Pogue only cites the JCS transcript of the meeting; presumably, an interview with a participant was the source of the McCloy quote. Some may associate this statement with one that Eisenhower later recalled making to Stimson. Three days later, it dropped another on Nagasaki. The warning would draw on the draft State-War proclamation to Japan; presumably, the one criticized by Hull (above) which included language about the emperor. Moreover, to shed light on the considerations that induced Japans surrender, this briefing book includes new translations of Japanese primary sources on crucial events, including accounts of the conferences on August 9 and 14, where Emperor Hirohito made decisions to accept Allied terms of surrender. [78]. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. Bernsteins detailed commentary on Trumans diary has not been reproduced here except for the opening pages where he provides context and background. Truman, already on his way to Europe, never saw the petition.[35]. At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. The thought of invading Japan gave Truman and his advisors pause. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Historians have suggested a number of ways in which the atomic bomb might have alienated Stalin- 1. What concepts did war planners use to select targets? What these people were laboring to construct, directly or indirectly, were two types of weaponsa gun-type weapon using U-235 and an implosion weapon using plutonium (although the possibility of U-235 was also under consideration). During a conversation with Joseph E. Davies, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Truman said that he wanted to delay talks with Stalin and Churchill until July when the first atomic device had been tested. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese people became commonplace. The National Security Archive is committed to digital accessibility. [40], L.D. That possibility would be difficult if the United States made first military use of the weapon. For Groves and the problem of radiation sickness, see Norris, 339-441, Bernstein, Reconsidering the Atomic General: Leslie R. Groves,Journal of Military History67 (2003), 907-908, and Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 513-518 and 539-542. The U.S believed the bomb was the only way to send out a warning.When the bombs were dropped on Japan, it was world shocking news which was what the U.S wanted from the start. Background on the U. S. Atomic Project, III. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Historian believed that there are two different possibilities. [14]. [56]. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), This shows "Little Boy" being raised for loading into the Enola Gay's bomb bay. There were battles and military posts in surprising places. A blog of the History and Public Policy Program. Since 2005, the collection has been updated. Taking the Americans by surprise, the Japanese planes destroyed or damaged 18 ships . To keep the secret, Bush wanted to avoid a ruinous appropriations request to Congress and asked Roosevelt to ask Congress for the necessary discretionary funds. [75]. We wish to believe. Moreover, the role of an invasion of Japan in U.S. planning remains a matter of debate, with some arguing that the bombings spared many thousands of American lives that otherwise would have been lost in an invasion. [6]. Tens of thousands were killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. Schaffer,Wings of Judgment, 143-146. With the devastating battle for Okinawa winding up, Truman and the Joint Chiefs stepped back and considered what it would take to secure Japans surrender. With the Japanese surrender announcement not yet in, President Truman believed that another atomic bombing might become necessary. But I couldnt help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants. In this entry written several months later, Meiklejohn shed light on what much later became an element of the controversy over the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings: whether any high level civilian or military officials objected to nuclear use. Alperovitz and Sherwin have argued that Truman made a real decision to use the bomb on Japan by choosing between various forms of diplomacy and warfare. In contrast, Bernstein found that Truman never questioned [the] assumption that the bomb would and should be used. 4 (copy from microfilm), General Groves prepared for Stimson, then at Potsdam, a detailed account of the Trinity test. Some of the key elements of Stimsons argument were his assumption that Japan is susceptible to reason and that Japanese might be even more inclined to surrender if we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty. The possibility of a Soviet attack would be part of the threat. As part of the threat message, Stimson alluded to the inevitability and completeness of the destruction which Japan could suffer, but he did not make it clear whether unconditional surrender terms should be clarified before using the atomic bomb. Seeing the bombing of Hiroshima as a sign of a worsening situation at home, Tagaki worried about further deterioration. Tagaki was soon at the center of a cabal of Japanese defense officials, civil servants, and academics, which concluded that, in the end, the emperor would have to impose his decision on the military and the government. Takagi kept a detailed account of his activities, part of which was in diary form, the other part of which he kept on index cards. The Japanese goal was to cripple the U.S. Pacific fleet, and they nearly succeeded. Besides Truman, guests included New York Governor Thomas Dewey (Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948), foreign ambassadors, members of the cabinet and the Supreme Court, the military high command, and various senators and representatives. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. Washington, D.C., August 5, 2005 - Sixty years ago this month, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. This includes a number of formerly top secret summaries of intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications, which enable interested readers to form their own judgments about the direction of Japanese diplomacy in the weeks before the atomic bombings. Library of Congress . In any event, historians have used information from the diary to support various interpretations. [72]. The Hiroshima operation was originally slated to begin in early August depending on local conditions. Try again Therefore, we are publishing an excised version of the entry, with a link to the Byrnes note. Also still debated is the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, compared to the atomic bombings, on the Japanese decision to surrender. Independence, MO 64050 An article that Bernstein published in 1995, The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,Foreign Affairs74 (1995), 135-152, nicely summarizes his thinking on the key issues. 