Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years later
Japan was an ally of the United States during the first world war. Japan has few resources in the way of coal, oil or gas, and the U.S. supplied them with oil — yes, the U.S. was once an oil exporter. As WW II proceeded, the Japanese militarists became very aggressive and invaded Korea, China and Burma. The U.S. stopped sending them oil. The Japanese warring class then had two options: stop warmaking or get oil elsewhere. The Japanese people had no say in this. The country their leaders chose was Indonesia.
The U.S. put its fleet at Pearl Harbor to stop an invasion of Indonesia. This made Pearl Harbor an essential target for a Japanese military bent on conquest. A number of people in the Pentagon warned of the danger. The question of why there was only one tiny observation plane guarding the entire Pacific fleet in 1945 has been left for historians to ponder.
Pearl Harbor was a military target. The Japanese cities were civilian targets.
The U.S. started development of an atomic bomb after learning that the Germans were experimenting with nuclear fission. Pieces of the Manhattan Project were in literally hundreds of places across the US, spreading radioactivity and spending vast sums of money wherever they went. The U.S. military was not informed of the Manhattan Project, and only a very few in Congress knew. By July 1945, three bombs had been built. The momentum of the experiment was strong. Researchers wanted to validate their efforts by seeing the effects of their creation.
Leaders in the project supported the bombings for another reason. With no “results,” the billions spent would appear to have been for no purpose. Perhaps worse, the project may have been ripe to be investigated for abuse. Most historians believe that the strongest motivation for the attack was as a political warning to the Soviet Union, whose communist system was greatly feared by American capitalists.
The first bomb, called Trinity, was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16. Scientists calculated that there was a possibility that this explosion could ignite the ozone layer and incinerate the earth. But that chance was not large, so they proceeded. Those affected by the test were largely Native Americans and Latinx people, and the health effects of the bomb linger to this day. New Mexico has since been further impacted by placing Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories there and targeting them as a dumping ground for all of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste.
By six months prior to the bombing, the Japanese had been defeated. They were blockaded, and the people and even the soldiers were starving. The United States was firebombing them with impunity. Several cities were spared from the firebombing. Scientists were interested in seeing the effects of the atomic bombs alone.
Peace was being negotiated. Both the Japanese and U.S. negotiators agreed that the emperor should remain, as he was worshipped by the people and could help with the transition. Yet the official position from the Truman administration demanded unconditional surrender, with no allowance for keeping the emperor. This made the Japanese hesitate to surrender.
The U.S. had two more bombs, a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb. Scientists wanted to see the differences. The first one, the uranium bomb, was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6. Hiroshima was chosen because it was near the mountains, which would reflect the bomb blast back on the city.
The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8. Japanese surrender appeared inevitable. The U.S. dropped the third bomb, the plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
After the bombs had been exhausted, the U.S. changed its position and allowed a conditional surrender, keeping the emperor.
Almost all of the U.S. generals and military leaders, including General Leslie Groves, who directed the Manhattan Project, and Dwight Eisenhower, who succeeded Truman as president, said that the bombings were unnecessary and should never have happened. Their conclusion was censored at the time by the Truman Administration.
The horrific effects of the bomb on the Japanese people were and are plain to see if one cares enough to look. The sobering back story is also something that America must come to grips with if we are to have a reckoning with warmaking, discrimination and inequality.
Patricia Marida is chair of the Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear Free Committee in Columbus.