Eighty years ago this month, the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ushering in the Atomic Age and forever changing the world. For decades, the use of nuclear weapons has been controversial. But America’s decision, fateful as it was, saved lives and ended World War II.
On August 6, 1945, a Boeing B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off from the Mariana Islands, carrying a nuclear bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” which was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 70,000 people. Three days later, another bomber, Bockscar, dropped “Fat Man” over Nagasaki, killing approximately 40,000 people. On August 15, the Empire of Japan announced its surrender, formalized on September 2 aboard the ship USS Missouri.
For most of the next two decades, the decision to use nuclear weapons went largely unquestioned. But beginning in the 1960s, scholars and activists asserted that it was both unnecessary and immoral.
Some have claimed that the United States didn’t need to drop nukes. Imperial Japan, they argue, was about to surrender. Others believe that a land invasion, or even a blockade, would have been better. Some have maintained that the U.S. could have just staged a demonstration of the bomb’s power by dropping one on a deserted island. Still others have contended that the use of two bombs was gratuitous; bombing Nagasaki was unnecessary. And some have even argued that it was the Soviet Union’s declaration of war against Japan on August 8, the day before “Fat Man” was dropped, that truly led to Japan’s surrender a week later.
In recent years, thanks in part to films such as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the debate has been renewed. But the past several decades has also seen a treasure trove of evidence emerge, including declassified American signals intelligence intercepts, as well as the war diaries of leading members of Japan’s government. And that evidence vindicates the decision made by President Harry Truman eight decades ago.
Imperial Japan was not about to surrender. Rather, nearly all of the Big Six, Japan’s Supreme Council at the Direction of War, believed that the country could hold out. At this point, many of them knew that they couldn’t win, but they viewed America as casualty-averse. They hoped that a U.S. invasion would be a bloodbath, putting them in a position to dictate terms and preserve the militarist system that had propelled Japan in its bloody conquest of Asia. Japanese leaders believed that they couldn’t win, but this is not synonymous with being ready to surrender. Tragically, they had other plans, what some called the “bleeding strategy.”
Japan had even figured out precisely where the U.S. invasion forces would first land: the island of Kyushu. In mid-June, American war planners plotting the invasion of Japan, codenamed Operation Downfall, believed that Kyushu would have 350,000 Japanese defenders against an invading force of 700,000 Americans. In fact, the Japanese had 900,000 soldiers on the island — a figure that doesn’t account for the many Japanese civilians who were being trained and encouraged to take up arms. An invasion would have been a bloodletting for the ages — both for Americans and Japanese alike.
The U.S. even had hundreds of thousands of Purple Heart medals premade and ready to go. The U.S. Navy anticipated 1.7–4 million American casualties, with 400,000–800,000 killed, and as many as 10 million Japanese casualties. The Big Six’s hopes for a “decisive battle” to get better surrender terms would have resulted in unimaginable loss.
A Soviet invasion would have given the Communist power an even greater foothold in Asia, potentially tipping the balance in the Cold War to come.
Higher-ups in the U.S. Navy, fearing such casualties, preferred a blockade to end the war. But such an option would have also led to mass starvation of Japanese civilians, and, with an uncertain timeline, a war-weary public, and mass media, it would have been difficult to maintain. Millions of Japanese dying from starvation is hardly more humane than the estimated 110,000–210,000 who died from nuclear weapons.
Indeed, Japanese leaders were already worried about a coming shortage of rice — a famine that they believed would lead to mass unrest and their overthrow. But they still couldn’t bring themselves to surrender. Even after the bombing of Hiroshima, the War Cabinet was filled with holdouts, with many figures arguing that the U.S. couldn’t possibly have enough material for additional bombs.
As the diaries of Shigenori Togo, the country’s foreign minister and one of the few quietly working for surrender, reveal: it was only after Nagasaki that Hirohito believed that Imperial Japan could no longer delay surrendering. The U.S., it was thought, could have additional nuclear bombs, and would use them, including in Tokyo. This belief was fueled by the interrogation of Marcus McDilda, an American P-51 pilot who had been captured and claimed, under duress and full of bravado, that the U.S. had 100 atomic bombs.
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Even after Nagasaki, some Japanese hardliners still believed that surrender wasn’t necessary. As late as August 9, the Deputy chief of staff of the Imperial Army, Lt. Gen. Torashiro Kawabe, wrote in his diary: “We must be tenacious and fight on.” But the man with the ultimate say, Emperor Hirohito, had come to think otherwise. For their part, American war planners were planning for additional bombs to be used and were inquiring about their quantity and when they would be ready.
Prince Konoe, a former Japanese prime minister who remained a palace insider and adviser, said that the bombs and Russia’s entry into the war were “gifts from the gods,” saving Japan from a prolonged war, famine, and the potential overthrow of the imperial system. It would be cruel to describe the mass deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “gifts,” as Konoe did. But the evidence is clear: The bombs saved lives and put an end to a war that, since 1937, had claimed no fewer than 25 million throughout Asia. It was the best of many options, none of them good, and all tragic.
The writer is a Washington D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.