Reasons Why the U.S. To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city? Some years after Trumans death, a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. [29], According to accounts based on post-war recollections and interviews, during the meeting McCloy raised the possibility of winding up the war by guaranteeing the preservation of the emperor albeit as a constitutional monarch. Soviet officials also rushed to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to survey damage to the cities and assess the power of the atomic bomb. [14]. What did senior officials know about the effects of atomic bombs before they were first used. On August 9, 1945, another bomber was in route to Japan, only this time they were heading for Nagasaki with Fat Man, another atomic bomb. Fears and Counterfactual Analysis: Would the Planned November 1945 Invasion of Southern Kyushu Have Occurred?Pacific Historical Review68 (1999): 561-609. Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent the point of no return in the history of world politics: they mark the dramatic culmination and end of the war, while symbolizing the beginning of an era of nuclear fear. With the Japanese surrender announcement not yet in, President Truman believed that another atomic bombing might become necessary. The Japanese were vicious fighters, however, and every victory cost more time, material, and, sadly, lives. [3] The NASM exhibit was drastically scaled-down but historians and journalist continued to engage in the debate. To keep the secret, Bush wanted to avoid a ruinous appropriations request to Congress and asked Roosevelt to ask Congress for the necessary discretionary funds. [42]. The parts that are highlighted in the report with a line on the left-hand margin are noteworthy. The 70th anniversary of the event presents an opportunity to set the record straight on five widely held myths about the bomb. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows, nuclear threats are real, present, and dangerous. Yonai was upset that Chief of Staff Yoshijiro Umezu and naval chief Suemu Toyada had sent the emperor a memorandum arguing that acceptance of the Brynes note would desecrate the emperors dignity and turn Japan into virtually a slave nation. The emperor chided Umezu and Toyoda for drawing hasty conclusions; in this he had the support of Yonai, who also dressed them down. objectives. RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein). The handwritten transcriptions are on the original archival copies. But it was the opposite, Truman caused the Cold War the moment he dropped the atomic bomb. RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1943-1945, CCS 381 (6-4-45), Sec. The second, which hit Nagasaki on 9 August, killed around 50,000 people. I. After Stalin reviewed in considerable detail, Soviet military gains in the Far East, they discussed the possible impact of the atomic bombing on Japans position (Nagasaki had not yet been attacked) and the dangers and difficulty of an atomic weapons program. 576 words. Small; Normal; . Shusen Shiroku (The Historical Records of the End of the War), annotated by Jun Eto, volume 4, 57-60 [Excerpts] [Translation by Toshihiro Higuchi], Excerpts from the Foreign Ministry's compilation about the end of the war show how news of the bombing reached Tokyo as well as how Foreign Minister's Togo initially reacted to reports about Hiroshima. 5, This review of Japanese capabilities and intentions portrays an economy and society under tremendous strain; nevertheless, the ground component of the Japanese armed forces remains Japans greatest military asset. Alperovitz sees statements in this estimate about the impact of Soviet entry into the war and the possibility of a conditional surrender involving survival of the emperor as an institution as more evidence that the policymakers saw alternatives to nuclear weapons use. On August 6, 1945 the American war plane Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing between 70,000 and 100,000 Japanese. olive tree children ministries; teaching blog; about our ministry; salvation prayer; contact us [71]. By providing access to a broad range of U.S. and Japanese documents, mainly from the spring and summer of 1945, interested readers can see for themselves the crucial source material that scholars have used to shape narrative accounts of the historical developments and to frame their arguments about the questions that have provoked controversy over the years. In Japan and elsewhere around the world, each anniversary is observed with great solemnity. Another column was striking south from the Soviet border toward Hailar. Library of Congress . If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? The events leading up to the dropping of the first atomic bomb can be traced back to 7 th December 1941, when the Japanese attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour. At 10:50 a.m., he met with the leadership at the bomb shelter in his palace. Groves did not mention this but around the time he wrote this the Manhattan Project had working at its far-flung installations over 125,000 people ; taking into account high labor turnover some 485,000 people worked on the project (1 out of every 250 people in the country at that time). Yonai made sure that Takagi understood his reasons for bringing the war to an end and why he believed that the atomic bomb and the Soviet declaration of war had made it easier for Japan to surrender. Besides discussing programmatic matters (e.g., status of gaseous diffusion plants, heavy water production for reactors, and staffing at Las Alamos), the participants agreed that the first use could be Japanese naval forces concentrated at Truk Harbor, an atoll in the Caroline Islands. Private collections were also important, such as the Henry L. Stimson Papers held at Yale University (although available on microfilm, for example, at the Library of Congress) and the papers of W. Averell Harriman at the Library of Congress. 