#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.