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[16], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. However, many historians believe that the attack on Japan-occupied Manchuria by the previously neutral Soviet Union on August 8 had more impact on Japan's leaders. On August 9th, 1945, Truman declared that the use of the A-bomb had saved THOUSANDS of American lives. In the belly of the bomber was Little Boy, an atomic bomb. [15], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. Washington, D.C., August 4, 2020 To mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the National Security Archive is updating and reposting one of its most popular e-books of the past 25 years. And the U.S. bombings hastened the Soviet Unions atomic bomb project and have fed a big-power nuclear arms race to this day. Those and other questions will be subjects of discussion well into the indefinite future. RG 77, MED, H-B files, folder no. Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (Safe File), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1, Tacitly dissenting from the Targeting Committees recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall argued for initial nuclear use against a clear-cut military target such as a large naval installation. If that did not work, manufacturing areas could be targeted, but only after warning their inhabitants. Contributors to the historical controversy have deployed the documents selected here to support their arguments about the first use of nuclear weapons and the end of World War II. [80]. This memorandum from General Groves to General Marshall captured how far the Manhattan Project had come in less than two years since Bushs December 1942 report to President Roosevelt. The destruction of two cities and their civilians merely to intimidate Russia seems to be an overtly extreme and vicious act that no rational person would deem just. The editor particularly benefited from the source material cited in the following works: Robert S. Norris,Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie S. Groves, The Manhattan Projects Indispensable Man(South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2002); Gar Alperovitz,The Decision to Use the Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth(New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1995); Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire(New York: Random House, 1999), Martin Sherwin,A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arm Race(New York, Vintage Books, 1987), and as already mentioned, HasegawasRacing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan(Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005). Why we dropped the Atomic Bomb The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 was a definite turning point in the Pacific War of World . See also Walker (2005), 316-317. A few weeks later, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed surrender documents on the USS Missouri, in Tokyo harbor.[71]. Is control of nuclear weapons necessary to maintain peace? Plainly he was troubled by the devastation and suffering caused by the bombings, but he found it justifiable because it saved the lives of U.S. troops. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-MDH), Hiroshima, after the first atomic bomb explosion. [27], Commenting on another memorandum by Herbert Hoover, George A. Lincoln discussed war aims, face-saving proposals for Japan, and the nature of the proposed declaration to the Japanese government, including the problem of defining unconditional surrender. Lincoln argued against modifying the concept of unconditional surrender: if it is phrased so as to invite negotiation he saw risks of prolonging the war or a compromise peace. J. Samuel Walker has observed that those risks help explain why senior officials were unwilling to modify the demand for unconditional surrender. Was there another way to end the war? According to Robert S. Norris, this was the fateful decision to turn over the atomic project to military control.[8]. Malloy (2008), 49-50. Despite the interest of some senior officials such as Joseph Grew, Henry Stimson, and John J. McCloy in modifying the concept of unconditional surrender so that the Japanese could be sure that the emperor would be preserved, it remained a highly contentious subject. Thus, he wanted Roosevelts instructions as to whether the project should be vigorously pushed throughout. Unlike the pilot plant proposal described above, Bush described a real production order for the bomb, at an estimated cost of a serious figure: $400 million, which was an optimistic projection given the eventual cost of $1.9 billion. Brown, special assistant to Secretary of State James Byrnes. The original 2005 posting included a wide range of material, including formerly top secret "Magic" summaries of intercepted Japanese communications and the first-ever full translations from the Japanese of accounts of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the Emperors decision to surrender. Early in the morning of August 9th Manchuria was invaded by the Soviet Union. It was Meiklejohns birthday and during the dinner party, Eisenhower and McCloy had an interesting discussion of atomic weapons, which included comments alluding to scientists statements about what appears to be the H-bomb project (a 20 megaton weapon), recollection of the early fear that an atomic detonation could burn up the atmosphere, and the Navys reluctance to use its battleships to test atomic weapons. At the outset, three possibilities were envisioned: radiological warfare, a power source for submarines and ships, and explosives. By providing access to a broad range of U.S. and Japanese documents, mainly from the spring and summer of 1945, interested readers can see for themselves the crucial source material that scholars have used to shape narrative accounts of the historical developments and to frame their arguments about the questions that have provoked controversy