This past week marked the 79th anniversary of the United States dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (which occurred on August 6th) and Nagasaki (which occurred on August 9th). The use of these bombs, as well as the Soviet Union declaring war upon Japan on August 8th, lead Japan to finally surrender on August 15th 1945. At the time, their use was seen as necessary to force the Japanese to surrender. The alternative would have involved a massive invasion of the island, with casualties projected to be in the millions on both sides, and including both soldiers and civilians. In the end the decision to employ the atomic bombs was seen as a tactical trade-off between one scenario of casualties and another (hopefully) smaller one.
This is the position that most Americans are familiar with, and the one that most school children are taught. From our vantage point almost eighty years later, the decision to drop the bombs is generally seen as the crowning point of the end of a brutal world war which served as a defining event of the twentieth century. The War would cement America’s role in the world as the dominant superpower, as well as define our sense of patriotism and how we honor the sacrifices and losses that the “Greatest Generation” endured in order to bring us the world that we live in today.
However, we cannot forget the bombings were controversial at the time and remain so today. Learning or recalling this truth is all the more important today as the G.I. Generation is passing on, and as we are moving out of living memory of the bombings and the events that led up to it. It is a living memory that has certainly changed over the years, as younger generations have taken their own look at our nation’s past and formed their own opinions.
This can be seen in in the way that the War is presented in recent films, beginning with Saving Private Ryan, and followed by Wind Talkers and Hacksaw Ridge. These films offer a grim look at war that differs from that shown in earlier history books and documentaries. In a similar manner, last year’s blockbuster Oppenheimer provides a dramatically different and unvarnished portrayal of the tenor of the times that surrounded the development of the atomic bomb and the decision to use it.
From a military and political point of view, this standard defense of the use the bombs is not without some merit. However, on the anniversary of those bombings, it is fitting that we should take a look back at these justifications, not merely with a jaded or cynical eye, but rather by applying a sober and balanced approach. The hope is that we can re-examine our past to rationally question the morality of using these horrific devices on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but also to see what wisdom and insight we may be able to gain from it going forward.
The Long and Bloody Road to Destruction
In 1931 Imperial Japan embarked on a mission of empire building with their invasion of Manchuria. From there they expanded outward into the Pacific as they conquered and occupied parts of China, Korea, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Singapore, and parts of Indo-China (modern day Vietnam).
Numerous attempts were made by the Allies to reign in Japan through negotiations after British Commonwealth forces had been soundly defeated, and while the United States was still officially neutral in the war in Europe. However, when Japanese forces sank an American gunboat that was escorting U.S. evacuees who were fleeing Nanking, the USS Panay, president Franklin D. Roosevelt reacted by freezing Japanese assets and placing an oil embargo on Japan. Reliant upon oil and other raw materials to maintain their empire, Japan sought to come to an agreement with the U.S. that might lift the blockade, but to no avail.
Thus, on December 7th 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, as well as Guam and parts of the Philippines. The following day the United States declared war on Japan, and over the course of the next four years, our nation engaged in a two-front war in Europe and the Pacific. In the Pacific theatre, the United States began by reclaiming territory back from the Japanese one island at a time. The purpose of this strategy was not only to force Japanese forces to retreat back to their home island, but also to acquire air bases that would be within bombing range of Japan. The demand for Japan’s unconditional surrender was solidified during the Potsdam Conference in July of 1945, as military commanders (who were at the time unaware of the Manhattan Project) began planning for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, which was given the name Operation Downfall.
The battles to take these islands had a tremendous cost due to Japan’s adherence to the code of Bushido, which was a remnant of the samurai tradition. This code was foreign to the Western soldiers; it stressed complete devotion to Japan’s emperor and required Japanese soldiers to fight to the death rather than surrender. It also more or less ensured that American and Allied soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese would likely suffer brutal treatment and execution, as Japan had not agreed to the Geneva Convention’s rules of war.
This adherence to the code by Japanese soldiers resulted in tremendous casualties among American and Japanese combatants, such as in the famous battle of Okinawa which led to approximately 50,000 American and 70,000 Japanese casualties. The battle of Iwo Jima, from which we get the famed photo of the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi, continued for an additional month and cost an additional 26,000 American and 18,000 Japanese casualties.
After President Roosevelt died in April of 1945, Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency and became aware of the Manhattan Project, and the eventual successful test of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, on July 16th, 1945. Truman, who was conscious of the cost in lives and materiel that the war in the Pacific had already created, was informed of how even more costly a conventional invasion of Japan would be. As Truman stated, an invasion of Japan “would mean an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.” Moreover, many of the generals in the Army and Marine Corps were older and had first-hand knowledge or experience of combat in the First World War and the infamous “butcher’s bills” of trench warfare where tens of thousands of men’s lives were lost in battles that resulted in only negligible gains.
