The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

[Open Bolt]

In 1995, under pressure from some members of Congress and the leaders of some veterans groups, the Smithsonian Institution canceled its planned exhibit on the Enola Gay and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the first text of the exhibit was released, leaders of certain veterans groups and some members of Congress expressed outrage over many of its statements and claimed that the exhibit dishonored Pacific War veterans and whitewashed Japan’s role in the war. The text was actually very balanced, and in fact it pulled many valid punches that could have been thrown, but it was too much for the critics.

It was not even close to being balanced. The original exhibit was filled with anti-American lies.

The open letter below was written to the Smithsonian’s secretary, Michael Heyman, to protest the revised version of the exhibit’s text. The letter was signed by scholars from leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Ohio State, and MIT:

Mr. I. Michael Heyman
Secretary
The Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C. 20560

July 31, 1995

Dear Secretary Heyman:

Testifying before a House subcommittee on March 10, 1995, you promised that when you finally unveiled the Enola Gay exhibit, "I am just going to report the facts."[1]

Unfortunately, the Enola Gay exhibit contains a text which goes far beyond the facts. The critical label at the heart of the exhibit makes the following assertions:

* The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "destroyed much of the two cities and caused many tens of thousands of deaths." This substantially understates the widely accepted figure that at least 200,000 men, women and children were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Official Japanese records calculate a figure of more than 200,000 deaths--the vast majority of victims being women, children and elderly men.)[2]​

A little while ago I addressed one of your posts that used early surveys to minimize the number of soldiers in Hiroshima.

If it was reasonable for you to focus on the lower numbers from early surveys, surely it is reasonable for the Smithsonian to do the same.

And it is also a fact that even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed, the Japanese still insisted that Emperor Hirohito be allowed to remain emperor as a condition of surrender. Only when that assurance was given did the Japanese agree to surrender.​

Oops. That isn't even remotely a fact.

Japan asked that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity.

This request was flatly denied, and Japan surrendered anyway.

* The Smithsonian's label also takes the highly partisan view that, "It was thought highly unlikely that Japan, while in a very weakened military condition, would have surrendered unconditionally without such an invasion." Nowhere in the exhibit is this interpretation balanced by other views. Visitors to the exhibit will not learn that many U.S. leaders--including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower[5], Admiral William D. Leahy[6], War Secretary Henry L. Stimson[7], Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew[8] and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy[9]--thought it highly probable that the Japanese would surrender well before the earliest possible invasion, scheduled for November 1945.​

Another miss. No one gave Mr. Truman any such advice.

* In yet another label, the Smithsonian asserts as fact that "Special leaflets were then dropped on Japanese cities three days before a bombing raid to warn civilians to evacuate." The very next sentence refers to the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, implying that the civilian inhabitants of Hiroshima were given a warning. In fact, no evidence has ever been uncovered that leaflets warning of atomic attack were dropped on Hiroshima.​

That one is outright dishonest.

The atomic bombs were the most closely guarded secret in history before their actual use. So of course the warning leaflets did not mention atomic bombs, and only said that the cities were going to be destroyed by a massive bombing raid.

To claim that there were no "leaflets mentioning the atomic bombs" in a context that challenges the existence of "leaflets warning of massive destruction" is so dishonest that this one has to have come from Gar Alperovitz.

Indeed, the decision of the Interim Committee was "that we could not give the Japanese any warning."[10]​

More deliberate deception.

A recommendation to not give any warning of the atomic bomb does not mean that no leaflets were dropped warning of massive destruction.

* In a 16 minute video film in which the crew of the Enola Gay are allowed to speak at length about why they believe the atomic bombings were justified, pilot Col. Paul Tibbits asserts that Hiroshima was "definitely a military objective." Nowhere in the exhibit is this false assertion balanced by contrary information.​

The assertion is true. Nothing false about it.

Hiroshima was chosen as a target precisely because it had been very low on the previous spring's campaign of conventional bombing, and therefore was a pristine target on which to measure the destructive powers of the atomic bomb.[11]​

Now that's what a false assertion looks like.

Hiroshima was selected as an atomic target early in the bombing campaign when not many Japanese cities had been destroyed. Thereafter it was off limits to conventional bombing.

Defining Hiroshima as a "military" target is analogous to calling San Francisco a "military" target because it has a port and contains the Presidio.​

More like calling Norfolk Virginia a military target.

Hiroshima was Japan's primary military port, and it held vital military headquarters.

If you want to read the list of scholars who signed the letter, here is a link to the full letter:

All we really need to know is that the people who signed the letter are all liars.

