#Historiography - #Hiroshima & #Nagasaki - Part VIII

Selection of Sources

The sheer volume of sources cited in relevant bibliographies is impressive. Comparison between Richard Frank and Gar Alperovitz is indicative of general trends. Since Frank wrote his cited work in 1999, while Alperovitz was writing in 1965, it is better to compare sources with Alperovitz’s later work, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. While there is some overlap, it is surprisingly rare. Harry Truman as author, cited nine times by Alperovitz, received one citation from Frank. Alperovitz is more likely to cite primary works; diaries, committee notes, etc. However, Shapiro’s criticism of Alperovitz’s quotations noted above should be considered. The comparison is further hindered by the nature of the works. Frank was writing a narrative, while Alperovitz was advancing an argument. Thus, Alperovitz was more likely to use interpretive language like “inevitably,” “non sequitur,” and “myth,” although this cannot be considered definitive proof of bias, merely divergence of purpose and audience.

The Future of Bomb Historiography

In the conclusion to his 2016 book, Prompt and Utter Destruction, J. Samuel Walker discussed the frequent moral/immoral assertions of Hiroshima scholars. Walker stated, “No amount of historical evidence will bridge this gap; it arises to a large degree from the differing values, assumptions, priorities, and experiences that individual scholars bring to their work on the subject.” In an appendix entitled “Essay on Sources,” Walker noted the “fierce partisanship” that has often characterized the traditionalist versus revisionist polemic. He cites Frank’s Downfall as an example of recent “middle ground” scholarship. “By demonstrating serious deficiencies in both [traditionalist and revisionist arguments], they have provided much needed correctives to the over-simplified formulas and overheated arguments at the poles of the debate.” His essay is a valuable resource on topical historiography.

The topic also continues to be influenced by personal memory and experience. An estimated 325,000 World War II veterans remain alive in 2020. Many recall something to the effect of “I was on a troop ship headed for the invasion when the bomb saved my life.” Countless more grew up hearing such stories from fathers, uncles, brothers, and old neighbors pontificating on neighborhood porches. In 1988, Paul Fussell published a collection of essays entitled Thank God for the Atomic Bomb. In the eponymous essay, Fussell posited “the importance of experience, sheer, vulgar experience, in influencing, if not determining, one’s views about that use of the atomic bomb.” If history is to be inclusive, these perspectives cannot be ignored. As that experience passes from first person reality to second-hand memory, will its effect on the collective memory pass with it? Current scholarship indicates it will not.

On 4 January 2010, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died at the age of 93. To date, he is the only person certified by the Japanese government as a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki Part VII

Traditionalists versus Revisionists

While scholarship is often categorized in terms of the military necessity of the bombings, the realities are more nuanced. Revisionists provide substantial evidence that political considerations were significant, but few address the issue of what effect, if any, this American nuclear advantage may have had on the subsequent Cold War. Most scholars acknowledge that the reasoning behind the bombings, and their effects, were multi-faceted. Implicit in most revisionist works is the assumption that, if it can be proved the bombings were primarily motivated by political and strategic considerations regarding Russian diplomacy, they were therefore illegitimate and immoral. Likewise, if the author’s morals discourage civilian casualties, justification for the bombings on any grounds will be difficult. Research on this topic will frequently reveal some form of the statement that “the overwhelming consensus of historians” now believe the bombings were unjustified. This is more a reflection of modern opinion of warfare in general than evidence of a scholarly monolith.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki Part VI

Renewed Traditionalism

Although Dr. Alperovitz’s work was widely lauded by a sympathetic audience, his provocative assertions attracted traditionalist scrutiny. In a 1978 article for Naval War College Review, Seton Hall professor Edward S. Shapiro argued that Alperovitz’s assertions were not new, many having been asserted by British physicist P. M. S. Blackett in 1948. Alperovitz could, however, be credited for his “copious documentation and aura of scholarly objectivity.” But coming as it did against the backdrop of American engagement in another conflict with a technologically and militarily inferior Asian enemy, Shapiro implied that Alperovitz may have intended portray the bombings as the origin of American diplomatic blunders that led to the Vietnam conflict, or worse, as an “example of American moral insensitivity and racism”39 at a time when the United States was deep in the throes of the Civil Rights movement. Shapiro called Alperovitz’s work “very much a product of radical sensibility of the 1960s,” and argued that Alperovitz’s greatest achievement may have been his impact “on some of the textbooks currently being used in university courses in American history,”41 though he cited no examples.

