Sixty
five years ago today, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. That and another bomb dropped on Nagasaki
three days later forced the unconditional surrender of Japan – ending World
War II.
The use
of the bomb was one of the most controversial issues of the war. The efficacy and appropriateness have been
discussed to death, and I will not debate it here except to state that I
believe from the perspective of ending the war quickly, with the least loss of
life on both sides, that the strategy was not only effective, but moral –
as moral as anything in war can be. It
also prevented the possible carving up of Japan by Soviet and American forces
which would have resulted from a land invasion.
The straw arguments brought out by those who state that Japan was on the
verge of surrender in summer 1945 would be laughable if they weren’t made in
the face of Japan’s human rights abuses both before and during the Second World
War – both against Allied military personnel and innocent civilians. Isn’t it interesting that Japan’s behavior in
atrocities such as the Bataan Death March and the rape of Manchuria are utterly
forgotten by those who use August 6 to declaim America’s evil? Some of this is doubtless due to Japan's own whitewashing of her history.
One question
that has been raised is whether Franklin Roosevelt would have used the atomic
bomb and if he knew of its potential for destruction. There is no doubt among
serious historians that Franklin Roosevelt fully intended to use the bomb. Although certain naïve persons have been misled
by FDR’s genteel image, he was particularly tough on issues of American
security: pushing J. Edgar Hoover to make broad use of wiretaps, approving the
execution of several German nationals who snuck into the United States with the
intent of sabotage, and signing Executive Order 9066 - which led to the
internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
(For what it’s worth, both Hoover and Harry Truman though Japanese Internment was a
mistake and unjustified by American security concerns.)
It was
FDR himself who put the development of an atomic bomb on the agenda after he
received a letter from Albert Einstein advising that Germany was working on
just such a weapon. He immediately told
his military aide, General Edwin “Pa” Watson, that “this requires action” and
to keep all documents relating to the project in the White House safe.
Roosevelt
followed the development of the Manhattan Project closely and was fully aware
of an atomic bomb’s potential power, telling an aide that one dropped in Times
Square “would lay New York low”.
When the
Germans broke through Allied lines in the Ardennes in late 1944, FDR called in
Leslie Groves to ask about the possibility of fast tracking a bomb to be
dropped on Berlin to force an end to the war.
Groves had the unpleasant duty of informing the President that
production of a workable bomb was months away.
There is
also the written account of James Roosevelt, the last of FDR’s sons to see him
alive, who in January 1945 confessed to this father his fears concerning
Operation Olympic – the planned invasion of Japan. FDR bluntly told James “There will be no
invasion of Japan. We are developing a
weapon of immense power, and we will use it if we can.” For FDR, who always kept his cards close to
his chest and hadn’t even told his wife about the Manhattan Project, to drop
such a broad hint was extraordinary.
Shortly
after FDR’s death, his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, advised Harry Truman of
the existence of the atomic bomb project - although Truman had suspected the
Manhattan Project centered on a new kind of “super-weapon” since he stumbled
upon the project while chairing the Special Committee to Investigate the
National Defense Program when he was a Senator.
As the targets were being chosen, it was Stimson who persuaded the
military against Kyoto as a target – as it was primarily a cultural and
religious center.
FDR would
have used the bomb. The only questions
are when and where. But FDR died, and that decision fell to another man.
Thank God for Harry Truman.