over the years. McCloy was part of a drafting committee at work on the text of a proclamation to Japan to be signed by heads of state at the forthcoming Potsdam conference. What did senior officials know about the effects of atomic bombs before they were first used. For Harrisons convenience, Arneson summarized key decisions made at the 21 June meeting of the Interim Committee, including a recommendation that President Truman use the forthcoming conference of allied leaders to inform Stalin about the atomic project. that participants in the debate have brought to bear in framing their arguments. Did President Truman make a decision, in a robust sense, to use the bomb or did he inherit a decision that had already been made? It is 28 inches in diameter and 120 inches long. Explain your answer. This document has also figured in the argument framed by Barton Bernstein that Truman and his advisers took it for granted that the bomb was a legitimate weapon and that there was no reason to explore alternatives to military use. August 4, 2015 A few months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Dwight D.Eisenhower commented during a social occasion how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the atomic bomb. This virtually unknown evidence from the diary of Robert P. Meiklejohn, an assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, published for the first time today by the National Security Archive, confirms that the future President Eisenhower had early misgivings about the first use of atomic weapons by the United States. Leaflets dropped on cities in Japan warning civilians about the atomic bomb, dropped c. August 6, 1945. [43]. RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1943-1945, CCS 381 (6-4-45), Sec. Henry L. Stimson Papers (MS 465), Sterling Library, Yale University (reel 113) (microfilm at Library of Congress), Still interested in trying to find ways to warn Japan into surrender, this represents an attempt by Stimson before the Potsdam conference, to persuade Truman and Byrnes to agree to issue warnings to Japan prior to the use of the bomb. 1. By contrast, Maddox argues that Nagasaki was necessary so that Japanese hardliners could not minimize the first explosion or otherwise explain it away. Sayuri Romei examines Soviet records produced in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the continuing importance of Hiroshima to Russian foreign policy. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.. Yonai was upset that Chief of Staff Yoshijiro Umezu and naval chief Suemu Toyada had sent the emperor a memorandum arguing that acceptance of the Brynes note would desecrate the emperors dignity and turn Japan into virtually a slave nation. The emperor chided Umezu and Toyoda for drawing hasty conclusions; in this he had the support of Yonai, who also dressed them down. Library of Congress, Curtis LeMay Papers, Box B-36. Thousands more would die of radiation exposure. In August 1945 the USA detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [34], On the eve of the Potsdam conference, Leo Szilard circulated a petition as part of a final effort to discourage military use of the bomb. In the surprise attack, Japan sunk several ships, destroyed hundreds of planes and ended thousands of lives. The proposal has been characterized as the most comprehensive attempt by any American policymaker to leverage diplomacy in order to shorten the Pacific War. Within a few days Japan surrendered, and the terrible struggle that we call World War II was over. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, and I weighed that decision most prayerfully. Stimson, who later wrote up the meeting in his diary, also prepared a discussion paper, which raised broader policy issues associated with the imminent possession of the most terrible weapon ever known in human history., In a background report prepared for the meeting, Groves provided a detailed overview of the bomb project from the raw materials to processing nuclear fuel to assembling the weapons to plans for using them, which were starting to crystallize. Thus, Groves and others would try to suppress findings about radioactive effects, although that was a losing proposition.[76]. It is quite apparent that the United States did, in fact, drop the two atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively for the . Gaimusho [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], ed., Shusen Shiroku [Historical Record of the End of the War] (Tokyo: Hokuyosha, 1977-1978), vol. A modern-day nuclear bomb . [54], This summary included several intercepted messages from Sato, who conveyed his despair and exasperation over what he saw as Tokyos inability to develop terms for ending the war: [I]f the Government and the Military dilly-dally in bringing this resolution to fruition, then all Japan will be reduced to ashes. Sato remained skeptical that the Soviets would have any interest in discussions with Tokyo: it is absolutely unthinkable that Russia would ignore the Three Power Proclamation and then engage in conversations with our special envoy., Documents 60A-D: These messages convey the process of creating and transmitting the execution order to bomb Hiroshima. [18]. Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link. Read more, The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project is a global network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of international nuclear history through archival documents, oral history interviews, and other empirical sources. [59]. 77 (copy from microfilm). See Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 541-542. The Supreme War Council comprised the prime minister, foreign minister, army and navy ministers, and army and navy chiefs of staff; see Hasegawa, 72. The question is: The Untied States decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the Soviet Union in the post-Second-World-War era rather then a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional suuender. Counterfactual issues are also disputed, for example whether there were alternatives to the atomic bombings, or would the Japanese have surrendered had a demonstration of the bomb been used to produced shock and awe. The embassy teams included GRU members Mikhail Ivanov and German Sergeev in August, and TASS correspondent Anatoliy Varshavskiy, former acting military attach Mikhail Romanov, and Naval apparatus employee Sergey Kikenin in September.
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