Shapiro believed Alperovitz mischaracterized quotes from such military authorities as General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral William Leahy. MacArthur had stated after the war that the atomic bomb was militarily unnecessary, “if by ‘unnecessary’ is meant not essential for ultimate victory.” MacArthur, and many U. S. officials, believed that the eventual defeat of Japan had been assured well prior to August, 1945. The timing and tactics necessary to achieve victory, however, were a matter of intense speculation. Admiral Leahy opposed the bombings because he believed that the naval blockade would successfully starve Japan into submission before any planned invasion became necessary. Shapiro claimed that Leahy’s autobiography stated his objection being “partially because he doubted it (the bomb) would in fact work,” and that Leahy admitted that continued conventional bombing and the blockade might have taken longer.” Given Frank’s air raid bombing findings noted earlier, it is difficult to argue fewer lives would have been lost. Indeed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would likely have suffered similar raids, in which case many of the same individuals killed by the atomic bombs would have died.

In 1999, noted historian Richard B. Frank released Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, an extensive examination of the final months of the Pacific war. Frank began with the 9-10 March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. For more than 8 pages, Frank described the event in chilling detail, and a horrific death toll. “Prior to March 10, there had been only 1,292 deaths from all air raids on Tokyo,” but on this night, Frank cited multiple death tolls from various authorities ranging from 79,466 to 100,000. By November 1945, the Hiroshima prefecture police would release an official death toll of 78,150. Like Harper, Frank asserted that newly inaugurated U. S. President Harry S. Truman may have felt the weight of Roosevelt’s shadow. Truman’s own biographer said “it was not just that the greatest of men had fallen, but that the least of men –or at any rate the least likely of men- had assumed his place.” Psychological considerations aside, Truman had real reason to fear a potentially bloody invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. Former President Herbert Hoover urged Truman to soften his stance on unconditional surrender, feared “‛500,000 to 1,000,000’ American fatalities,” although Lt. General Thomas Handy labeled this catastrophic prediction “entirely too high.” Frank noted, however, that “the heaviest loss of the war [was] in March 1945.” Hoover may be forgiven if reports from Iwo Jima and Okinawa affected his views. Advocates of avoiding an invasion pointed to the expectation of a fanatical resistance by the Japanese on their home soil. Japanese officials had instituted self-defense drills for civilians, saying “Even killing just one American soldier will do… THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN” [emphasis in original]. Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki urged a hard line against the Americans, believing the Allies would shortly be forced to end the war for their ownreasons, saying on July 30, “Precisely at a time like this, if we hold firm, they will yield before we do.” Clearly, Japanese high command was not unanimously seeking the emergency exit.

Frank argued that the U. S. had reason to suspect the sincerity of Japanese peace overtures that Alperovitz esteemed so highly. “Americans of all ranks remembered very well the image of Japanese diplomats in ostensible parlays for peace” during the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nor was the Hiroshima bombing on 6 August immediately decisive. Frank stated that as late as the night of 8 August, “The government of Japan had not met formally to reassess the situation with the advent of the atomic bomb.” It would, in fact, take the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in the early morning hours of 9 August, and another 23,753-45,000 dead from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki later that morning, before the Japanese would surrender to Allied demands. Even after Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his decision (breaking a deadlock among Japanese civil and military leaders) to surrender, Japanese Minister of War, Korechika Anami, in an announcement to the Army Ministry, stated, “I do not know what excuse I can offer but it is the decision of His Majesty that we accept the Potsdam Proclamation…. Your individual feelings and those of the men under you must be disregarded.” While the ultimate terms of the surrender may not be considered “unconditional,” the assertion that Japan was on the verge of surrender before the atomic bombings is not supported by the preponderance of the evidence. Further, the Americans were in no mood to spare Japanese feelings. Resentment over Pearl Harbor lingered, appalling casualties had been suffered in multiple Pacific island assaults, and an estimated 17.2 million deaths had been caused by Japanese aggression from 1931 to 1945, 10 million in China alone. Public opinion polls in America in October 1945 showed 85% approval, with fully 23% believing more bombs should have been dropped. Frank called the revisionist argument that the choice in 1945 was only between the atomic bomb and the horrific slaughter of a ground invasion “one of the most basic misconceptions of the military realities in 1945.” Admiral Leahy’s oft-quoted post-war assertion that the “use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima was of no material assistance in our war against Japan”59 was, for Frank, difficult to reconcile with Leahy’s support of Allied firebombing, and a naval blockade that was starving civilians and soldiers alike.