It is in within this context that Truman weighed whether or not to make use of the atomic bombs and the other options that were offered to him.
1. Conventional Bombing
As soon as airstrips were acquired and built up to handle B-29 bombers Major General Curtis LeMay was put in charge of the air raids that began over Japan. It was LeMay who, using the lessons learned from the European theater, orchestrated the fire bombings of Tokyo, a city filled with wooden buildings. The two nights of raids in March of 1945 were devastating, as over 100,000 people (mostly civilians) were killed. Steel structures melted, and the water in the city’s canals were made to boil. Even though the bombers were flying at lower altitudes during the bombings many of the B-29 pilots still wore their oxygen masks, in order to avoid the stench of burning human flesh that arose from the city.
However, as destructive as these bombings were, they still did not weaken Japan’s will to fight. As former ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew stated, “I know Japan; I lived there for ten years...The Japanese will not crack...even when eventual defeat stares them in the face...they will fight to the bitter end.”
2. Naval Blockade
This plan involved enforcing the embargo that the United States had imposed on Japan before the war. This option entailed many problems. Japan was far away from supply bases, and there was the risk of operating during Japan’s typhoon season as it could wreak havoc on U.S. naval vessels. In addition, a blockade had been tried with Germany after World War One. It led to widespread famine and the death of over 750,000 German civilians and created a slow burning resentment that ultimately led to World War Two exactly twenty years later.
3. A Demonstration of the Bomb’s Ability
Another option considered was to detonate one of the bombs on an island off the coast of Japan in order to demonstrate its destructive power. Given that the atomic bomb was a novel “gadget” (which was its code name before its completion), the concern was that it might not work in a real-world setting. Furthermore, simply witnessing a huge explosion on some uninhabited island may not have provided the "shock and awe" effect the U.S. military desired. Leaders wanted to show its effect on buildings or people, and if the detonation failed, the concern was that their leverage would be lost.
Truman ultimately dismissed all of these options. Furthermore, he knew that asking Stalin to enter the war against Japan would be a gamble that could cause frictions with the Soviet Union in the future, especially since Stalin was asking a for a lot of concessions in order for him to agree to attack Japan in Manchuria. Truman was also aware that using an atomic bomb could provide a deterrent to the Soviets in the future.
Also, as uncomfortable as it may be for our modern sensibilities, we cannot forget the ambient racism which existed at the time, combined with the overall American mood during the war. Recall that Americans had been propagandized to see the Japanese as less-than-human, and even if Americans at the time didn’t know about the “Rape of Nanking” nor of General Shiro Ishii and his infamous Unit 731 which conducted ghoulish experiments on Chinese citizens and tested biological weapons on them, they were at least aware of the Bhutan Death March and the torture and beheading of U.S. prisoners of war.
There is no denying that it was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor, which took millions of men away from their homes to fight overseas and caused years of rationing and hardship on the home front. Without condoning it, it is not hard to see how Americans at the time wanted and expected justice from the president and the military. Truman said as much in his radio address on August 6th, 1945 after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima when he stated, “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.”
Lastly, there was the notion that so much time, effort and money had been poured into developing something that had no guarantee of working. But once it was known that the bomb did in fact “work,” how could anyone in the chain of command not insist that it be used? It must also be kept in mind that the radioactive effects of using atomic weapons was not fully understood at the time; how could they be? Such a weapon had never been used before. Hence, at the time the atomic bomb was seen by most as just a single bomb that had the destructive potential of an entire bombing run, and thus from a tactical point of view it was seen as more efficient and effective use of military resources.
Truman decided in favor of using the atomic bomb on Japan's mainland, and on August 6th the city of Hiroshima was bombed. Three days later on August 9th the same horror befell the city of Nagasaki, killing somewhere between 150,000 and 246,000 people.
The Great Debate on Using the Bomb
At the time, and after four long bloody years of war, it is not hard to see how the decision to use the bomb amounted to what Catholic apologist and Marine Corp veteran Chris Check has called, “pure consequentialism,” highlighting that one set of lives (Americans) were in effect “weighed” against another (the Japanese). Concerns about bombing civilians had since diminished years earlier in the war after the “strategic bombings” of Hamburg and Dresden in Germany, where incendiary bombs were used as a means to break the will of the civilian population.
