[Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a US citizen born in Japan,
challenges the prevailing American view that the US decision to drop
the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary or justified
as a means of compelling Japans surrender.]
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CAN THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS ON JAPAN BE JUSTIFIED? A CONVERSATION WITH
DR. TSUYOSHI HASEGAWA  
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Hibiki Yamaguchi, Fumihiko Yoshida and Radomir Compel
May 29, 2019
Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
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_ Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a US citizen born in Japan, challenges
the prevailing American view that the US decision to drop the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary or justified as a means
of compelling Japan's surrender. _

The Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima by Vincent_AF ( CC BY-SA 2.0.)

 

[For a related new documentary, see Lifting the Fog: The Bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
[[link removed]] from
director Allan Siegel -- moderator.]

ABSTRACT

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a US citizen who was born in Japan, has taught in
both countries. Applying his specialized knowledge of Russian history
to an analysis of the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, he
challenges the prevailing American view that the US decision to drop
the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. The
prevailing view is based on two premises: first, the use of the atomic
bombs was the only option available to the US government without
launching a costly homeland invasion; and second, the atomic bombings
had an immediate and direct impact on Japan’s decision to surrender.
Dr. Hasegawa rebuts both assumptions. He also sets out the third –
and often hidden – justification for dropping the bombs, namely,
America’s sense of revenge. He argues that, even before the atomic
bombings, the United States had already crossed the moral high ground
that it had held. He views the US use of atomic bombs to be a war
crime. But he asserts that this action must be understood in the
context of Japan’s responsibility for starting the war of aggression
and committing atrocities in the Asia–Pacific War.

ABSTRACT

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a US citizen who was born in Japan, has taught in
both countries. Applying his specialized knowledge of Russian history
to an analysis of the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, he
challenges the prevailing American view that the US decision to drop
the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. The
prevailing view is based on two premises: first, the use of the atomic
bombs was the only option available to the US government without
launching a costly homeland invasion; and second, the atomic bombings
had an immediate and direct impact on Japan’s decision to surrender.
Dr. Hasegawa rebuts both assumptions. He also sets out the third –
and often hidden – justification for dropping the bombs, namely,
America’s sense of revenge. He argues that, even before the atomic
bombings, the United States had already crossed the moral high ground
that it had held. He views the US use of atomic bombs to be a war
crime. But he asserts that this action must be understood in the
context of Japan’s responsibility for starting the war of aggression
and committing atrocities in the Asia–Pacific War.

HIBIKI YAMAGUCHI (HY): We are so honored and privileged to be here
with you to discuss your works on the international history of the
atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You have published numerous
books and articles such as _Racing the Enemy_ in English
and _Anto_ in Japanese (Hasegawa Citation2005
[[link removed]], Citation2006
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You are also an expert on Russian history and Russo-Japanese
relations. In this regard, you have recently written _Crime and
Punishment in the Russian Revolution_ (Hasegawa Citation2017a
[[link removed]])
and _The February Revolution, Petrograd
1917_ (Hasegawa Citation2017b
[[link removed]]).
As far as I understand, you have come to the field of the
international historiography of the atomic bombings in a relatively
late stage of your career as a historian.

DR. TSUYOSHI HASEGAWA (TH): That is correct. But it might be
important and useful to explain my background as well as the
trajectory of my scholarly interest at the outset.

I was born in Tokyo in 1941 and was evacuated to the city of Komatsu,
in Ishikawa prefecture, after the Tokyo bombing (on March 9–10,
1945). I remember the crimson sky in downtown Tokyo on that night, and
later the adults gathering in my grandfather’s house to listen to
the emperor announce the termination of the war on the radio. As a
four-year-old boy, I do not have clear memories of the war, but some
fragments are still vivid.

I grew up in Japan and attended Tokyo University, Komaba campus, where
I was the editor of the university newspaper. It was the time of large
student movements against the renewal of the Treaty of Mutual
Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan
(_Anpo)_ in 1960. My close friends divided and splintered along
various ideological lines. Although I did not belong to any factions,
I became interested in socialism and questioned why the Soviet Union,
which was founded on the seemingly utopian vision of socialism, had
degenerated into the monstrous Stalinist regime. This led me to study
Russian history, especially the Russian Revolution, and I wrote my
graduation thesis on the February Revolution.