#Historiography : #Hiroshima & #Nagasaki Part V

Forty years after the war, renewed scholarship on the topic flourished in the mid-1980s. In the Summer-Fall, 1985 issue of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Review, John L. Harper, then-visiting professor of U. S. foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University, reexamined the 1947 article by Stimson defending the use of the atomic bomb. Although he acknowledged Stimson was qualified to treat on the subject of America’s decision to deploy atomic weapons, he faulted Stimson’s failure to address why the bombings were preferred to alternative measures to bring the war to an end. Harper cited, as many revisionists do, the conclusions of the SBS that Japan would have surrendered in late 1945, regardless of other factors such as the atomic bomb and the entry of the Soviets into the war in Manchuria. Harper did note that the SBS assumed continued U. S. conventional bombing in the intervening months prior to a hypothetical Japanese surrender, potentially costing more Japanese lives than the atomic bombings themselves23 (Frank documented casualties from raids on Japan’s seven largest cities at over 126,000 dead and more than 1.4 million dwellings destroyed). Harper noted that the bombs were dropped without explicit prior warning, maximizing the expected shock of such a devastating new weapon.

Harper attributes the bombings to Truman’s concern for public opinion, which overwhelmingly supported the notion of unconditional surrender.26 He argued that the only logical reason for the Potsdam Declaration to omit the expressed intent of the U. S. government that “unconditional surrender” would not preclude retention of the Emperor, a known nonnegotiable in Japanese estimations, was that “doing so would have jeopardized the chance to employ the atomic bombs in a wartime situation.” It was this “immense psychological and diplomatic value” that led President Truman to deliberately leave the Potsdam Declaration vague regarding the fate of the Emperor. Truman’s own insecurity in the enormous shadow of recently deceased President Roosevelt, and his desire to cultivate an image of decisiveness, were significant, if not deciding, factors in Truman’s determination not to waste an opportunity to play America’s “master card.”28 He admitted that the ultimate value of the bombings may have been “that they gave the world an unforgettable preview of the future of general war,” which horrors may explain why nuclear weapons have never again been used in war.

In the fall of 1985, Rufus E. Miles, Jr., a former senior fellow of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, attacked what he termed the myth that dropping the atomic bombs saved “half a million American lives” from the planned November 1945 invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. Former President Truman had asserted this prediction in his 1955 memoir. Miles cites Winston Churchill’s post-war defense of such catastrophic casualty estimates, supported by the example of the U. S. assault on Okinawa.31 Presenting a bloody invasion as the sole alternative to the atomic bombings was a flawed assumption. Irrespective of his estimation that the bombings saved fewer than 20,000 American casualties, “perhaps even zero,”32 Miles asserts four alternatives: a negotiated peace, based on terms similar to those that eventually prevailed; intensified bombing and naval blockade succeeding no later than November; a land invasion of Southern Kyushu in November 1945; and a spring 1946 invasion of Honshu. Any of these alternatives, Miles argued, would have accomplished U. S. objectives and resulted in Japanese surrender by early 1946. Miles relied on the SBS to demonstrate that such enormous casualty estimates were unwarranted. He did not address whether the bombings were “a sound decision on other grounds,” but merely that casualty estimates were not warranted.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki Part IV