 

[Open Bolt]

If you want a very good all-in-one refutation of the major arguments used by nuke defenders, I recommend reading Dr. Stephen Shalom's famous essay "The Obliteration of Hiroshima." I've posted a condensed version of it on my website The Pacific War and the Atomic Bomb:
https://miketgriffith.com/files/obliteration.pdf

The article is filled with falsehoods about the invasion estimates. That is likely due to its reliance on Gar Alperovitz, a known fraud.

There were invasion estimates of up to a million Americans killed, and millions more maimed and wounded. There were also estimates of many millions of Japanese killed in the invasion.

The article's whining that we could have used a demonstration instead of hitting military targets, or that we could have let the war drag on without using the atomic bombs, certainly doesn't refute anything.

Is this some kind of joke? The fact that Eisenhower and Grew, among many others, opposed nuking Japan has been documented in literally hundreds of scholarly studies.

Nonsense. There is no evidence that Grew opposed using the atomic bombs.

By the way, the "link to your [my] website" is a condensed version of Dr. Stephen Shalom's famous article "The Obliteration of Hiroshima," which answers every major excuse given for nuking Japan. Clearly, you have not yet bothered to read it.

It does no such thing. It has no answer for the fact that Japan was still refusing to surrender. It has no answer for the fact that the atomic bombs were dropped on military targets. And its claims about invasion casualty estimates are completely false.

Dr. Ward Wilson has written extensively about Japan's surrender and, like so many other scholars, has debunked the traditional story that Japan surrendered because we nuked them. I quote from one of his articles on the surrender, "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan . . . Stalin Did":

Stalin didn't beat Japan, the US military did.

Stalin's declaration of war against Japan certainly undermined their efforts to exit the war with Soviet mediation.

But Japan's decision to exit the war came when the US military captured Okinawa.

 

[Open Bolt]

Here is good article written in 2015 by Dr. Geoffrey Shepherd titled "It's Clear the US Should Not Have Bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Dr. Shepherd outlines one of the several alternative courses of action that we could have taken instead of nuking two cities:

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And with each passing year the historical record is ever clearer that dropping the A-bombs was unnecessary, repugnant and very likely a war crime.​

Attacks on military targets are not a war crime.

The bombings probably killed more than 200,000 Japanese civilians and maimed untold more. Such destruction of life stirs me to sorrow and outrage. That’s even more true given that there was an alternative available: the US could have dropped an A-bomb in or near Tokyo Bay. Such a warning shot could have persuaded the Japanese to end the war, and its humane nature would have enhanced the US’s moral standing.​

We chose to direct our attacks at actual military targets.

But American leaders had acquired the habit of bombing cities, having attacked Berlin, Hamburg and even the cultural jewel of Dresden.​

We did participate in the destruction of Berlin. But it was the UK who destroyed Hamburg and Dresden.

The hellish firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 alone killed some 250,000 civilians and maimed huge numbers more.​

I do not accept your casualty figures.

And the planning of Truman’s advisors—including Groves, Doolittle, and Curtis LeMay—was full of mistakes. Hiroshima emerged as a candidate after having escaped attack thus far in the conflict. It was almost entirely civilian, and any attention to its few military targets soon disappeared.​

Hiroshima was selected as an atomic target early in the bombing campaign, and was thereafter off limits to conventional bombing.

Everyone was well aware that Hiroshima was a huge military center with thousands of soldiers and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our invasion.

On top of the Japanese deaths and casualties, the actual dropping of the A-bombs likely heightened the stakes at the advent of the Cold War. Had the US not dropped the A-bombs, the nuclear arms race might have proceeded more slowly and less wastefully, possibly without hydrogen bombs. The US and USSR might even have cultivated cooperation and prosperity, in place of mutual fears and military-industrial excesses.​

A more likely outcome is that without the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to restrain people, there would have been a large nuclear war and civilization would now be in a new dark age.

 

[there4eyeM]

What motive is there for trying so hard to make such a horrendous act appear less than it was?

 

[Open Bolt]

What motive is there for trying so hard to make such a horrendous act appear less than it was?

Hardly horrendous. And hardly less than what it was.

All I do is tell the truth. My motive is that I dislike seeing the US be lied about.

 

[gipper]

None of those quotes are relevant to the untrue claim about imaginary surrender offers.



No he didn't.



Imaginary overtures are difficult to follow up on.

You must be Bill Casey’s illegitimate son.

 

[there4eyeM]

Hardly horrendous. And hardly less than what it was.

