Page 62 of Daikon
This is the fearsome calculus that comes into play when the Pandora’s box of war is opened.
No one understood this better than Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese navy pilot who led the first wave of planes in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Fuchida visited Hiroshima on August 7, 1945, the day after the atomic blast, to survey the damage.
“It was like an evil nightmare,” he would recall to University of Maryland historian Gordon Prange two decades later.
But he did not resent the Americans for it.
“That was war… If Japan had had the atomic bomb we would have dropped it on the United States.” The Mitsuo Fuchida of 1945 “would have been willing, even proud to strike such a devastating blow for his country.” Fuchida saw the bomb’s demonstration of power as a way to end the war with some of Japan’s dignity intact, for even the most determined warrior could not stand against such a terrible weapon.
He immediately telephoned the Navy Chief of Staff and said, “Japan should sue for peace at once. Please go straight to the Naval General Staff and pressure them to act!” (Prange, God’s Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor, 150–53).
Could the war have been ended in August 1945 without using atomic bombs against Japanese cities?
Could an attack on a purely military target, for example, or a demonstration on an uninhabited island for the Japanese to witness—both of which were suggested—have sufficiently shocked the leaders of Japan to surrender?
In isolation, perhaps not. Combined with a few words of assurance, however, and the outcome might have been different.
An earlier draft of the surrender terms in the Potsdam Declaration included the stipulation that Japan would be allowed to continue as a constitutional monarchy and retain its emperor.
This line was removed from the final draft of the terms that were transmitted to Japan, undermining those leaders seeking to surrender and prompting the hard-liners to dig in their heels.
Why was this sentence deleted? Was it simply out of concern that it would convey weakness and encourage the Japanese to hold out for concessions?
Or was something deeper going on, a plan to ensure that the war would continue long enough for the atomic bombs to be used—that the bombs had to be used to intimidate the Soviet Union, which was poised to declare war on Japan and advance into its colonial possession Korea?
As historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa sums up, “The rejection of the Potsdam Declaration [by Japan] was required to justify the dropping of the bomb” ( Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan , 152).
Despite the widespread support the atomic bomb had in the United States, numerous people involved in its creation and use harbored misgivings.
Albert Einstein would come to regret signing a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 warning of the potential threat of Nazi Germany’s conducting atomic bomb research and urging the U.S.
government to launch its own program. He would later describe this as the “one great mistake in my life” (Ronald T.
Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb , 137).
The day after the bomb was successfully tested on July 16, 1945, sixty-eight Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition to President Truman urging him not to use it, asserting that with Germany defeated it was no longer needed.
A key sentence: “Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale” (letter reproduced in Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds, Hiroshima’s Shadow , 553).
President Harry Truman himself was initially against using the bomb against Japanese cities.
As he wrote in his private diary on July 25, 1945: “I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. [Henry] Stimson to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children” (“Truman at Potsdam,” American Heritage , June/July 1980).
The Target Committee rejected this idea and came up with a list of five cities.
After receiving reports of the devastation wrought at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman halted delivery of further atomic bombs.
General Dwight Eisenhower, Truman’s successor as president, recoiled even more strongly from the idea of using nuclear weapons.
He would later recall having dinner with Secretary of War Stimson in July 1945 when a cable arrived informing Stimson that the Trinity test had been successful and the bomb was ready to use.
“The cable was in code, you know the way they do it. ‘The lamb is born’ or some damn thing like that. So then he told me they were going to drop it on the Japanese. Well, I listened… But I was getting more and more depressed just thinking about it. Then he asked for my opinion, so I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.
Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.
Well… the old gentleman got furious. And I can see how he would.
After all, it had been his responsibility to push for all the huge expenditure to develop the bomb, which of course he had a right to do, and was right to do.
Still, it was an awful problem” (“Ike on Ike,” Newsweek , November 11, 1963, 108).
I would like to end with a heartfelt thanks to my agent, Warren Frazier of John Hawkins to Julianna Haubner and Jessica Chin for their careful editorial work on the manuscript; and to Iori Kusano for her authenticity read that helped me correct several missteps in writing about a culture that isn’t my own.