Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of
California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it
was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. ...
By the summer of 1945, the Americans had cornered Japan and assembled a final invasion plan, codenamed Operation Downfall. ...
Japan’s leaders were in fact quite savvy, well aware of their difficult
position, and holding out for strategic reasons. Their concern was not
so much whether to end the conflict, but how to end it while holding
onto territory, avoiding war crimes trials, and preserving the imperial
system. The Japanese could still inflict heavy casualties on any
invader, and they hoped to convince the Soviet Union, still neutral in
the Asian theater, to mediate a settlement with the Americans. Stalin,
they calculated, might negotiate more favorable terms in exchange for
territory in Asia. It was a long shot, but it made strategic sense. ...
As Hasegawa writes in his book “Racing the Enemy,” the Japanese
leadership reacted with concern [to the Hiroshima bombing], but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign
Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador
in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request
for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a
“sense of urgency,” Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same.
Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change
the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise
attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japan’s
strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the
approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was
more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing
Japan’s traditional imperial system to continue. Better to surrender to
Washington than to Moscow.
By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender.
How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more
strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated?
One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by
civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were
instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at
the beach.
Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have
always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress
bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more
died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled
in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are
indistinguishable. ...
To us, then, Hiroshima was unique, and the move to atomic weaponry was a
great leap, military and moral. But Hasegawa argues the change was
incremental. “Once we had accepted strategic bombing as an acceptable
weapon of war, the atomic bomb was a very small step,” he says. To
Japan’s leaders, Hiroshima was yet another population center leveled,
albeit in a novel way. If they didn’t surrender after Tokyo, they
weren’t going to after Hiroshima. ...
Bernstein, Hasegawa, and many historians agree on one startling point.
The public view that the atomic bomb was the decisive event that ended
World War II is not supported by the facts. ...
If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit, then
perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems. In fact,
Wilson argues, history suggests that leveling population centers, by
whatever method, does not force surrender. The Allied firebombing of
Dresden in February of 1945 killed many people, but the Germans did not
capitulate. The long-range German bombing of London did not push
Churchill towards acquiescence. And it is nearly impossible to imagine
that a bomb detonated on American soil, even one that immolated a large
city, would prompt the nation to bow in surrender.
If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact,
then what, [nuclear weapons scholar Ward] Wilson asks, is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons? We
know they are dangerous. If they turn out not to be strategically
effective, then nuclear weapons are not trump cards, but time bombs
beneath our feet.
--Gareth Cook, Boston Globe, on what nuclear weapons did and do. HT: Franklin Shaddy
