The war was finally over. The target is and was always expected to be Japan., These documents have important implications for the perennial debate over whether Truman inherited assumptions from the Roosevelt administration that the bomb would be used when available or that he madethedecision to do so. [67], National Archives, RG 165, Army Operations OPD, Executive Files 1940-1945, box 12, Exec #2. Intimidation to the brim On August 1945, America dropped an atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [53], RG 457, Summaries of Intercepted Japanese Messages (Magic Far East Summary, March 20, 1942 October 2, 1945), box 7, SRS 491-547, This Far East Summary included reports on the Japanese Armys plans to disperse fuel stocks to reduce vulnerability to bombing attacks, the text of a directive by the commander of naval forces on Operation Homeland, the preparations and planning to repel a U.S. invasion of Honshu, and the specific identification of army divisions located in, or moving into, Kyushu. Stimson had in mind a carefully timed warning delivered before the invasion of Japan. [14], Firebombing raids on other cities followed Tokyo, including Osaka, Kobe, Yokahama, and Nagoya, but with fewer casualties (many civilians had fled the cities). Reasons Why the U.S. The result was approximately 80,000 deaths in just the first few minutes. 2 Pt. Ramsey, a physicist, served as deputy director of the bomb delivery group, Project Alberta. Historians Herbert Feis and Gar Alperovitz raised searching questions about the first use of nuclear weapons and their broader political and diplomatic implications. Willingness to accept even the destruction of the Army and Navy rather than surrender inspired the military coup that unfolded and failed during the night of 14 August. How is the current debate about immigration in the United States rooted in our nations past? None of these sections are about damage to human beings. When the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, Americans felt both deep satisfaction and deep anxiety, and these responses have coexisted ever since. Documents 67A-B:Early High-level Reactions to the Hiroshima Bombing, Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed. zhuri james net worth 2021 . Colonel John Stone, an assistant to commanding General of the Army Air Forces Henry H. Hap Arnold, had just returned from Potsdam and updated his boss on the plans as they had developed. This summary included intercepts of Japanese diplomatic reporting on the Soviet buildup in the Far East as well as a naval intelligence report on Anglo-American discussions of U.S. plans for the invasion of Japan. To get production going, Bush wanted to establish a carefully chosen engineering group to study plans for possible production. This was the basis of the Top Policy Group, or the S-1 Committee, which Bush and James B. Conant quickly established. Alperovitz and Sherwin have argued that Truman made a real decision to use the bomb on Japan by choosing between various forms of diplomacy and warfare. In contrast, Bernstein found that Truman never questioned [the] assumption that the bomb would and should be used. The entry from Meiklejohns diary does not prove or disprove Eisenhowers recollection, but it does confirm that he had doubts which he expressed only a few months after the bombings. For a slightly different perspective, see Malloy (2007), 138. According to Hasegawa, this was an important, even startling, conversation: it showed that Stalin took the atomic bomb seriously; moreover, he disclosed that the Soviets were working on their own atomic program. [21] An engineer for the Kellex Corporation, which was involved in the gas diffusion project to enrich uranium, Brewster recognized that the objective was fissile material for a weapon. . The Magic intercepts from mid-July have figured in Gar Alperovitzs argument that Truman and his advisers recognized that the Emperor was ready to capitulate if the Allies showed more flexibility on the demand for unconditional surrender. According to Meiklejohn, None of us doubt that the atomic bomb speeded up the Soviets declaration of war.. For discussion of the importance of this memorandum, see Sherwin, 126-127, and Hershberg, James B. Conant, 203-207. [40]. Nor does it include any of the interviews, documents prepared after the events, and post-World War II correspondence, etc. While U.S. leaders hailed the bombings at the time and for many years afterwards for bringing the Pacific war to an end and saving untold thousands of American lives, that interpretation has since been seriously challenged. The initial radiation from the detonation would be fatal within a radius of about 6/10ths of a mile and injurious within a radius of a mile. One of the visitors mentioned at the beginning of the entry was Iwao Yamazaki who became Minister of the Interior in the next cabinet. An Ordinary Man, His Extraordinary Journey, President Harry S. Truman's White House Staff, National History Day Workshops from the National Archives, Video: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb Study Collection, Harry S. Truman Library & Mu. RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. Gaimusho [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], ed., Shusen Shiroku [Historical Record of the End of the War] (Tokyo: Hokuyosha, 1977-1978), vol. To keep the secret, Bush wanted to avoid a ruinous appropriations request to Congress and asked Roosevelt to ask Congress for the necessary discretionary funds. Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons-- to intimidate the Soviets--or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end? [68], George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein), While Truman had rescinded the order to drop nuclear bombs, the war was not yet over and uncertainty about Japans next step motivated war planner General John E. Hull (assistant chief of staff for the War Departments Operations Division), and one of Groves associates, Colonel L. E. Seeman, to continue thinking about further nuclear use and its relationship to a possible invasion of Japan. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. For further consideration of Tokyo and more likely targets at the time, see Alex Wellerstein, Neglected Niigata,Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, 9 October 2015. Pogue only cites the JCS transcript of the meeting; presumably, an interview with a participant was the source of the McCloy quote. 153-154, 164 (n)). In 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documents can help readers to make up their own minds about long-standing controversies such as whether the first use of atomic weapons was justified, whether President Harry S. Truman had alternatives to atomic attacks for ending the war, and what the impact of the Soviet declaration of war on Japan was. The explosion over Hiroshima wiped out 95 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people. The museum has justfinished a massive renovation of the museum and its exhibitions, the first major renovation in more than 20 years and the largest since the museum opened its doors in 1957. At Potsdam, Stimson raised his objections to targeting Japans cultural capital, Kyoto, and Truman supported the secretarys efforts to drop that city from the target list [See Documents 47 and 48]. See also Walker (2005), 316-317. By Marc Gallicchio. This point is central to Alperovitzs thesis that top U.S. officials recognized a two-step logic: relaxing unconditional surrender and a Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Japans surrender without the use of the bomb. According to a Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Japanese target systems, expected results from the bombing campaign included: The absorption of man-hours in repair and relief; the dislocation of labor by casualty; the interruption of public services necessary to production, and above all the destruction of factories engaged in war industry. While Stimson would later raise questions about the bombing of Japanese cities, he was largely disengaged from the details (as he was with atomic targeting). 