Prompt & Utter Destruction

On August 6, 1945 Japan and the rest of the world witnessed the most
devastating form of destruction in human history. The orchestration of the
$2 billion Manhattan project for the development of the atomic bomb yielded
President Truman with the greatest destructive power seen so far in human
history. Trumans decision to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan in order to
yield unconditional surrender is still greatly debated among scholars even
today. The brutality and the suicidal defenses of the Japanese military had
shown American planners that there was plenty of fight left in a supposedly
defeated enemy. Senior military and civilian leaders presented Truman with
several options to force the surrender of Japan. The options included the
tightening of the naval blockade and aerial bombardment of Japan, invasion
of Kyushu, a negotiated peace settlement maintaining imperial
establishments, and the use of the atomic bomb on cities of concentrated
population. In the wake of bloody battles such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa,
Trumans ultimate priority was to avoid American casualties as much as
possible while still achieving Roosevelts unconditional surrender policy for
Japan.
By May 7th of 1945 the war in Europe was over. Germany had
surrendered to the Allied forces after suffering from Hitlers suicide and the
overwhelming invasion of Allied Expeditionary forces in Berlin. With the
European front defeated, the U.S, Russian and British governments could
focus their attention on the Pacific War against the relentless Imperial Japan.

Upon Presidents Roosevelts death on April 12 of 1945, Vice President Harry

S. Truman was sworn into the presidency facing the dilemma of leading the
nation to a swift victory in the Pacific War. Inexperienced with foreign policy,
Truman depended on FDRs handpicked civilian and military advisors to
present him with all the plausible options for ending the war with Japan.
Truman, along with many of his top military advisors, drew heavily upon the
experiences gained by the particularly brutal and bloody invasions of
Okinawa and Iwo Jima. With the 83-day battle for Okinawa resulting in
77,263 American casualties and the beach invasion of Iwo Jima experiencing
higher casualties than D-Day, Truman and his advisors developed strategies
for ending the Pacific War that focused on avoiding such casualties from ever
being sustained again.
In the three and a half years after the Japanese assault on Pearl
Harbor, the Pacific had proven to be a dreadfully savage affair. In the words
of historian John W. Dower, it was a war without mercy, even more brutal
and dehumanizing than the European conflict. Dower goes on to describe the
war writing As World War Two recedes in time and scholars dig at the formal
documents it is easy to forget the visceral emotions and sheer race hate that
gripped virtually all participants in the war, at home and overseas.
Americans regarded Japanese with hatred of singular intensity, exceeding
even their antipathy toward Germans. A primary reason for this was the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. J. Samuel Walker describes this as, an
attack that not only enraged Americans but humiliated them as well.

Americans also detested the Japanese with special ferocity because during
the war Americans knew more about Japanese atrocities than they did
German ones; the horrors of the Holocaust did not come widespread public
knowledge until after the surrender of the Nazis. Japanese atrocities against
other people such as the rape of Nantking in 1937 and the Bataan death
march of 1942 were well publicized by the U.S government to intensify an
anti-Japanese sentiment of the public that would build support for American
retaliation, despite its heavy casualties. It is likely that this anti-Japanese
sentiment that had been brewing for so long took hold of not only the public
psych but that of Trumans top military advisors as well and thus played an
underlying role in the decision making process of Truman and his advisors.
U.S strategies for forcing the unconditional surrender of JapWillan
where dramatically expanded when President Truman was informed by
Secretary of State, James F. Brynes, of the top secret Manhattan Project only
an hour after the first cabinet meeting of his presidency. In a meeting on
April 25, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson confirmed and elaborated on
the information that Byrnes had provided. Stimson handed Truman a
memorandum that began with a sobering statement: within four months we
shall probably have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in
human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city. However, the
specifics on the practicality of this one bomb were still vague estimations
that could not yet be realistically applied. Whether or not the atomic bomb
could become a deployable weapon was dependent upon the success of the

plutonium bomb test in Los Alamos, New Mexico scheduled to take place on
July 16 of 1945.
On June 18th of 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented their views to
the president on the strategic military methods of gaining the publically
anticipated unconditional surrender from the Japan. General George Marshall,
U.S Army Chief of Staff, recommended that preparations be made to launch
the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands, with a
target date of November 1, 1945. Marshall read from a paper drawn up by
the Joint Chiefs: The Kyushu operation is essential to a strategy of
strangulation and appears to be the least costly worth-while operation
following Okinawa. When prompted by the president, the Chiefs hedged on
the crucial issue of casualties. They obliquely projected about 31,000
casualties, based on their belief that the first 30 days in Kyushu should not
exceed the price we paid for Luzon (which was roughly 32,000). Though
officially unknown, it is likely that Truman was either unaware of or did not
validate the casualty figure of about 132,500 (killed, wounded, and missing)
proposed by the Joint War Plans Committee. Historian J. Samuel Walker
claimed that, the figure of 31,000 casualties in first thirty days was
apparently the only one that Truman heard before the end of the war.
Without conformation that the atomic bomb was an option, Truman
unknowingly authorized the option with the largest casualties: the invasion of
Kyushu.

