OPINION:
It’s just about time for the annual bemoaning about the U.S. use of the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Yet a simple review of the historical facts shows the self-flagellation to be inappropriate and misinformed.
There are several powerful arguments supporting the U.S. use of the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan — and few, if any, persuasive or accurate counterarguments.
First, as the U.S. recovered from the initial setbacks of the war against Japan and reconquered the Pacific territories invaded by the Japanese, the cost of each battle to the U.S. escalated as the Japanese home islands were approached.
The death toll for the U.S. on Iwo Jima was 6,821, with 20,000 others wounded; on Okinawa, more than 12,000 U.S. servicemen were killed, with 37,000 others wounded.
Second, Japan, even in mid-1945, showed no willingness to surrender. In fact, the Japanese military was preparing a Gotterdammerung defense of the home islands, with (1) over 13,000 kamikaze planes, (2) thousands of explosive-laden suicide torpedo boats, (3) the return from China of over 1 million troops, and (4) the arming of the entire civilian population.
Although there have been quibbles about the estimates of what the cost in dead and wounded would have been to the U.S. of an invasion of Japan, almost all informed commenters on the topic estimate the number of expected U.S. dead to have been 300,000 to 500,000.
Moreover, the toll of Japanese military and civilian deaths would have been much higher than U.S. losses had the U.S. invaded the home islands to end the war.
Third, it has been claimed that the atomic bomb was not necessary to end the war because Japan had already been defeated by conventional U.S. bombing and naval blockade. It has also been argued that a mere demonstration of the bomb’s power over a unpopulated area would have been enough to ensure Japanese capitulation.
But as Evan Thomas clearly demonstrates in his new book, “Road to Surrender,” the Japanese were far from thinking themselves defeated. In fact, even after the dropping of the second atomic bomb, the four military members of the Big 6 inner cabinet to the emperor were still advocating continued fighting, refusing even the direct order from Emperor Hirohito to end the war.
Thus, if the actual use of two atomic bombs had not persuaded the power brokers of the Japanese government to sue for peace, certainly a benign demonstration of the bomb would have had no effect.
And it was only the threat of further destruction by more U.S. atomic weapons that finally pushed the inner counsel into accepting the emperor’s decision to end the war.
Fourth, it was not as if the atomic bombs were much more deadly than weapons already used against Japan. Gen. Curtis Lemay’s saturation bombing of Japanese cities had been overwhelmingly destructive. In Tokyo alone, an estimated 100,000 people were killed on the night of March 9, 1945, in a massive firebombing raid.
The prolongation of the war — had the A-bomb not been used — would have resulted in further hundreds of thousands of Japanese war deaths, not to speak of the starvation of possibly millions of civilians, which was already starting to occur in the summer of 1945.
Fifth, it has been claimed that the use of the atomic bomb on Japan was not necessary to end the war but was merely employed to intimidate the Russians with a show of U.S. military might.
But a reading of (1) U.S. military communications and (2) personal diary entries from all the major U.S. leaders of that period — as described by Mr. Thomas — shows the falsehood of such attributed motivations.
True, some of the U.S. leaders were concerned about civilian casualties in Japan, but they correctly weighted this against both the number of U.S. and Japanese dead, wounded and starved if the war did not end. There was never any discussion of using the A-bomb as a political tool to influence the Soviets.
Finally, it has been argued that the U.S. should not have been the first nation to use the atomic bomb. But after four years of war and increasing casualty numbers as the U.S. approached Japan, government officials had to weigh such theoretical concerns against the potential deaths of 300,000 to 500,000 more Americans to end a war they did not start.
Neither the American people nor Congress would have forgiven our political leaders for not having used the bomb to end the war when the knowledge about the availability of a completed A-bomb eventually came out. The sad but undeniable truth is that ending the war against Japan with the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions of Japanese lives.
Yes, the atomic bomb was a terrible weapon, and it is a shame it ever had to be used.
But given the reluctance of the Japanese government to acknowledge that they had lost the war, given the increasing cost to the U.S. in lives and wounded as battles approached the Japanese home islands, and given the huge anticipated losses an actual invasion of Japan would have incurred, the use of the atomic bomb to end the war — which it just barely did — was not only unavoidable but was in fact a lifesaver.
• Dr. Henry Lerner is the founder of Newton-Wellesley OB/GYN. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Medical School.
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