1. Brown Papers, box 10, folder 12, Byrnes, James F.: Potsdam, Minutes, July-August 1945, Walter Brown, who served as special assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes, kept a diary which provided considerable detail on the Potsdam conference and the growing concerns about Soviet policy among top U.S. officials. The embassy teams included GRU members Mikhail Ivanov and German Sergeev in August, and TASS correspondent Anatoliy Varshavskiy, former acting military attach Mikhail Romanov, and Naval apparatus employee Sergey Kikenin in September. The notion that the atomic bombs caused . Martin Sherwin has argued that the Franck committee shared an important assumption with Truman et al.--that an atomic attack against Japan would `shock the Russians--but drew entirely different conclusions about the import of such a shock. This was the affirmation of the emperors theocratic powers, unencumbered by any law, based on Shinto gods in antiquity, and totally incompatible with a constitutional monarchy. Thus, the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration opposed any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a sovereign ruler. This proved to be unacceptable to the Truman administration.[63]. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-AEC), The polar cap of the "Fat Man" weapon being sprayed with plastic spray paint in front of Assembly Building Number 2. On the eve of the Potsdam Conference, a State Department draft of the proclamation to Japan contained language which modified unconditional surrender by promising to retain the emperor. Collectively the decoded messages were known as Magic. How this came about is explained in an internal history of pre-war and World War II Army and Navy code-breaking activities prepared by William F. Friedman, a central figure in the development of U.S. government cryptology during the 20th century. At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. The bomb missed Gregg's house by just 100 yards, and the explosion caused by the TNT trigger created a hole in Walter Gregg's garden that measured 24 feet in depth and 50 feet in width. Additional bombs will be delivery on the [targets] as soon as made ready by the project staff., RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. The translations differ but they convey the sticking point that prevented U.S. acceptance: Tokyos condition that the allies not make any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler., Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department). For background on Magic and the Purple code, see John Prados,Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), 161-172 and David Kahn,The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing(New York: Scribner, 1996), 1-67. Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable. "The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the USSR in the post-second World War era rather than strictly a military measure designed to force Japan to unconditionallysurrender" Procedure: Use the documents, textbook pages 845-849, and your knowledge of the era to support a position on A few weeks later, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed surrender documents on the USS Missouri, in Tokyo harbor.[71]. What did senior officials know about the effects of atomic bombs before they were first used. Over 200,000 people were killed. In this short memorandum to Groves deputy, General Farrell, Oppenheimer explained the need for precautions because of the radiological dangers of a nuclear detonation. The last remark aggravated Navy Minister Yonai who saw it as irresponsible. George C. Marshall Papers, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein), Groves informed General Marshall that he was making plans for the use of a third atomic weapon sometime after 17 August, depending on the weather. RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein). The bomb was dropped to impress the Soviets, and persuade them to relax their grip on eastern Europe. After President Roosevelt died on April 12th, 1945, it became Harry Trumans job to decide how to end the war. Richard Frank sees this as evidence of the uncertainty felt by senior officials about the situation in early August; Forrestal would not have been so audacious to take an action that could ignite a political firestorm if he seriously thought the end of the war was near., Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945, Shortly after the Soviets declared war on Japan, in line with commitments made at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, Ambassador Harriman met with Stalin, with George Kennan keeping the U.S. record of the meeting. But I couldnt help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants. Read more, The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project is a global network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of international nuclear history through archival documents, oral history interviews, and other empirical sources. Why did the Americans decide to carry out these attacks? [19], Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, box 17, 21 May 1945, While officials at the Pentagon continued to look closely at the problem of atomic targets, President Truman, like Stimson, was thinking about the diplomatic implications of the bomb. Why were alternatives not pursued? The outspoken Szilard was not involved in operational work on the bomb and General Groves kept him under surveillance but Met Lab director Arthur Compton found Szilard useful to have around. This document has also figured in the argument framed by Barton Bernstein that Truman and his advisers took it for granted that the bomb was a legitimate weapon and that there was no reason to explore alternatives to military use. As indicated by the L.D. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows, nuclear threats are real, present, and dangerous. The destruction was. However, the Department of the Interior opposed the disclosure of the nature of the weapon. Therefore, it is hard to believe that by November 1945, the Japanese press had any detailed, spontaneous reporting of the effects of the atomic bomb. 100 (copy from microfilm). To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city? [54], This summary included several intercepted messages from Sato, who conveyed his despair and exasperation over what he saw as Tokyos inability to develop terms for ending the war: [I]f the Government and the Military dilly-dally in bringing this resolution to fruition, then all Japan will be reduced to ashes. Sato remained skeptical that the Soviets would have any interest in discussions with Tokyo: it is absolutely unthinkable that Russia would ignore the Three Power Proclamation and then engage in conversations with our special envoy., Documents 60A-D: These messages convey the process of creating and transmitting the execution order to bomb Hiroshima.

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