Can the bombs be justified?
Atomic destruction was the alternative to land invasion and almost certainly saved many Allied (and Japanese) lives, writes Peter Stiff
SEVENTY years have passed since the following events. I’m not writing because I don’t believe in nuclear non-proliferation, because I’m a firm believer in that. But when these events occurred, it was a war in which no holds were barred by the Japanese enemy.
On August 9 1945, a uranium gun-type atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
The bomb killed an estimated 90 000 to 160 000 Japanese. Japan was called on to surrender unconditionally, but its war cabinet, headed by General Hideki Tojo, ignored the casualties the mostly civilian population had suffered and refused, threatening that any “American” invasion would be opposed by every man, woman and child. This was no idle threat. The Allied High Command agreed there was no option, and with US President Harry Truman’s orders, a second bomb was dropped on Japan to see if this would change the Imperial mindset. It was the only nuclear bomb left in the arsenal, but the Japanese weren’t to know this. It was a plutonium bomb and it was dropped on Nagasaki, killing or causing the death of an estimated 39 000 to 80 000 people. Many more would die from the effects of both bombs over the ensuing years.
The Japanese cabinet met for a second time and debated an unconditional surrender. The cabinet unanimously decided to continue the war. This was vetoed by Emperor Hirohito, so they finally agreed to let the Allies know they’d accede to their request on one condition – that Hirohito could remain on the throne.
Failing this, the war would go on and Japan would fight to the death.
Hirohito was regarded as the Emperor of the Sun, and the Japanese considered themselves the People of the Sun – a cut above the rest. This explains the red roundel on the Japanese flag. Hirohito was worshipped as a living god and the Japanese would never have consented to him relinquishing his throne and being handed over, even if the Allies considered him a war criminal.
The reality was they would have to be satisfied with the next in line, Tojo, who was also a war criminal, but they’d have got him anyway. Tojo was later convicted and sent blindfolded to his death, content that he had taken the place of, and saved, his divine emperor.
The Allied High Command agreed to this conditional surrender. They knew the cost of doing otherwise would have been too high a price to pay, as will be illustrated.
The surrender was formally accepted by General Douglas MacArthur, the Allied commander-in-chief, on a US battleship in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. He ordered that surrendering Japanese officers would not be relieved of their swords, but would be allowed to keep them.
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British supreme commander of the Far East Command, ordered otherwise. MacArthur had overlooked that such officers lived by the code of Bushido, which Mountbatten knew meant many Allied PoWs and civilians in occupied territories had been beheaded with those swords.
Before the bombing, an estimate of Allied casualties if an invasion of mainland Japan took place had been calculated by the Allied joint chiefs of staff to be about 1 200 000. The landings were planned to take place firstly at Kyushu, from where air strikes would be launched against Japanese positions and in support of the second landings, which would occur at Kanto, close to Tokyo.
Within 30 days after the landings it was estimated that the total casualties would rise to 4 000 000. Japanese likely casualties, military and civilian, including suicides, were estimated to be in excess of 10 000 000.
There was no final estimate of the likely casualties the Allies would have suffered by the time mainland Japan had been captured. There were American doubts that such casualties would be acceptable to the US public. Arguments raged between US commanders over this. The naval commanders, led by Admiral Chet Nimitz, commanding the combined Allied fleets, recommended warships should stand off from the mainland and batter it with shellfire, combined with aerial assaults.
This was opposed by MacArthur, who ruled such a campaign would take too long. Besides that, the US Air Force had previously launched a fire-bombing campaign against Japan’s cities which were mostly built with flammable materials, and many cities had been razed to the ground.
This had brought no sign of an unconditional surrender from the Japanese. The army won the argument, but none of those commanders knew then that the atomic bomb existed.
It was not long after the atomic bomb- ings that storms of protest were raised worldwide against the bombings. In the US, Robert R Wilson, a scientist who had worked on the development of the bomb, was appalled that the public was so apathetic about the dropping of the bombs. He was horrified at the thought of what the development of the atomic bomb would bring to the US.
Perhaps its destruction? RE Cody of San Francisco said Americans who had denounced the bombs were mistaken because they had saved many Allied lives.
And so the arguments have raged on, with the majority of people decrying the dropping of the bombs.
The author has personal reasons for agreeing with Cody and others. My elder brother, Staff Sergeant Ronald Stiff, of his Majesty’s Kings Royal Hussars, was badly wounded at St Anthonis in Holland during the British Army’s push to relieve the Parachute Regiment then besieged by the Germans at Arnhem.
He was casevaced to the UK and hospitalised. On recovering from his wounds, he volunteered for the British Commandos training for the invasion of Japan at a Scottish loch, where the shores were similar to the rugged coast of Japan. He was about to be shipped out to the Far East when the atomic bombs were dropped and the war was over, and he was soon demobilised.
If by chance he had reached the Japanese coast to take part in the invasion, it was likely he would have been numbered among the estimated 4 000 000 casualties. But as it was, he went on to live to a ripe old age with a loving wife and three children.
Nevertheless, such protests about the bomb have continued. Many of those protesters are either unaware of the dangers facing the Allies if the invasion of Japan had occurred or they’ve not examined the estimated casualties the Allies would likely have suffered. They have not realised what brutal enemies the Sons of the Sun were.
They should examine the American island-hopping campaign, where they fought battles with the Imperial Japanese Army at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, where the US Marines won the battles but lost 1 592 men, and the US Navy lost 5 000 seamen. Against this, the Japanese lost more than 24 000 troops and seamen, but had fought bitterly with no thought of survival.
The US Marines landed at Iwo Jima and fought the Japanese in heavily fortified positions, killing 21 000 soldiers, capturing only 216 prisoners, who were only caught because they had been knocked unconscious or were otherwise disabled. These were just samples of brutal campaigns.
When the last battles had been fought, only 200 Japanese prisoners were counted out of the 96 000 men who had been there, and they were only the men who had been captured unconscious or were disabled beyond resistance.
If that doesn’t convince the bomb detractors, this might. If Imperial Japan had not surrendered and fought on, the thousands of well-armed troops garrisoned in their captured territories would also have fought to the bitter end.
Would the detractors of the bombs dropped on Japan speak up and say if they would have preferred the war to have continued for many years, with the consequent loss of many more US and Allied lives, to say nothing of the likelihood of far more Japanese casualties than were killed by the atomic bombs?
Detractors have not realised what brutal enemies the Sons of the Sun were
Peter Stiff is a British-born South African
historian and author of 13 books