Seventy-five years later, and with the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever, it is essential to keep exploring the meaning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how these tragedies still shape current global politics. See Janet Farrell Brodie, Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,The Journal of Social History48 (2015): 842-864. 75 years ago, in August 1945, the United States dropped the first and last atomic bombs used in warfare. After the first successful test of the atomic bomb in 1945, U.S. officials immediately considered the potential non-military benefits that could be derived from the American nuclear monopoly. As the scientists had learned, a gun-type weapon based on plutonium was impossible because that element had an unexpected property: spontaneous neutron emissions would cause the weapon to fizzle.[10] For both the gun-type and the implosion weapons, a production schedule had been established and both would be available during 1945. [27]. 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. As for targeting, however, he had a more significant role. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), This shows "Little Boy" being raised for loading into the Enola Gay's bomb bay. If it was, he believed that the bomb would be the master card in U.S. diplomacy. 1-127. 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. Both agreed that the possibility of a nuclear partnership with Moscow would depend on quid pro quos: the settlement of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, and Manchurian problems.. This and other entries from the Stimson diary (as well as the entry from the Davies diary that follows) are important to arguments developed by Gar Alperovitz and Barton J. Bernstein, among others, although with significantly different emphases, that in light of controversies with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe and other areas, top officials in the Truman administration believed that possessing the atomic bomb would provide them with significant leverage for inducing Moscows acquiescence in U.S. Hasegawa, 105; Alperovitz, 67-72; Forrest Pogue,George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945-1959(New York: Viking, 1987), 18. Naryshkin, then Chairman of the State Duma and Director of the Russian Historical Society, also added that if those responsible for the bombings were not punished "there could be very, very serious consequences.". coinspot deposit not showing. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), The mushroom cloud billowing up 20,000 feet over Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945 (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-AEC), The Enola Gay returns to Tinian Island after the strike on Hiroshima. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows, nuclear threats are real, present, and dangerous. Pogue only cites the JCS transcript of the meeting; presumably, an interview with a participant was the source of the McCloy quote. The Japanese were vicious fighters, however, and every victory cost more time, material, and, sadly, lives. 24, tab D, Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelts death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Projectfrom briefingsbySecretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves (who went through the back door to escape the watchful press). Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 531-534. olive tree children ministries; teaching blog; about our ministry; salvation prayer; contact us The World Wide Web includes significant documentary resources on these events. When Truman received a detailed account of the test, Stimson reported that the President was tremendously pepped up by it and that it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence (see entry for July 21). [77], Harry S. Truman Library, President's Secretary's Files, Speech Files, 1945-1953, copy on U.S. National Archives Web Site, On 15 December, President Truman spoke about the atomic bombings in his speech at the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, organized by bureau chiefs and other leading figures of print media organizations. The day after he told Sato about the current thinking on Soviet mediation, Togo requested the Ambassador to see Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and tell him of the Emperors private intention to send Prince Konoye as a Special Envoy to Moscow. 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. [63]. [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. Documents 77A-B: The First Japanese Offer Intercepted. According to Herbert Bix, for months Hirohito had believed that the outlook for a negotiated peace could be improved if Japan fought and won one last decisive battle, thus, he delayed surrender, continuing to procrastinate until the bomb was dropped and the Soviets attacked.[52]. National Archives and Records Administration, Newspaper clipping, Japanese planes destroy US fleet at Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1945, Excerpts of Franklin Roosevelts speech to Congress, December 8, 1941, Excerpt of Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, July 26, 1945, Letter from Henry Stimson to Harry S. Truman, April 24, 1945, Letter from Harry S. Truman to Richard Russell, August 9, 1945, Translation of leaflet dropped on the Japanese, August 6, 1945, Petition to the President of the United States, July 17, 1945, Minutes of meeting held at the White House, June 18, 1945. 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 . Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link. Frank, 258; Bernstein (1995), 147; Walker (2005), 322. As noted, some documents relating to the origins of the Manhattan Project have been included in addition to entries from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries and translations of a few Soviet documents, among other items. If there was a misfire the weapon would be difficult for the Japanese to recover, which would not be the case if Tokyo was targeted. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, and the following day the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing an additional 100,000 people. The bomb would be dropped in the citys center. Aftermath of the August 6, 1945 Atomic Bomb blast in Hiroshima, 1946. [26], 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 8, Japan (After December 7/41), A former ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grews extensive knowledge of Japanese politics and culture informed his stance toward the concept of unconditional surrender. This personal account, written on Tinian, reports his fears about the danger of a nuclear accident, the confusion surrounding the Nagasaki attack, and early Air Force thinking about a nuclear strike force. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. We wish to believe. 35+ YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION, FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports, a helpful collection of archival documents, on-line resources on the first atomic test. See also Malloy (2008), at 116-117, including the argument that 1) Stimson was deceiving himself by accepting the notion that a vital war plant surrounded by workers houses was a legitimate military target, and 2) that Groves was misleading Stimson by withholding the Target Committees conclusions that the target would be a city center. Were the Japanese ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped? To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city? Willingness to accept even the destruction of the Army and Navy rather than surrender inspired the military coup that unfolded and failed during the night of 14 August. In August 1945 the USA detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [69]. Shusen Shiroku (The Historical Records of the End of the War), annotated by Jun Eto, volume 4, 57-60 [Excerpts] [Translation by Toshihiro Higuchi], Excerpts from the Foreign Ministry's compilation about the end of the war show how news of the bombing reached Tokyo as well as how Foreign Minister's Togo initially reacted to reports about Hiroshima. Moreover, ethical questions have shrouded the bombings which caused terrible human losses and in succeeding decades fed a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and now Russia and others. Quotation and statistics from Thomas R. Searle, `It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,The Journal of Military History55 (2002):103. Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, Magic Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18. Drawing on contemporary documents and journals, Masuji Ibuses novelBlack Rain(Tokyo, Kodansha, 1982) provides an unforgettable account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (civil war), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by Big Six. Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. [57]. The Magic intercepts from mid-July have figured in Gar Alperovitzs argument that Truman and his advisers recognized that the Emperor was ready to capitulate if the Allies showed more flexibility on the demand for unconditional surrender. The bomb ended the war. Hasegawa argues that Truman realized that the Japanese would refuse a demand for unconditional surrender without a proviso on a constitutional monarchy and that he needed Japans refusal to justify the use of the atomic bomb.[47], Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter J. 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. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States officially into World War II. RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1943-1945, CCS 381 (6-4-45), Sec. Courtesy of Tim Brown. [20], Harrison-Bundy Files relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1108 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), File 77: "Interim Committee - International Control.". The weekly illustrated magazine Asahi Graph also published a brief article on August 25 titled What is an atomic bomb?. 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? 1. His estimate of 250,000 U.S. soldiers spared far exceeded that made by General Marshall in June 1945, which was in the range of 31,000 (comparable to the Battle of Luzon) [See Document 26]. Japanese kamikaze pilots could turn planes into guided missiles. While Lincoln believed that the proposed peace teams were militarily acceptable he doubted that they were workable or that they could check Soviet expansion which he saw as an inescapable result of World War II. [22]. 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. Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable. Small; Normal; . Former Secretary of War Henry Stimson found the criticisms troubling and published an influential justification for the attacks inHarpers. To produce material for any of those purposes required a capability to separate uranium isotopes in order to produce fissionable U-235. We gave them fair warning and asked them to quit. Japan, sensing conflict was inevitable, began planning for an attack on Pearl Harbor by April, 1941. Lower image - August 11, 1945, photo by 6th Photo Reconnaissance Group Because the Japanese population was far from surrendering and would fight to their death, so an invasion would be costly in human lives. The ensuing war was costly. Alperovitz, 226; Bernstein, Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender,Diplomatic History19 (1995), 237, note 22. [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. With the material that follows, the National Security Archive publishes the most comprehensive on-line collection to date of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. Something went wrong. Collectively the decoded messages were known as Magic. How this came about is explained in an internal history of pre-war and World War II Army and Navy code-breaking activities prepared by William F. Friedman, a central figure in the development of U.S. government cryptology during the 20th century. Those and other questions will be subjects of discussion well into the indefinite future. [14], Firebombing raids on other cities followed Tokyo, including Osaka, Kobe, Yokahama, and Nagoya, but with fewer casualties (many civilians had fled the cities). 