The Revisionists

Revisionist interpretations of the bombings began to appear very quickly following the end of the war. As euphoria began to wane, former war correspondent and journalist John Hersey published Hiroshima one year after the bombings. The story of six bombing survivors, Hersey’s book stood in stark relief against the clinical backdrop of official accounts. In the April 1947 issue of The English Journal, educator Robert Frank posited the question: “Hiroshima: Moral or Military?” In an exercise designed to examine the moral implications of a weapon that could, in sufficient quantities, annihilate human civilization, Frank’s students, a majority of whom initially supported the bombings and the U. S. monopoly (at that time) on atomic weapons, came to see the survivors depicted in Hersey’s book as human beings, not as “the enemy.” Through this humanization of the statistics regarding the dead and wounded, the question became: “Could such an act ever be justified in terms of military expediency?”10 Revisionists rejected the expediency argument, and an increasingly cynical American public began to agree.

The revisionist argument found its champion in Dr. Gar Alperovitz. Dr. Alperovitz is an American historian, author, and professor who earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University. His 1965 book, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam –The use of the Atomic Bomb and the American confrontation with Soviet power, based on his doctoral dissertation, was one of the seminal works of revisionist World War II history. Arriving at a time when the United States was becoming increasingly mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam and mistrust of American government and foreign policy was building, the book found a receptive audience.

Dr. Alperovitz asserted that following victory over Germany, the United States was in a weakened diplomatic position with the Soviets dominating the battlefields of the European Theatre. He challenged the long-held assumption that newly-inaugurated President Harry S. Truman continued the conciliatory tone of the Roosevelt Administration, instead taking aggressive measures to counter Soviet influence on the post-war world. Truman adopted a hard line with the Soviets, advised by such officials as U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Herriman, who believed Soviet “domination in Eastern Europe was intolerable,”14 though given Soviet success on the Eastern Front, it may have been inevitable. The Soviet entry into the war in the East had been assumed necessary to pin down Japanese forces in China to prevent reinforcement of the Home Islands, should a planned invasion be necessary. However, Dr. Alperovitz asserted that American control of the seas was, by spring 1945, so complete that such movement of troops by Japan would have been impossible, obviating fears of a massive Japanese troop buildup to resist such an invasion. With American expectations of China as a “faithful friend and ally,” Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew believed Soviet entry into the war should not be encouraged without Soviet agreement to “certain desirable political objectives.” Truman, an astute politician, no doubt valued a strong diplomatic hand with the Russians.

Dr. Alperovitz placed great emphasis on Japanese peace initiatives “as early as September 1944,” which in his estimation displayed increased urgency in the spring of 1945. However, the U. S. apparently did not consider such efforts sufficient or sincere. After the successful bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman had the diplomatic leverage he needed to exclude the Soviets from influence in the administration of post-war Japan, and minimize Soviet operations in Manchuria as a decisive factor in bringing the war to an end. According Stimson’s aide, Vannevar Bush, the bomb meant, “There was no necessity for any concessions to Russia at the end of the war.” Dr. Alperovitz concludes that deployment of the bomb following Los Alamos was a foregone conclusion, and political considerations, not military necessity, overrode all other factors in the American decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as soon as they became available, closing with an extended (albeit, edited) quote from physicist Dr. Leo Szilard: “Mr. [U. S. Secretary of State James F.] Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war… Mr. Byrnes’… view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.” Extensively footnoted and with multiple appendices, Dr. Alperovitz’s book is perhaps the most well-documented revisionist work on the topic.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki Part III

Early Topical Historiography

The historiography of the bombings defies chronological delineation. It does, however, bear the clear imprint of two distinct viewpoints. The traditionalist perspective that the bombs were dropped to shorten a costly and devastating war, saving lives on all sides, dominated early literature. This was no accident, as the leaders associated with the decision actively strove to shape the narrative. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wrote a lengthy defense of the government perspective in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Stimson unequivocally stated the aims of the Manhattan Project: to develop and deploy an atomic weapon for the purpose of hastening the end of the war. As a major participant in the decision, Stimson must be considered an authoritative source, but may have had a bias toward justifying what some considered a morally ambiguous decision and the project’s unprecedented investment.