While attending the University of Tokyo, I also joined a research
group on Russian history (_Roshiashi Kenkyukai)_ led by Professor
Haruki Wada that exposed me to pioneering research liberated from the
rigid Stalinist historiography.

Thanks to a Ford Foundation scholarship, I did my graduate training at
the University of Washington in Seattle in the United States. There I
wrote my PhD dissertation on the February Revolution.

The University of Washington in 1964–1969, like American campuses
everywhere, was a hotbed of the Vietnam War protests and the civil
rights movement. Traditional Russian history was also being challenged
by young scholars, and it was the beginning of the social history of
the Russian Revolution.

I then taught at the State University of New York at Oswego for eight
years. Studying, teaching, and living in the United States gave me an
insight into how American society worked. Impressed by the depth of
the roots of American democracy and the diversity it offered, I felt
more at home and more liberated in America than in the more regimented
Japan, so I became an American citizen in 1976.

American citizenship gave me opportunities to do research in the
Soviet Union that were not available in Japan at that time. I had
access to archives and establishing a wide network of relations with
scholars.

After long years of research in the Soviet archives, I finally
published my first book, _The February Revolution, Petrograd, 1917_,
in 1981.

When I finished the book, the United States was going through another
important debate, this time, on the nuclear issue. I became interested
in this issue, and retooled myself at Columbia University,
familiarizing myself with the esoteric knowledge and theories of
nuclear weapons and strategies of both the United States and the
Soviet Union. I was particularly interested in arms control to avoid
nuclear wars.

In 1985, I took a position at Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido
University as the first foreign permanent professor in Japan, thanks
to new legislation that had just been passed.

I apologize for the long-winded answer, but I do believe that the
uniqueness of my trajectory in life and scholarly background is
important to understanding my research. I have lived in three vastly
different societies and I am fluent in Japanese, English, and Russian.
Because of my background, facility for languages, and diverse
scholarly interests in both Russian history and nuclear issues, I
think my perspective is different from most scholars who have not had
such diverse experiences.

Now, finally to answer your question, my stay at the Slavic Research
Center coincided with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika,
an exciting period that mesmerized not only every specialist on
Russia, but also every specialist on international history. While
following developments in the Soviet Union, I became interested in the
new era of Soviet-Japanese relations and the thorny Northern
Territories issue. I found the debate on this issue both from Japan
and the Soviet Union unsatisfactory, with both sides driven by narrow
nationalism. There’s was no room for a meeting point while the world
was radically changing before our eyes.

Taking advantage of the American debate on perestroika and the new
scholarly approach to nationalism and ethnicity, as well as the new
impetus for international history in the United States, I wanted to
enter the discussion to bridge the gap. So I wrote a book on
Russo-Japanese relations and the Northern Territories both in English
and in Japanese (Hasegawa Citation1998
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Hasegawa Citation2000
[[link removed]]).
And in those books, one chapter is devoted to World War II.

When I examined the history of ending the Pacific War, I was surprised
to find that very little attention had been paid to the role of the
Soviet Union in the ending drama of the Pacific War. So that triggered
my interest. Originally, I was going to do a small book, a small
article on the Russian role on Japan’s decision-making, but the more
I studied, I thought it’s not enough to study Russo-Japanese
relations because it’s so connected with international relations,
and one had to, of course, bring the United States into the picture.

Looking at American historiography of the ending of the Pacific War,
Russia is almost absent. So I decided that I was going to study this
issue, and I spent many years examining the archives and documents in
the United States, Russia, and Japan. The end result is _Racing the
Enemy_. This is the first international history of the subject.

In a way, with _Racing the Enemy_, I returned to the roots of my
childhood memory of the Pacific War, trying to place the fragments of
my memory into the full historical background.

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan: Two Wrong Assumptions

HY: So why did you choose the issue of the atomic bombings in
particular out of the various events in the last months of World War
II?

