False historical narratives abound in our contentious and divided world, as leaders and complicit historians endeavor to use public understanding of the past to push policies and gain control in the present. One of the most egregious cases is the widely accepted account of the decision by U.S. leaders to drop the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 of 1945, respectively.
The generally held view, which is frequently taught in schools across the U.S. and beyond, is that the bombings were necessary to save lives, both American and Japanese; just how many lives were saved has itself been subject to debate, though President Harry Truman claimed half a million U.S. lives in his 1955 memoirs. This assessment is not only disputed by the facts, but it ignores the realities of what the bombings meant for the initiation of the Cold War and the future of humanity, in a world long awash with civilization-ending weapons.
Most importantly, the bombings quite simply were unnecessary. There were at least three ways that Japanese surrender could have been induced without the instantaneous killing of more than a hundred thousand civilians and another several hundred thousand men, women, and children being subjected to third-degree burns, injuries, and radiation exposure that would either end their lives shortly thereafter, or cause health problems in the years and decades following the fateful attacks.
One option was that the U.S. could have altered the surrender terms to make them acceptable to the Japanese. What most Japanese leaders wanted in early August of 1945 was to keep their Emperor and the kokutai or emperor system. The Americans, who knew this from intercepted cables, should have accepted this term; they would eventually agree anyway out of self-interest. Sadly, most of Truman’s top military and political advisors urged this course of action, but Truman, with the support of Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes, refused.
Another possibility was to allow the Soviet Union to proceed with its ground invasion upon declaring a war on Japan at midnight on August 8. The Joint Intelligence Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted on April 11, “If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.” As Japan’s Supreme War Council stated in May, “At the present moment when Japan is waging a life-or-death struggle against the U.S. and Britain, Soviet entry into the war will deal a death blow to the Empire.” Japan would have surrendered once it saw that it would be fighting both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Moreover, President Truman knew that the Soviets were about to invade, and wrote at least twice that that would end the war.
The last, albeit arguably the weakest, alternative was to demonstrate the enormous power of the atomic bomb by exploding it, as was done on July 16 in New Mexico, in the presence of foreign leaders, and as was recommended by a group of scientists in the Franck Report. Such a display could have exerted sufficient pressure on the Japanese government, especially in conjunction with the changed surrender terms and a warning about Soviet entry, to precipitate Japanese surrender. In fact, seven of America’s eight five-star admirals and generals in 1945 said the bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both. Truman’s personal chief of staff Admiral William Leahy, who also chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the use of the atomic bombs put us on the moral level of the ”barbarians of the dark ages.” General Douglas MacArthur wrote that the Japanese would have “gladly” surrendered months earlier if we’d told them they could keep the emperor.
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