24, tab D, Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelts death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Projectfrom briefingsbySecretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves (who went through the back door to escape the watchful press). After the first minute of dropping "Fat Man," 39,000 men, women and children were killed. The force of B-29 nuclear delivery vehicles that was being readied for first nuclear usethe Army Air Forces 509th Composite Grouprequired an operational base in the Western Pacific. 1. Women and children had been taught how to kill with basic weapons. On this date 74 years ago, the US dropped the first of two atomic bombs on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing more than 70,000 people instantly. If the Japanese decided to keep fighting, G-2 opined that Atomic bombs will not have a decisive effect in the next 30 days. Richard Frank has pointed out that this and other documents indicate that high level military figures remained unsure as to how close Japan really was to surrender. Arguing that continuing the war would reduce the nation to ashes, his words about bearing the unbearable and sadness over wartime losses and suffering prefigured the language that Hirohito would use in his public announcement the next day. Henry L. Stimson Papers (MS 465), Sterling Library, Yale University (reel 113) (microfilm at Library of Congress), Still interested in trying to find ways to warn Japan into surrender, this represents an attempt by Stimson before the Potsdam conference, to persuade Truman and Byrnes to agree to issue warnings to Japan prior to the use of the bomb. With Japan close to capitulation, Truman asserted presidential control and ordered a halt to atomic bombings. In a progress report, Bush told President Roosevelt that the bomb project was on a pilot plant basis, but not yet at the production stage. To what extent were senior officials interested in looking at alternatives to urban targets? The outspoken Szilard was not involved in operational work on the bomb and General Groves kept him under surveillance but Met Lab director Arthur Compton found Szilard useful to have around. At the time, the American people cheered the . With more information on the Alamogordo test available, Groves provided Marshall with detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. Not altogether certain that surrender was imminent, Army intelligence did not rule out the possibility that Tokyo would try to drag out the negotiations or reject the Byrnes proposal and continue fighting. Some of the key elements of Stimsons argument were his assumption that Japan is susceptible to reason and that Japanese might be even more inclined to surrender if we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty. The possibility of a Soviet attack would be part of the threat. As part of the threat message, Stimson alluded to the inevitability and completeness of the destruction which Japan could suffer, but he did not make it clear whether unconditional surrender terms should be clarified before using the atomic bomb. The light from the explosion could been seen from here [Washington, D.C.] to high hold [Stimsons estate on Long Island250 miles away] and it was so loud that Harrison could have heard the screams from Washington, D.C. to my farm [in Upperville, VA, 50 miles away][42], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. The editor has closely reviewed the footnotes and endnotes in a variety of articles and books and selected documents cited by participants on the various sides of the controversy. Whether or not the atomic bombs should have been dropped is a topic that is still debated. Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, Transcript/Draft B, Returning from the Potsdam Conference, sailing on the U.S.S. Japanese kamikaze pilots could turn planes into guided missiles. The 27-tonne Soviet Tsar Bomba was the most powerful weapon ever constructed. This summary included intercepts of Japanese diplomatic reporting on the Soviet buildup in the Far East as well as a naval intelligence report on Anglo-American discussions of U.S. plans for the invasion of Japan. Early the next day, General Anami committed suicide. 75 years ago, in August 1945, the United States dropped the first and last atomic bombs used in warfare. 35+ YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION, FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports, a helpful collection of archival documents, on-line resources on the first atomic test. The bombings were the first time that nuclear weapons had been detonated in combat operations. McCloy was part of a drafting committee at work on the text of a proclamation to Japan to be signed by heads of state at the forthcoming Potsdam conference. On August 9, 1945, another bomber was in route to Japan, only this time they were heading for Nagasaki with "Fat Man," another atomic bomb. 961 Words4 Pages. Stalin considered various dates to schedule an attack. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. RG 77, Harrison-Bundy Files (H-B Files), folder 69 (copy from microfilm), While Groves worried about the engineering and production problems, key War Department advisers were becoming troubled over the diplomatic and political implications of these enormously powerful weapons and the dangers of a global nuclear arms race. By contrast, Herbert P. Bix has suggested that the Japanese leadership would probably not have surrendered if the Truman administration had spelled out the status of the emperor. Later that year, the Uranium Committee completed its report and OSRD Chairman Vannevar Bush reported the findings to President Roosevelt: As Bush emphasized, the U.S. findings were more conservative than those in the British MAUD report: the bomb would be somewhat less effective, would take longer to produce, and at a higher cost. Frank, 286-287; Sherwin, 233-237; Bernstein (1995), 150; Maddox, 148. Also included, to give a wider perspective, were translations of Japanese documents not widely available before. A full translation of the surrender offer was circulated separately. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, and I weighed that decision most prayerfully. The Supreme War Council comprised the prime minister, foreign minister, army and navy ministers, and army and navy chiefs of staff; see Hasegawa, 72. Years of fighting brought the US armed forces closer and closer to Japan as they hopped from one island to another. After a successful test of the weapon, Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese government, warning of prompt and utter destruction. Eleven days later, on August 6, 1945, having received no reply, an American bomber called the Enola Gay left the Tinian Island in route toward Japan. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. Vladimir Putin's renewed threat of nuclear war, issued during a bitter and rambling speech, has revived fears that he could drop an atomic bomb on . Japan was already a day late in responding to the Byrnes Note and Hirohito agreed to move quickly. August 4, 2015 A few months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Dwight D.Eisenhower commented during a social occasion how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the atomic bomb. This virtually unknown evidence from the diary of Robert P. Meiklejohn, an assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, published for the first time today by the National Security Archive, confirms that the future President Eisenhower had early misgivings about the first use of atomic weapons by the United States. Two days later an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated . President Obama's visit to Hiroshima, nearly 71 years after it was destroyed by the first atomic bomb, inevitably raises once again the questions of why the United States dropped that bomb,. According to Robert S. Norris, this was the fateful decision to turn over the atomic project to military control.[8]. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.. He also points out that Truman and his colleagues had no idea what was behind Japanese peace moves, only that Suzuki had declared that he would ignore the Potsdam Declaration. The United States decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the Soviet Union in the post- Second-War era rather than a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional surrender. None of these sections are about damage to human beings. Truman, already on his way to Europe, never saw the petition.[35]. In what Stimson called the letter of an honest man, Oswald C. Brewster sent President Truman a profound analysis of the danger and unfeasibility of a U.S. atomic monopoly. As indicated by the L.D. The total destruction of that city, and the instant incineration of 40,000 mostly civilian people, occurred just three days after the destruction of Hiroshima by a 15-kiloton uranium bomb, which instantly killed 70,000. However, the Department of the Interior opposed the disclosure of the nature of the weapon. Wait a moment and try again. Interested readers will continue to absorb the fascinating historical literature on the subject. In this memorandum, Norstad reviewed the complex requirements for preparing B-29s and their crew for successful nuclear strikes. Source: U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, Record Group 373, Defense Intelligence Agency, Aerial Film, U.S., Army Air Force. Plainly he was troubled by the devastation and suffering caused by the bombings, but he found it justifiable because it saved the lives of U.S. troops. Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. This was the affirmation of the emperors theocratic powers, unencumbered by any law, based on Shinto gods in antiquity, and totally incompatible with a constitutional monarchy. Thus, the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration opposed any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a sovereign ruler. This proved to be unacceptable to the Truman administration.[63]. Quotation and statistics from Thomas R. Searle, `It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,The Journal of Military History55 (2002):103. Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945. Two scientists at Oak Ridges Health Division, Henshaw and Coveyou, saw a United Press report in the Knoxville News Sentinel about radiation sickness caused by the bombings. The war was finally over. Peter Grose,Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 170-174, 248-249. Therefore, we are publishing an excised version of the entry, with a link to the Byrnes note. [59a], Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 923-924 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]. [16]. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (civil war), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by Big Six. Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. This. Analyzes how the united states and the soviet union became superpowers as world war ii ended. The initial report, May 1941, showed how leading American scientists grappled with the potential of nuclear energy for military purposes. Brown Papers, box 10, folder 12, Byrnes, James F.: Potsdam, Minutes, July-August 1945, Walter Brown, who served as special assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes, kept a diary which provided considerable detail on the Potsdam conference and the growing concerns about Soviet policy among top U.S. officials. Suite 701, Gelman Library Unaware of the findings of Health Division scientists, Groves and Rhea saw the injuries as nothing more than good thermal burns.