By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
August 6, 2020
This month
marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on
Japan, at Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9.
Each year, Americans argue about our supposed moral shortcomings for being the only nation to have used an atomic weapon in war.
Given
the current cultural revolution that topples statues, renames
institutions, cancels out the supposedly politically incorrect, and
wages war on America’s past, we will hear numerous attacks on the
decision of Democratic president Harry Truman to use the two terrible
weapons.
But
what were the alternatives that Truman faced had he not dropped the
bombs that precipitated Japan’s agreement to surrender less than a week
after the bombing of Nagasaki and formally on September 2?
One,
Truman could have allowed Japan’s wounded military government to stop
the killing and stay in power. But the Japanese had already killed more
than 10 million Chinese civilians since 1931, and perhaps another 4
million to 5 million Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, and members of
the Allied Forces since 1940.
A
mere armistice rather than unconditional surrender would have meant the
Pacific War had been fought in vain. Japan’s Fascist government likely
would have regrouped in a few years to try it again on more favorable
terms.
Two,
Truman could have postponed the use of the new bombs and invaded Japan
over the ensuing year. The planned assault was scheduled to begin on the
island of Kyushu in November 1945, and in early 1946 would have
expanded to the main island of Honshu. Yet Japan had millions of
soldiers at home with fortifications, planes, and artillery, waiting for
the assault.
The
fighting in Japan would have made the prior three-month bloodbath at
Okinawa, which formally ended just six weeks before Hiroshima, seem like
child’s play. The disaster at Okinawa cost the U.S. 50,000 casualties
and 32 ships — the worst battle losses the American Navy suffered in the
war. More than 250,000 Okinawans and Japanese soldiers were killed as
well.
Just
the street fighting to recapture Manilla in the Philippines in early
1945 cost a quarter-million Filipino, Allied, and Japanese lives.
Three,
the U.S. could have held off on using the bomb, postponed the invasion,
and simply kept firebombing Japan with its huge fleet of B-29 bombers.
The planes soon would have been reinforced with thousands more American
and British bombers freed from the end of World War II in Europe.
The
napalming of Tokyo had already taken some 100,000 lives. With huge new
Allied bomber fleets of 5,000 or more planes based on nearby Okinawa,
the Japanese death toll would have soared to near a million.
Four,
the U.S. might have played rope-a-dope, stood down, and let the Soviet
Red Army overrun China, Korea, and Japan itself — in the same fashion
that the Russians months earlier had absorbed eastern Germany, the
Balkans, and Eastern Europe.
But
the Soviet occupation of North Korea alone led only to more war in
1950. Had the Soviets grabbed more Japanese-occupied territory, more
Communist totalitarianism and conflict probably would have ensued, with
no chance of a free and democratic post-war Japan.
Five,
Truman could have dropped a demonstration bomb or two in Tokyo Bay to
warn the Japanese government of their country’s certain destruction if
it continued the war.
But
there was no guarantee that the novel weapons, especially the untested
plutonium bomb, would work. A dud bomb or an unimpressive detonation at
sea might have only emboldened the Japanese to continue the war.
There
were likely only three bombs ready in August. It was not clear when
more would be available. So real worries arose that the Japanese might
be unimpressed, ignore the warning, and ride out the future attacks in
hopes that there were few additional bombs left.
In
the cruel logic of existential war, demonstrating rather than using a
new weapon can convey to autocratic belligerents hesitancy seen as
weakness to be manipulated, rather than as magnanimity to be
reciprocated.
By
August 1945, six years after the start of World War II in Europe, some
70 million had died, including some 10 million killed by the Japanese
military. Millions more starved throughout Asia and China owing to the
destruction and famine unleashed by Japan — a brutal military empowered
by millions of skilled civilian industrial workers.
To
Americans and most of the world 75 years ago, each day in early August
1945 that the Japanese war machine continued its work meant that
thousands of Asian civilians and Allied soldiers would die.
In
the terrible arithmetic of World War II, the idea that such a nightmare
might end in a day or two was seen as saving millions of lives rather
than gratuitously incinerating tens of thousands.
It
was in that bleak context that Harry Truman dropped the two bombs —
opting for a terrible choice among even worse alternatives.
EDITOR'S NOTE: God bless Harry Truman! If he had not ordered dropping the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I probably would not be alive today.
Today, any nation that would resort to the use of nuclear bombs would be charged by the International Court with committing War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
3 comments:
I agree with you 100% on this one Howie. (And I didn't have as much skin in the game as you did.)
I most likely would never have been born had the A bomb not been dropped. My dad was a marine on Guadalcanal, and would have been part of the invasion of mainland Japan had that bomb not been dropped.
Whole hearted agreement on this.
Thank you for your service and sacrifice.
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