The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki sparked a significant scholarly and popular dispute in the United States. A bevy of books appeared wrestling with questions concerning the necessity, the wisdom, and the morality of America’s use of the new weapon in 1945.1 An even more inflammatory and public controversy centered on the text developed to accompany the planned exhibit at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution of a part of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the American B-29 aircraft that dropped the atomic weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Supposedly reflecting the most recent scholarly findings and self-consciously unafraid to puncture prevailing national “myths,” the Smithsonian text gave a privileged voice to an interpretation that held that the atomic bomb was not necessary to either end the Pacific War or to save American lives. The predictable public outrage apparently caught the Smithsonian curators by surprise. The historian J. Samuel Walker recounted that “veterans’ groups led a fusillade of attacks that accused the Smithsonian of making the use of the bomb appear aggressive, immoral, and unjustified.”2 With considerable congressional support, the aging veterans, members of the proverbial greatest generation, forced the Smithsonian to back down, to modify the text considerably, and to alter the thrust of the exhibit. This led in turn to lengthy lamentations that blatant political pressure had censored a well-researched, historical presentation.3
The commotion surrounding the Enola Gay exhibit ultimately generated much more heat than light. It proved to be just another in a long series of disputes and debates that has made the use of the atomic bombs without doubt President Harry S. Truman’s most controversial decision. At base these debates arose out of a rejection of the arguments put forth by policy makers like Truman and his Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb “obviated the need for an invasion of Japan, accelerated the conclusion of the war, and saved a vast number of American lives.”4 Especially after the appearance of Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy in 1965, various writers increasingly challenged the notion that the atomic bombs were needed to defeat a Japan that supposedly stood very close to surrender. Alperovitz has been nothing if not consistent, and in his massive book marking the fiftieth anniversary of the bomb’s use he reiterated his contentious thesis along with its corollary that the Truman administration used the atomic weapons as part of its diplomacy aimed primarily at the Soviet Union.5 As one close observer of the atomic debate noted, Alperovitz’s work “redirected the focus of questions that scholars asked about the bomb.” Instead of attending to the necessity of the bomb, “the central questions had become: What factors were paramount in the decision to use the bomb and why was its use more attractive to policymakers than other alternatives.”6 This seemingly subtle change of emphasis in effect put the Truman administration on trial for its use of the powerful new weapons. Why had it done what wasn’t really necessary went the reasoning implicit in this approach.
The questions a historian asks hold great importance and influence significantly how well any explorer of the past can map and understand its difficult terrain. In such contested and controversial territory as the use of the atomic bombs, it seems wise to clarify at the outset the questions that this book addresses and seeks to answer. Essentially, it examines why the bombs were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then goes on to investigate the role they played in Japan’s surrender. Pursuing these fundamental matters allows for other fascinating questions to be addressed. Would Truman’s great predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, have used the atomic bombs in the manner that Truman authorized? Did the likely possession of the atomic bombs transform American military calculations as the Pacific War came to an end, and alter American intentions toward its then Soviet ally? Were the Japanese really on the verge of surrender before the atomic bombs were used? Should the bombing of Hiroshima be seen as the opening salvo in the Cold War as Gar Alperovitz suggested so provocatively more than forty years ago? How is the Potsdam conference (July 17–August 2, 1945), Truman’s one and only exercise in Big Three summitry, related to America’s possession of the atomic bomb? Answers to such questions help shed light on the crucial issue regarding the necessity of using these terrible weapons to force Japan’s defeat.7 These matters are surely the province of the historian and might reasonably suffice in an effort to understand Truman’s decision making and its consequences. Yet, given the intensity of the conflict surrounding the atomic bomb, it seems essential to also confront the question regarding the morality of the atomic bomb. Thus, this book explores whether it was right for the United States to use this weapon against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I find convincing the observation of the Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis that one “can’t escape thinking about history in moral terms” and rather than doing this implicitly or subconsciously I prefer here to engage the issue explicitly.8 I trust my analysis might instigate good reflection and discussion among my readers.
I have not sought to engage in any detailed refutation of the work of other historians, although this book assuredly revises and directly challenges certain past interpretations. Rather, my effort here takes account of the available and extensive documentary evidence on this much debated issue, and it draws on the best scholarship on the subject. It also seeks to take into account the most recent work on the use of the atomic bombs. The continuing appearance of new studies testifies to the enduring effort to understand and explain the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The effort in this book to understand and explain Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs draws heavily on my earlier book From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War.9 In that book I made a genuine effort to treat Truman as more than a one-dimensional figure. I sought to reveal him as the more complex man he truly was – one blessed with certain strengths and beset with notable limitations, who was occasionally given to uncertainty and indecision on matters of foreign policy. Understanding this more complicated figure allows for a deeper appreciation of his foreign policy and his decision making. So too does a firm grasp of the circumstances in which he operated. This book, like From Roosevelt to Truman, accepts the complexity, the uncertainty, the sheer messiness of policy making. It tries to convey the tense atmosphere in which policy makers worked, the heavy pressures they endured, and the complex of influences that weighed upon them. I trust it will lead readers to better understand Truman and his most controversial decision.
1 A sample of the works published around the fiftieth anniversary includes Gar Alperovitz et al., The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York, 1995); Robert James Maddox, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later (Columbia, MO, 1995); Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York, 1995); Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing, MI, 1995); and Stanley Weintraub, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July–August 1945 (New York, 1995). The more recent sixtieth anniversary passed in more subdued fashion with a mere flurry of op-ed pieces and magazine articles published in early August 2005. For the best of these, see Richard B. Frank, “Why Truman Dropped the Bomb,” The Weekly Standard, 10 (August 8, 2005), pp. 20–25.
2 J. Samuel Walker, “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update,” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge and New York, 1995), p. 206.
3 For further details of the Smithsonian controversy told largely from the perspective of those sympathetic to the originally planned exhibition, see Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Englehardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York, 1996). For a more critical treatment of the exhibit, see Robert P. Newman, “Enola Gay at Air and Space: Anonymity, Hypocrisy, Ignorance,” in Robert James Maddox, ed., Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism (Columbia, MO, 2007), pp. 171–189.
4 Walker summarizes this position in his “The Decision to Use the Bomb,” p. 207.
5 See Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Drop the Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth.
6 Walker, “The Decision to Use the Bomb,” p. 213.
7 See the very helpful chapter on “Key Questions and Interpretations,” in Michael Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (New York, 2007), pp. 81–116.
8 John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York, 2002), p. 122.
9 Wilson D. Miscamble, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (New York and Cambridge, 2007).