Curiously enough, President Truman, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, were aligned regarding the use of the bomb, but Truman still retained some qualms about using it. As noted in The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes Truman wrote in his diary,
“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates valley Ersa, after Noah and his fabulous Ark...This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leaders of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old Capital or the new. He & I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will give them the chance.”
Of course, this is not the way it all worked out. Even considering that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had military bases and/or industries, the bombings amounted to massive overkill.
While the use of the atomic bomb(s) was seen in purely strategic terms during the War, two years later former Secretary of War under Truman Henry L. Stimson offered up a defense in using the bomb in a Harper’s Weekly article. After going through a detailed account of the development of the weapon, he made the argument that most are familiar with, “My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I had helped to raise.”
He ended on a dour note by saying,
“The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies.”
Some years later, English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe responded to this argument in a famous pamphlet she wrote in 1958 entitled Mr. Truman’s Degree. Anscombe wrote her pamphlet in response to Oxford University bestowing an honorary degree to former president Harry S. Truman. Anscombe, a Catholic convert, uses the first part of the document to refute the accusation that she is a pacifist and pacifism itself, before getting to her main contention of why dropping the atomic bomb was wrong and, in effect, “an act of murder.” She first argued that it was an act of evil to demand unconditional surrender. Anscomb noted that Imperial Japan was not Nazi Germany. It was a nation and culture steeped in Shintoism and Bushido, and it would be dishonorable to accept a Western version of unconditional surrender. As a consequence, the Allies deliberately left Japan with little choice but to fight fanatically to the end.
Her second, and main, point was, “For me to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder, and murder is one of the worst of human actions.” To Anscombe, her problem was not with war, or with bombing, or with a single weapon of mass destruction like the atomic bomb, but its indiscriminate use on innocent civilians. In choosing to destroy entire cities in order to force Japan’s surrender, Truman crossed the line from acceptable killing in wartime to outright murder, “for with Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are not confronted with a borderline case. In the bombing of these two cities, the killing of the innocent was seen as a means to an end.”
Anscombe called any talk of regrettable but necessary “collateral damage,” or even worse, implying that the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not really innocent because of their support of the emperor or the war effort, an “unfunny joke.” Such assertions made a mockery of internationally accepted norms, the Catholic tradition of the double-effect, and particularly the third tenet of St. Augustine’s Just War theory (the bombing lacked a just intention) whereby an evil act may never be committed in order in order to bring about some good (whether it be alleged or real).
Lessons from the Past Informing Our Future
The development and eventual use of the atomic bombs was a pivotal ekpyrosis that marked the end of World War Two, but it also ushered in a new age or, according to the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, a “Turning.” While a more advanced and peaceful world followed the carnage, it operated in the shadow of the Cold War that came about in part by opposing ideologies wrestling for supremacy under the Damclesian sword of these atomic (and later nuclear) weapons. We are now in living in the waning days of the current Turning, where the last vestiges of the twentieth century’s political banes- Communism, radical Islam, American imperialism– are running on fumes as their original proponents are rapidly aging out of significance.
Lest we repeat the misdeeds of the past, it would be prudent to consider these points for the future.
1. Deliberately Targeting the Innocent
First and foremost is to remember the one tenet of warfare that our Christian-Western tradition has bequeathed to us: the principle that wars should be fought by armies against other armies, while innocent civilians are to be left unharmed. Anscombe was careful to define her terms in this matter by saying that “innocent” did not mean “guiltless,” but instead meant “harmless.” Thus, civilians going about their daily lives in a major city are “innocent” even if they work in war industries because they do not pose a direct threat to an opposing army. Likewise, captured POWs, especially those soldiers who were forcibly conscripted, deserve humane treatment not because they are “guiltless,” but because they have been rendered “harmless.”
Throughout all of human history this principle has repeatedly been, and will continue to be violated, because we live in a fallen world filled with leaders and soldiers who are prone to sin and vice. We have seen recent deliberate acts of targeting civilians in both the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars. Nevertheless, a promise to avoid targeting the “harmless” is something that all nations should aspire to uphold, especially the United States, whose founding principles recognize inalienable rights and a higher standard of justice that rises above the mere whims of its temporary leaders.
This will not always be easy, and most Americans would possibly not adhere to it if pressed. In fact, there appears to be an intellectual and moral disconnect on this topic for many individuals. The same people who accept the consequentialist view of using the atomic bomb on Japan in order to bring an end to the War are often the same ones (if they grew up during the Cold War) who decry the use of nuclear weapons because of the massive destruction that they would inevitably create. Even worse are those who believe that a nation like China or Russia would never use a nuke (such as a smaller tactical one) on the battlefield out of fear that NATO would retaliate against Beijing or Moscow in a similar manner. This is Anscombe’s point all over again! How would bombing the civilians of Moscow in retaliation be in any way just simply because of a decision that their leader made, and which they had no part in? Such a retaliation would necessarily be an unjust act.
