The Bomb

The most destructive American weapon against Japan was blockade; the Japanese high command’s greatest fear was of blockade-induced revolution

August is the anniversary month of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led quickly to the capitulation of the Empire of Japan, ending World War II. The history leading up to the bombings compelling.

Much of the anti-Americanism of the American Left and foreign nationals springs condemning the US as the only country ever to employ atomic weapons in war. The communist propagandists especially made much hay out of that fact. The Left has proclaimed the bombings as unjustified or worse for decades.

Only the passage of time will settle the argument, as the wartime generation passes away and the topic no longer grabs the public attention any more. There are some resources worth reading now, though.

Austin Bay posted the text of a letter written by James A. Michener to a friend in October, 1995. Michener was serving in the US Army Air Corps in the Pacific when the bombs were dropped. He wrote,

Never once in those first days nor in the long reconsiderations later could I possibly have criticized Truman for having dropped that first bomb. True, I see now that the second bomb on Nagasaki might have been redundant and I would have been just as happy if it had not been dropped. And I can understand how some historians can argue that Japan might have surrendered without the Hiroshima bomb, but the evidence from many nations involved at that moment testify to the contrary. From my experience on Saipan and Okinawa, when I saw how violently the Japanese soldiers defended their caves to the death I am satisfied that they would have done the same on Kyushu. . . .

. . . if you are unlucky enough to become engaged in [war] you better not lose it. The doctrine, cruel and thoughtless as it may sound, governs my thought, my evaluations and my behavior. I could never publicly turn my back on that belief, so I have refused opportunities to testify against the United States in the Hiroshima matter. . . . I know that I was terrified at what might happen and d——d relieved when the invasion became unnecessary. I accept the military estimates that at least one million lives were saved and mine could have been one of them.

I have known a few men, also serving in the armed forces in the Pacific, who completely agree. My father-in-law, an Army officer in 1945, veteran of eight combat amphibious assaults in the Pacific, is convinced that he is alive because the atom bomb canceled the invasion of Japan. My father was assigned to the Pacific Fleet in 1945 and wound up on an aircraft carrier, serving a battle station as a 40-mm antiaircraft gunner. Carriers were primary kamikaze targets.

There are two essential books to understand what happened and why. One is a little-known work of Japanese historians, written eight years after the bombing, Japan’s Longest Day. Their focus is on the period between the Nagasaki bombing and the radio address of Emperor Hirohito in which he announced that the war “had not turned in Japan’s favor.” They painstakingly document the fact that even the atomic bombings did not persuade all the Japanese high command to surrender. A coup was actually attempted by an army general, who sent troops to seize the emperor and halt the broadcast. The coup failed, of course, but as Wellington had said about Waterloo, it was a close-run thing.

The second book is an award-winning book, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, by Richard B. Frank. A very comprehensive history, Frank documents the Japanese plan for defending against the invasion, using Japanese documents and records. But his best contribution is the way he shows the context in which the Japanese bombings occurred.

Frank shows that the most destructive weapon used against Japan in 1945 was blockade, which robbed Japan of raw materials, petroleum and most vitally, food from the Asian mainland. The blockade was enforced by submarines and B-29 bombers, which laid mines throughout the Sea of Japan, concentrating them in the approaches to Japan’s harbors. Japanese industry was surprisingly resilient to aerial bombing but could not function when its raw materials were so successfully interdicted.

The Japanese people came dangerously close to actual starvation. By the time of the atom bombings, the per capita calorie intake was much less than 1000 per day for adults, and was declining steadily. Typhoons so damaged crops in October 1945 that massive US food aid was required to prevent enormous deaths from malnutrition. Had the war still been going on then, as it would have been without the bombings, the Japanese death toll would have been very high.

Throughout most of 1945, 500,000 civilians were dying monthly at the hands of the Japanese occupiers in the Asian and Pacific lands Japan still occupied. The Left has never acknowledged the terrible toll Japan was taking among its subjugated peoples.

Author Frank shows that within a day of the first bombing, Japanese scientists had correctly identified the weapon’s type. Even so, no one’s first thought was of surrender. In fact, the bombs did not compel Japan’s surrender at all; neither did the bombs persuade Hirohito to issue the command. Their collective, non-negotiable condition for capitulation was that the Emperor and his office must remain intact, along with the symbols of his divine authority (something akin to the British crown jewels and scepter).

Once the allies covertly guaranteed both, the atomic bombings provided the excuse, rather than the real reason, to accept the allies’ terms. Why? The overriding fear of the high command was the destruction of the emperor’s office and line, and the most serious threat thereto was revolution by the Japanese people themselves. The American blockade was so punishing the populace that the Japanese internal security service had bona fide reasons to believe revolution would break out. Even the most hawkish of the hawks were petrified by this prospect.

Once the Americans promised not to abolish the emperor’s office or claim the imperial symbols as war prizes, surrender suddenly became the “least-worst” option.

Endnote: Here is the text of the BBC’s initial announcement of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which took place on htis date in 1945.