24 Jun . Here senior State Department officials, Under Secretary Joseph Grew on one side, and Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson and Archibald MacLeish on the other, engaged in hot debate. To get production going, Bush wanted to establish a carefully chosen engineering group to study plans for possible production. This was the basis of the Top Policy Group, or the S-1 Committee, which Bush and James B. Conant quickly established. Alperovitz, 281-282. Moreover, he may not have known that the third bomb was still in the United States and would not be available for use for nearly another week. The Committee also reaffirmed earlier recommendations about the use of the bomb at the earliest opportunity against dual targets. In addition, Arneson included the Committees recommendation for revoking part two of the 1944 Quebec agreement which stipulated that the neither the United States nor Great Britain would use the bomb against third parties without each others consent. Thus, an impulse for unilateral control of nuclear use decisions predated the first use of the bomb. Nevertheless, his diary suggests that military hard-liners were very much in charge and that Prime Minister Suzuki was talking tough against surrender, by evoking last ditch moments in Japanese history and warning of the danger that subordinate commanders might not obey surrender orders. [55] On 22 July Marshall asked Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas Handy to prepare a draft; General Groves wrote one which went to Potsdam for Marshalls approval. [48]. Despite the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet declaration of war, and growing worry about domestic instability, the Japanese cabinet (whose decisions required unanimity) could not form a consensus to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Schaffer,Wings of Judgment, 143-146. Early in the morning of August 9th Manchuria was invaded by the Soviet Union. Unaware of the findings of Health Division scientists, Groves and Rhea saw the injuries as nothing more than good thermal burns.[75], Documents 94A-B: General Farrell Surveys the Destruction, RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 17, Envelope B, A month after the attacks Groves deputy, General Farrell, traveled to Japan to see for himself the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harriman opined that surrender is in the bag because of the Potsdam Declarations provision that the Japanese could choose their own form of government, which would probably include the Emperor. Further, the only alternative to the Emperor is Communism, implying that an official role for the Emperor was necessary to preserve social stability and prevent social revolution. Yet, according to Forrest Pogues account, when Truman asked McCloy if he had any comments, the latter opened up a discussion of nuclear weapons use by asking Why not use the bomb?[30]. If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for unconditional surrender by explicitly or implicitly guaranteeing a constitutional monarchy would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did? This issue of the diplomatic summary also includes Togos account of his notification of the Soviet declaration of war, reports of Soviet military operations in the Far East, and intercepts of French diplomatic traffic. This latest iteration of the collection includes corrections, a few minor revisions, and updated footnotes to take into account recently published secondary literature. "Nobody should allow themselves to forget the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," declared Sergey Naryshkin on August 5, 2015, at an event at Moscow's State Institute of International Relations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings on the Japanese cities. Cited in Barton J. Bernstein, Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the "Decision,The Journal of Military History62 (1998), at page 559. To what extent did subsequent justification for the atomic bomb exaggerate or misuse wartime estimates for U.S. casualties stemming from an invasion of Japan? Bernstein, introduction,Toward a Livable World, xxxvii-xxxviii. When he learned of the atomic bombing from the Domei News Agency, Togo believed that it was time to give up and advised the cabinet that the atomic attack provided the occasion for Japan to surrender on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. 2130 H Street, NW Peter Grose,Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 170-174, 248-249. Eisenhowers son John cast doubts about the memoir statements, although he attested that when the general first learned about the bomb he was downcast. If Russia used a nuclear weapon of any type, "I expect (the president) to say we're in a new situation, and the U.S. will directly enter the war against Russia to stop this government that has . The "Tsar Bomba," as it became known, was 10 times more powerful than all the munitions used during World War II. The numbered items are military and industrial installations with the percentages of total destruction.
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