Early historians tended to support this reasoning. In a review of noted historian Herbert Feis’ 1961 book Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War in the Pacific, Theodore McNelly describes Feis’ defense of traditionalist interpretation of the bombings. Although Feis acknowledged the findings of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey (SBS) that Japan would likely have surrendered by November 1945, even without the bombings, American state and military leaders could not be certain of this timing. While some within the Truman Administration argued for a non-deployment demonstration of the weapon with Japanese witnesses, they feared a failed detonation (a serious possibility) would harden Japanese resolve to fight on. Feis concluded that although U. S. officials may be faulted for not revealing the destructive potential of the weapon as a warning of the consequences of rejecting the Potsdam Declaration, such criticism has the benefit of hindsight the decision makers were denied. The decision was reasonable based on the information American officials had at the time.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki Part II

Historiographical Trends

Scholarly works on the bombings have been influenced by several trends in historiography in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Following the war, historicist methodologies retained preeminence. As the United States emerged victorious from what was largely regarded as a just war against clearly aggressive regimes in Germany and Japan, consensus history seemed primed for the same supremacy to which the nation itself was ascending. For twenty years following the war, a period of economic prosperity that one historian called “rather placid,” the vision of America as the champion of democracy in a growing global conflict with communism had broad appeal. As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s and the United States became increasingly embroiled in yet another conflict in Southeast Asia, a rising subculture of mistrust in traditional institutions and authority began to dominate academia. The “New Left,” or “Radical Historians” objected to traditionalist interpretations of the past, even progressive ones. Historians like Walter La Feber argued that U. S. foreign policy was dictated by the demands of capitalism and denied that the Soviet Union was a communist monolith intent on world domination.5 This revisionist perspective cast the triumphal leaders of the World War II era as aggressors, using America’s technological and industrial might to promote moneyed interests and confront Soviet “aggression,” which they believed was simply a natural reaction to U. S. attempts to maintain hegemony along its borders.

This wave of socially conscious scholarship found fertile ground in a nation preoccupied with what many viewed as an unjustified and increasingly costly war in Vietnam, and whose faith in its leadership was badly shaken by the Watergate scandal. Postmodernist interpretations seemed to fit a world where change was so rapid and widespread that continuity seemed not only elusive, but perhaps an illusion altogether.

#Historiography - #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki

I recently completed my first class of graduate school: Historiography, the study of the evolution of written history, essentially the history of history. My final project for the term was the historiography of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the next few posts, I'll share these thoughts with all three of you reading this page.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Perses Reborn

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22141958

On the morning of 6 August 1945, twenty-nine-year-old marine engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was leaving Hiroshima following a business trip, taking the train to his home in Nagasaki. He forgot his travel papers and had to return to the office to get them. Thus, he was approximately three kilometers outside the city center when the world’s first atomic weapon exploded over Shima Hospital. Severely burned but alive, he managed to stagger to an air raid shelter, finally taking the train home the next day. Two days later, heavily bandaged, he reported for work. As he stood in his office, his superiors haranguing him for fantastical stories of a single bomb destroying an entire city, “Fat Man” exploded over Nagasaki.1

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most controversial military actions in history. More than seventy-five years later historians are still divided over the justification, if any is possible, for the most destructive weapon ever deployed. Historians have generally fallen on a spectrum between traditionalists who defend the bombings as necessary to swiftly end the war with Japan, and revisionists who argue that the bombings were unnecessary, immoral, and ushered the world into a nightmarish existence under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. More than half a century of debate in the nuclear shadow has seen revisionist interpretations rise, ebb, and rise again. While the revisionist perspective has gained wide acceptance in popular opinion and education, it has failed to overtake traditionalist scholarly interpretation.

1. Twice Bombed: The Legacy of Yamaguchi Tsuotomu, 2011, directed by James Cameron, accessed 22 Sep 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1931497/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2