All I do is tell the truth. My motive is that I dislike seeing the US be lied about.

What "lie" is that?

 

[Dayton3]

What motive is there for trying so hard to make such a horrendous act appear less than it was?

Because while "horrendous" it was also fully justified. And attempts to slam the U.S. for using nuclear weapons are pure anti-Americanism at its worst.

 

[Open Bolt]

You must be Bill Casey’s illegitimate son.

I doubt that he said that. But note that everything that I am saying is true. You are the one who was making untrue statements.

 

[Open Bolt]

What "lie" is that?

Claims that Japan offered to surrender before we dropped the atomic bombs are untrue.

Claims that there was no military value to the atomic bomb targets are also untrue.

Claims that there were no estimates of huge casualties if we had invaded are also untrue.

Claims that we did not drop warning leaflets before bombing are also untrue.

The term lie alleges deception. I do not suggest that all untrue statements are lies. Many posters here are merely mistaken. But many of the supposed "historians" who push these falsehoods in public are lying.

 

[Open Bolt]

Some people continue to claim that the Japanese peace feelers in the months leading up to Hiroshima were all meaningless low-level approaches with no high-level support. In fact, this is a standard talking point among authors who defend the nuking of Japan.

Those people are correct. The only peace move that had high level support was the attempt to get the Soviets to mediate the end of the war.

However, there are government records and plenty of scholarly studies that refute this claim.

No there aren't.

These peace feelers, and others, are discussed in detail by John Toland in The Rising Sun, by Lester Brooks in Behind Japan’s Surrender, and by Gar Alperovitz in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.

Gar Alperovitz is a known fraud. He may well produce something purporting to show high level support for the peace feelers, but whatever he produces will not be true.

Truman and his Japan-hating Secretary of State, James Byrnes,

Oh please.

Now, I would say that a peace feeler done by Japan’s Foreign Minister was both official and very high level.

I wouldn't. Until such time as the Emperor overruled them, the Japanese Army was the real government of Japan.

Shigemitsu’s effort did not succeed, but that was only because his successor, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, believed that a more powerful intermediary should be approached.

Notice that it was Japan who killed this peace feeler, not the Americans.

Yonai then informed Foreign Minister Togo of the negotiations, and Togo authorized Yonai to have the Fujimura group explore the Dulles proposal more thoroughly.
So the claim that the approach to Dulles was some meaningless low-level effort that had no backing in Tokyo is demonstrably incorrect.

No it isn't. Where was the backing of the Japanese Army?

The hardliners eventually succeeded in killing the Fujimura approach to Dulles,

Notice that it was Japan, not the US, who killed off this peace feeler as well.

the hardliners would not have been able to kill it if Truman, or a high official at Truman’s direction, had simply advised the Japanese that we would not depose the emperor if they surrendered according to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.

Nonsense. Truman was not responsible for the actions of Japanese hardliners.

On June 22, Truman received another memo on the Fujimura-Dulles peace talks. The memo advised him that “Fujimura insists that the Japanese, before surrendering, would require assurances that the Emperor would be retained.”
So Truman knew, long before Hiroshima, that the only real obstacle to a surrender was his refusal to assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be deposed if they surrendered.

Nonsense again. The fact that the position of the Emperor was important does not mean that it was the "only" obstacle.

-- The second peace feeler in Switzerland involved General Seigo Okamoto, the Japanese military attache in Berne, and two Japanese officials at the International Bank of Settlements in Basel, in July 1945. Not only was Okamoto a general and the head of the Japanese attache office in Berne, he was a close friend of General Yoshijiru Omezu’s, the Japanese Army Chief of Staff.

Yet this peace feeler as well did not have the support of the Japanese Army.

I notice you didn't mention who was responsible for killing off this peace feeler. Hint: it wasn't the US.

-- Furthermore, Emperor Hirohito himself authorized the effort to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender with the U.S., and Truman was aware of this fact from Foreign Minister Togo’s July 12 cable. Hirohito even wanted to send Prince Konoye to Moscow as a special envoy to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender deal with the U.S. I’d say that a peace feeler pushed by the Foreign Minister and strongly backed by Emperor Hirohito was about as substantial, official, and high ranking as you could get.

True. The gambit with the Soviets did have the support of the Japanese government.

When people dismiss the peace feelers as not representing the Japanese government, they are not considering the Soviet gambit to be a peace feeler. They are only referring to those other low-level attempts.

Incidentally, the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian website includes an article on the Japanese peace feelers, and it documents that American high officials were aware of these efforts:

Of course US officials were aware.