2. Honoring the Sacrifices of Predecessors
The biggest obstacle that most Americans have in accepting the truth that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjust acts, or even possibly the outright mass murder of civilians, is that they feel that they must continue to support America and its role on the world stage after having won the War. Since just about everyone in America knows someone or had family members who fought in World War Two, calling the bombings acts of murder would mean denouncing them, as well their sense of patriotism.
This need not be the case. While God’s moral commandments have not changed, our understanding of how we should abide by them has definitely evolved. There are many things that our ancestors did that were considered normal and morally licit at the time, but which today we consider as abhorrent. For example, it used to be thought morally licit to order men to march in tight formations into enemy fire, or to use poison gas or cancer-causing chemicals like Agent Orange, but today it is not.
In a similar manner, we can honor the bravery and the sacrifices of all of the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who gave their all to fight in a given war, without having to approve of every action that was done, or every battle that was fought. This is especially the case when it comes to wars fought in times that were very different from our own.
3. Beware of Propaganda that Dehumanizes the “Other”
An unfortunate irony of the Second World War is that America fought for freedom and democracy, but with a segregated military. Furthermore, our leaders voted to intern American citizens of Japanese, German and Italian descent during the conflict (a decision which was upheld by our Supreme Court) because they feared their loyalties were rooted in their ethnicities rather than their nationalities. Most Americans supported those internments, or at the very least were silent about them, because they feared the backlash that might result come from their speaking out against the “war effort.”
Needless to say, it is something that we are encountering today from people who are left-of-center “othering” the Russians or middle-Americans (i.e., “deplorables”), and from people who are right-of-center demonizing China and almost anyone who enters the country illegally through the southern border. It can run the gamut from unkind remarks to irrational hatred, which can eventually lead to violence and killing. This is yet another perennial human failing and something that we should aspire to rise above. In the future we cannot allow our passions to become so disordered and sinful that we would consider the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons (or worse).
4. Avoid the Extremes of Our Exposure to War
When Japan embarked on its imperial ambitions and Europe went to war in the late 1930’s, the world was still in the grips of the Great Depression. Thus, when the United States went to war in 1941, its citizens were already accustomed to poverty and hardships. The next four years brought still more hardships as millions of men left their homes and the work force to join the military. Those friends and relatives whom the soldiers left behind had to deal with food and product rationing and shortages, as well as the stress of having to conform to a unified mindset that supported the war in both words and deeds; even if their conscience’s had qualms about the war, or in the event that they eventually grew weary of it.
By comparison, since the end of the Vietnam War and the move to an all-voluntary military, Americans have become accustomed to having both guns and “butter.” Around this same time America embarked on all manner of limited and undeclared wars around the globe that accomplished little but served to create an image of America as modern empire bent on making the rest of the world in its own image.
Most Americans are pleased that citizens are no longer drafted into military service, and that the peace American won at the end of World War Two gave them the relatively peaceful and prosperous nation that we enjoy today. On the other hand, the downside has been that many Americans have fallen into a kind of worldly stupor whereby they are ignorant or dismissive of the dangers and animosities that exist outside of our borders. Such is the case now with the tensions that are growing with Russia, China, Iran and the Middle East, all of which grew out of the post-war world. We ignore their histories and ambitions at our own peril, especially when it comes to who we vote to serve our country in our national elections.
Hope for the Future
The purpose of this discussion is not to take the current and fashionable route of morally preening ourselves by looking down at those who came before us. Rather, the purpose is to take into account the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the only time that atomic (or nuclear) weapons were used on a human population in wartime. By doing so, hopefully, we can learn from our past so as not to make such moral mistakes again. For while we may no longer fear the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction and all-out nuclear war, the world is by no means a safe place today.
We should continue to express admiration for (and certainly pray for) our nation and its leaders, but we should also be ready to admonish them when it is appropriate. We are blessed to live in a constitutional republic with a distinct national identity and character that calls us to higher set of standards than the other nations of the world. So while we should look back at our nation’s decision to use atomic weapons to destroy two Japanese cities and innocent civilians as a moral failing in the same vein as slavery, segregation, and legalized abortion, we should also see it as a moment to reaffirm our founding principles for the sake of God and neighbor, so that we may live civilized and “peaceable lives.”
Photo Credit- The Golden Echo