[75], Documents 94A-B: General Farrell Surveys the Destruction, RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 17, Envelope B, A month after the attacks Groves deputy, General Farrell, traveled to Japan to see for himself the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ramsey, a physicist, served as deputy director of the bomb delivery group, Project Alberta. [53], RG 457, Summaries of Intercepted Japanese Messages (Magic Far East Summary, March 20, 1942 October 2, 1945), box 7, SRS 491-547, This Far East Summary included reports on the Japanese Armys plans to disperse fuel stocks to reduce vulnerability to bombing attacks, the text of a directive by the commander of naval forces on Operation Homeland, the preparations and planning to repel a U.S. invasion of Honshu, and the specific identification of army divisions located in, or moving into, Kyushu. A blog of the History and Public Policy Program. Alperovitz, 147; Robert James Maddox,Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995), 52; Gabiel Kolko,The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945(New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 421-422. If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an atomic diplomacy capability as a bonus? Robert J. Maddox has cited this document to support his argument that top U.S. officials recognized that Japan was not close to surrender because Japan was trying to stave off defeat. In a close analysis of this document, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who is also skeptical of claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, argues that each of the three possibilities proposed by Weckerling contained an element of truth, but none was entirely correct. [69]. Russias military intervention in Syria and Putins speech at the 70th UN General Assembly in September 2015 further aggravated the US-Russia bilateral relations. If there was a misfire the weapon would be difficult for the Japanese to recover, which would not be the case if Tokyo was targeted. Harriman opined that surrender is in the bag because of the Potsdam Declarations provision that the Japanese could choose their own form of government, which would probably include the Emperor. Further, the only alternative to the Emperor is Communism, implying that an official role for the Emperor was necessary to preserve social stability and prevent social revolution. Bix, Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War,Japan Focus. Since 2005, the collection has been updated. Thousands died later from radiation sickness. Moreover, ethical questions have shrouded the bombings which caused terrible human losses and in succeeding decades fed a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and now Russia and others. A few days later another Japanese city, Nagasaki, was obliterated by a second atomic bomb. Alperovitz, 281-282. Bernstein (1995), 144. It is 28 inches in diameter and 120 inches long. In fact, after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese military's Information Division, in charge of media control, intended to announce that the bomb was an atomic one. Togos proposal would have been generally consistent with a constitutional monarchy because it defined the kokutai narrowly as the emperor and the imperial household. The bomb, nicknamed 'Little Boy,' detonated with the force of 15 kilotons of TNT. [51] Togos private position was more nuanced than Suzukis; he told Sato that we are adopting a policy of careful study. That Stalin had not signed the declaration (Truman and Churchill did not ask him to) led to questions about the Soviet attitude. [38], Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, Magic Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18. National Security Agency Mandatory declassification review release. [6]. An intercepted message from Togo to Sato showed that Tokyo remained interested in securing Moscows good office but that it is difficult to decide on concrete peace conditions here at home all at once. [W]e are exerting ourselves to collect the views of all quarters on the matter of concrete terms. Barton Bernstein, Richard Frank, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, among others, have argued that the Magic intercepts from the end of July and early August show that the Japanese were far from ready to surrender. [73] As it turned out, a few hours later, at 4:05 p.m., the White House received the Japanese surrender announcement. were the atomic strikes necessary primarily to avert an invasion of Japan in November 1945? The president, however, wrote in long-hand a text that that might approximate what he said that evening. Truman was apparently not considering the fact that Tokyo was already devastated by fire bombing and that an atomic bombing would have killed the Emperor, which would have greatly complicated the process of surrender. Historian believed that there are two different possibilities. [79]. . With respect to the latter, It is possible that the destructive effects on life caused by the intense radioactivity of the products of the explosion may be as important as those of the explosion itself. This insight was overlooked when top officials of the Manhattan Project considered the targeting of Japan during 1945. The National Security Agency kept the Magic diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the entire series for 1942 through August 1945 until the early 1990s.[36]. After reviewing the impact of various atomic bomb effects--blast, heat, flash radiation (prompt effects from gamma and neutron radiation), and radiation from radioactive substances--they concluded that it seems highly plausible that a great many persons were subjected to lethal and sub-lethal dosages of radiation in areas where direct blast effects were possibly non-lethal. It was probable, therefore, that radiation would produce increments to the death rate and even more probable that a great number of cases of sub-lethal exposures to radiation have been suffered.[74], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no.
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