US officials pursued all of the peace feelers that they could, despite knowing that none of them had the support of the Japanese government, just in case one of the feelers evolved into an actual contact with the Japanese government.

Again note that it was Japan that killed off all these peace feelers.

 

[Open Bolt]

I did not attack any person; rather, I attacked the excuses that have been offered for nuking two defenseless cities of a country whose civilians leaders were already willing to surrender and that was on the verge of collapse. There is a difference.

If they were willing to surrender then they should have done so.

Again, you excoriate the Japanese for their sins but seem uninterested in the sins of the Soviets, the Nationalists, and the Communists, whose sins were clearly worse than those of the Japanese.

The focus on Japanese sins is probably related to the focus on the atomic bombs.

You excoriate the Japanese for Nanking but seem just fine with our conventional bombing of over 60 Japanese cities, which killed at least 500,000 people, most of them women and children, not to mention our nuking of two defenseless Japanese cities, which killed at least 200,000 more civilians, most of them, again, women and children,

I don't accept these casualty figures or claims about women and children.

even though Truman knew that Japan's civilian leaders wanted to surrender and needed his help to overcome the hardliners.

There was little that he could do to help them.

Even the vaguely worded Byrnes Note provided enough leverage for the moderates to create a situation where the emperor was able to order the hardliners to agree to a surrender.

There was nothing vaguely worded about it. It quite clearly rejected Japan's request that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power.

 

[there4eyeM]

Contentions and lies often cross boundaries.
It was said that invading Japan would have cost the U.S. huge casualties. That was doubtlessly true. Invading Japan was not necessary. Saying it was is not true.
Saying that dropping the bombs changed the course of things is true. Saying it defeated Japan is not true; Japan was already defeated.
If, as is so often quoted, you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?

 

[Open Bolt]

Contentions and lies often cross boundaries.
It was said that invading Japan would have cost the U.S. huge casualties. That was doubtlessly true. Invading Japan was not necessary. Saying it was is not true.

This term "necessary" doesn't have much meaning to me. We would have invaded if Japan had continued to refuse to surrender even after Russia and the atomic bombs.

We also would have saved up atomic bombs and nuked the beaches just before sending troops ashore. And we would also have used chemical weapons on the beaches. Considering the number of kamikazes waiting to pounce on our troop transports, the entire battle would have been massive and ugly.

Saying that dropping the bombs changed the course of things is true. Saying it defeated Japan is not true; Japan was already defeated.

If they were already defeated, then they should have already surrendered.

It's their fault if they needlessly delayed their surrender and thereby suffered unnecessary attacks. It's certainly not our fault.

If, as is so often quoted, you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

 

[DudleySmith]

Because while "horrendous" it was also fully justified. And attempts to slam the U.S. for using nuclear weapons are pure anti-Americanism at its worst.

It's just about bashing FDR by neo-nazis pretending to be 'patriots' who hate the U.S. for winning the war.

 

[gipper]

I doubt that he said that. But note that everything that I am saying is true. You are the one who was making untrue statements.

He said it and worse. Why would you object to his words? Don’t you want Americans uninformed like yourself?

 

[gipper]

How is that a "war crime"? There is no guarantee in war that the side that starts it is entitled to a fair fight.

Dumb. As usual.

 

[Mushroom]

Truman knew from intercepts that the Emperor's status was not the only sticking point for surrender. He knew that the military faction (the faction with the actual power) wanted more than one condition.

Hell, most of the hardliners wanted to keep on fighting no matter what that they staged a coup the night before the surrender was to be announced.

The Kyujo Incident was when 18,000 IJA soldiers tried to take over the government to prevent the surrender from being announced. They did take the palace, and executed two people in their attempt to secure the palace and uncover the location of the "Jewel Voice" recording.



Hard to imagine, but if the coup plotters had been able to locate the recording and destroyed it the war would have continued.

 

[DudleySmith]

The IJA still had millions of troops under arms on the mainland as well. Nuking the homeland was the very best option, probably saved millions of lives, not only of U.S. troops but Japanese and Chinese as well, with the added bonus of the Soviets not being able to seize half the islands and then start seizing Chinese territory as well as tearing off another big chunk of Europe.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

None of those quotes are relevant to the untrue claim about imaginary surrender offers.



No he didn't.



Imaginary overtures are difficult to follow up on.

I have repeatedly ask this poster for a LINK to any official document that verifies the claim that Mac sent any such list. He can not provide it yet keeps claiming it.