In addition to the invasion there were three alternatives that were also
proposed at the meeting on June 18th. The first involved the tightening and
fortification of the preexisting naval blockade around Japan along with
continued bombing of major Japanese cities. While this alternative was
practical, it was not considered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be an effective
timely method of forcing Japan to surrender. The second possible alternative
was to wait for the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan, which Stalin
had promised at Yalta and reaffirmed in his talks with Harry Hopkins, in
anticipation that this would produce surrender. American military strategists
viewed Soviet involvement as a means to tie down Japanese troops in
Manchuria so that they could not be shipped home to defend against an
American invasion. By the spring of 1945, however, the dominance of the
U.S Navy in Japanese waters appeared likely to prevent the movement of
troops between Asian mainland and Japan, thus eliminating Americas need
for Soviet involvement. A third alternative met considerable support from
Trumans administration as it called for the softening of Roosevelts
unconditional surrender policy which he felt to be the pertinent outcome for
the European and Pacific wars. Roosevelt justified negative aspects of
unconditional surrender by stating that the policy helped ensure, the
destruction of a philosophy which is based on the conquest and
subjugation of other peoples. This alternative also seemed diplomatically
attractive in that a peace negotiation for the surrender of Japan allowing the
country to retain its emperor would potentially help defend the country from

the nearby Soviet communism that often perpetrated vulnerable postwar

countries. Despite the plausibility of all these alternatives, Truman initially
authorized the invasion of Japan because it was most strongly endorsed by
all of his advisors.
A successful test of the plutonium bomb on July 16th proposed a
shortcut solution for Truman previously considered impractical by many of
his advisors. Further information regarding the Trinity test (code name given
to the bomb test by General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan project)
was given to Truman on the morning of July 18 while he was concluding the
Conference in Potsdam Germany with Stalin and Churchill. Groves disclosed
that the test was successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of
anyone I estimate the energy generated to be in excess of the equivalent
of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. Trumans recognition that the bomb was
something qualitatively different from other weapons of war and that its
destructive power made it the most terrible thing ever discovered did not
move him to a call a meeting with any of his advisors to discuss it. In fact, he
did not ask for position papers on the advantages and disadvantages of the
new weapon nor did he seek advice on the potential impact of using the new
weapon to obtain quick Japanese surrender. Truman remained primarily
concerned with ending the war as soon as possible and the bomb was the
most likely and least risky means to accomplish his objective. Therefore,
discussions with his advisors about its use, even if it was the most terrible
bomb in the history of the world, hardly seemed necessary.

Considered by many historians to be the most critical decision of

Trumans presidency, the decision to use the atomic bomb is still widely
debated on many facets to this day. To categorize the wide range of
interpretations Gar Alperovitz, a leading expert on the atomic bomb
diplomacy in the 1990s, split the interpretations into traditionalist and
revisionist views. The leading historian of the traditionalist view, Paul D.
Walker, claims that Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
order to reduce the loss of American lives as much as possible and reach the
unconditional surrender of Japan as quickly as possible. This is quite contrary
to the revisionist views, led by Alperovitz, asserting that the atomic bomb
was dropped to intimidate the Soviets and the rest of the world of U.S
nuclear power. Alperovitz extensively supports this view in his heavily
footnoted book by claiming chiefly that the Japanese government wanted to
surrender and would have as early as June of 1945 had it received
conformation U.S that Emperor Hirohito could retain his throne after the war.
He goes on to examine six other reasons why Japanese surrender was
attainable without the use of the bomb or invasion in order to support his
claim that the Trumans use of the atomic bomb was for motives other than
Japanese surrender.
The traditionalist view, pioneered by Paul Walker, that Truman used the
atomic bomb as a quick cost effective way to obtain peace in the Pacific war
was not only coherent with the public justification for the bombs use, but
also runs parallel to the conclusions of this paper. In addition to the reduction

of American casualties as Trumans primary motive, Walker also suggests a

secondary incentive for using the bomb that serves as one of the few
parallels between revisionist and traditionalist views on this topic. Walker
directly states that, using the bomb might provide diplomatic benefits by
making the Soviet Union more amenable to American wishes. Though not
by any means a priority for Truman, the ability to demonstrate the atomic
bomb in order to intimidate or impress the Soviet Union made the choice of
bombing over invasion much more attractive.
Walker extents the primary points of this paper by asserting modern
estimates of the casualties expected in the invasion of Kyushu to be around
210,000, thus accentuating on the fact that many of Trumans alternatives to
the atomic bomb held casualty levels that he was just not wiling to accept.
He also elaborates on several aspects that he terms collectively as dealing
with a beast. Walker points to the public hatred of the Japanese, desire for
revenge of Pearl Harbor and racist attitudes of the Americans as factors of
significant contribution to the use of the atomic bomb. As stated above in
this paper, Truman also chooses the bomb because it was the only option
that could curb Soviet influence in East Asia without costing American lives.
Walker also discusses this point extensively by stating, At the same time
that Byrnes was trying to delay Soviet claims in East Asia, Stalin was doing
all he could to join the war As Marshall realized, Stalin was anxious to
declare war on Japan for his own reasons. These main motives for Trumans
use of the atomic bomb and many more collectively form the traditionalist

view of the atomic diplomacy in the Pacific war and are considered by
historians to be the opposite of logic most revisionist views.
Inexperienced politically and by his background as a farmer, Harry S.
Truman faced one of the most critical decisions of World War II. As the Allied
forces claimed victory in the European front and U.S forces met steadfast
opposition from the Japanese expansionist empire, Truman was confronted
with the complex diplomacy of ending a war with armies unwilling to stop
fighting. Faced with a variety of foreign policy options, Truman stuck to his
top two priorities of reducing American fatalities and achieving the shortest
end to the war as possible. It was with this mindset that Truman set forth in
search for the best option in achieving the ultimate goal of unconditional
Japanese surrender. Though historians and scholars may never come to a
consensus, it is likely that a mix of anti-Japanese sentiment in America,
diplomatic benefits in the interference of Soviet influence in East Asia, public
desire for a quick end to the Pacific War in the wake of European victory and
the political desire of Trumans administration to reduce casualties to an
absolute minimum all played a critical part in Trumans decision to use the
atomic bomb. The fateful summer of 1945 not only resulted in the
conditional surrender of Japan, but also unveiled on the most destructive
weapon ever produced to the world as a means of power for good and evil.