Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Debate over dropping the bomb still rages

More than a half-century after the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the debate continues over whether or not the bombing by the United States was a necessary action to bring World War II to an end.

"It is a great debate," says Dr. Martin J. Sherwin, a professor of history at Massachusetts' Tufts University. "It seems to just get more difficult for each side to talk to each other, rather than less difficult as time goes by, (about) whether or not it was necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to get the Japanese to surrender at about that time and to prevent an invasion" by the United States.

Sherwin authored the 1976 book "A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race" (the 25th anniversary edition was recently published by Stanford University Press). "The people on the side of the debate, like most if not all of the of the crew of the Enola Gay ... argue that the bomb saved a million American lives," Sherwin says, "that if it wasn't for using the bomb, (the United States) would have had to invade (Japan)" in November of 1945, which likely would have killed thousands of American soldiers, as well as Japanese military and civilians.

"The other side of the argument," he says, "which I became persuaded of a long time ago when I wrote this book and have become even more convinced since as more information has come out, is that there was absolutely zero likelihood that the war would have gone on until Nov. 1."

Sherwin says this was known in the mid-'40s -- the result of a strategic bombing study conducted by the Air Force and the U.S. government, "that the Japanese would have surrendered even if the bomb had not been dropped, even if there had been no invasion, long before November."

Other factors also came into play, including the interception of Japanese intelligence by the U.S., he says, and the division of Japanese government members over the issue of unconditional surrender "and the military's belief that they could get the Soviet Union to mediate surrender terms that were more acceptable to the military because the Soviet Union was not yet at war with Japan."

In February 1945, Sherwin says, the Soviet Union secretly told the U.S. that it would enter the war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered, which occurred on May 8, 1945.

"Three months after that is Aug. 8," two days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, he explains. "As soon as the Soviets came in there was no argument left for the (Japanese) military to continue the war. They had put all of their eggs in the Soviet basket, so to speak.

"We have all kinds of evidence now that the emperor (Hirohito) himself knew that Japan was defeated and he had been trying as early as March of 1945 to arrange some kind of surrender," Sherwin says. "It was absolutely necessary to assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be held responsible for the war."

President Harry Truman, he explains, had been told by Japanese experts that the country would surrender if it was clarified that the emperor would not be considered a war criminal.

Another "critical" condition was the guaranteed survival of the emperor and the emperorship as part of Japanese culture. "We finally agreed to that after both bombs were dropped and after the Soviets entered the war."

Even more evidence has surfaced in recent years, Sherwin says: When the emperor announced to the Japanese military that they were surrendering, "the reason he gave was not because (the) atomic bomb was dropped, but because the Soviets had entered the war.

"I can't see an argument for believing the bomb was necessary," Sherwin says. "When the Soviets came into the war the war was over."

Bill Coombes, an educational and historical consultant for the American Air Power Heritage Museum in Midland, Texas, has spoken with many career military people about World War II.

"They view the war as a tremendous tragedy, and it certainly is not something one gloats about, the deaths of thousands of people," he says.

"But from the standpoint of the atomic bomb mission (it) ended the war effectively, and from that standpoint, it prevented a lot of people from dying and I think that their perspective is it was the thing that had to be done to stop the incredible insanity of World War II.

"I think there's no question in the minds of most people that the Japanese were not going to surrender unless they were bludgeoned to death, and the atomic bomb certainly provided a bludgeon to do that."

At the same time, Coombes says, "the destructive force of the bomb, I think, surprised a lot of people. Even the scientific people were surprised with the extent of the explosion. From their standpoint it was a success because the thing worked.

"The larger issue of it ending the war, I think that was probably not primary to those people, but it certainly was something that they knew was a possibility."

Coombes spoke with Enola Gay pilot Gen. Paul Tibbets when he presented a program at the museum last year.

Coombes says of the crew: "I think they would prefer to be known as people who ended the war rather than people who dropped the atomic bomb and I think that's a distinction Gen. Tibbets made to me when I talked to him. (Tibbets said), 'We're not war mongers who did this because we knew we were killing people, we were people who were doing a job that was going to end the killing,' and that's the way they want to be remembered in history, I'm sure."

"There are the arguments," Sherwin says. "How are they going to be settled? They won't be. Whether more votes will go to one side or another probably depends on how people feel about nuclear weapons."