TH: I must stress that this book is not merely about the atomic
bombings; it covers broader issues of international history. For
instance, the last chapter is devoted to the intricate negotiations
between US President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on
the territorial settlement over the Kuril Islands.

But you are right in one respect. One of the most important issues
that the book examines is the issue of the US decision to use the
atomic bombs.

The prevailing American view on the atomic bombings ignores or pays
little attention to the role the Soviet Union played. The prevailing
belief of America is that the use of atomic bombs by the United States
was the only available choice that the US government had, because
without using the bombs, the United States would have to invade Japan,
and about a million people would have perished. And so, to avoid that,
the bombs were the only option available to Truman and, in fact, to
any president in his place. This is the first assumption.

The second assumption is that the bombs did their job, that they were
the deciding factor, the knock-out punch, if you will, of Japanese
surrender. After careful examinations of the archives and other
materials, I came to question these assumptions. I came to the
conclusion that this is a myth, a myth that Americans want to cling to
because of their own psychological need to justify the killing as a
necessary evil.

With regard to the first assumption, I have to point out that two very
important options were available to Americans. And in fact, the
options were presented in some stage of the deliberations of the US
government. The first option was to welcome the Soviet entry into the
war. By the end of 1944, the United States had come to the conclusion
that in order to force Japan to surrender, a homeland invasion of
Japan would be necessary. The successful execution of this strategy
would require Soviet entry into the war in order to pin down the
Japanese forces in China and Korea.

The Yalta Conference was held in February 1945. In order to secure
Stalin’s pledge to enter the war, US President Franklin Roosevelt
promised that the United States was going to grant rewards to the
Soviet Union. This was the so-called Yalta Secret Protocol Agreement.
There, Roosevelt promised to grant the Soviet Union various
concessions on the railways and ports in Manchuria, the return of
Southern Sakhalin (_Karafuto_), and the handing over of the Kuril
Islands.

But, in the few months that followed, the situation changed. The war
developed in favor of the United States to such an extent that the
United States thought that it could win the war by itself without the
Soviets. Here was the first dilemma that faced the new president,
Harry Truman. Should he welcome the Soviet entry into the war at the
risk of allowing the Soviet Union to enhance its influence in East
Asia? Or should he seek the termination of the war without Soviet
help? In that case, the war’s termination might be prolonged,
necessitating further sacrifices of American lives.

The second dilemma Truman faced was the so-called
unconditional-surrender demand. Under Roosevelt, the United States had
been demanding unconditional surrender by Japan, and Truman followed
this policy faithfully. This was because Japan had engaged in military
aggression causing the war (unjust war) and had committed all kinds of
atrocities against American and Allied soldiers (violations on justice
in warfare). In order to defeat Japanese militarism so that Japan
could never rise up again as a military power, the United States and
its allies should impose on Japan unconditional surrender.

But, as the war developed, there were certain people, very influential
people within the government – such as Secretary of War Henry
Stimson, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, and Deputy Secretary
of State and former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew – who thought it
necessary to define what “unconditional surrender” exactly meant.
Particularly important was the status of the emperor. If the United
States were to insist on unconditional surrender, particularly if it
were to insist on, for instance, trying or punishing the emperor, as
some within the administration insisted, the Japanese would fight on
to the very last man. Therefore, in order to terminate the war, the US
government would have to define the terms in such a way that it could
allow the Japanese to preserve the monarchical system, even under the
current dynasty.

In fact, before the Potsdam Conference began, Stimson presented the
president with the draft proposal for the Potsdam on July 2. This
draft included two important items. First, it anticipated the Soviet
entry into the war. In fact, the Operation Division of the Army
General Staff, which had worked on the proclamation draft, thought the
most effective means of forcing Japan’s surrender was to time the
issuance of the ultimatum to Japan so that it coincided with the
initiation of Soviet entry into the war. The second provision was that
the Allied powers would allow Japan to preserve the monarchical system
under the current dynasty.

What happened with these provisions? When the actual Potsdam
proclamation was issued, it stated nothing about the Soviet Union and
nothing about unconditional surrender. Those two conditions were
rejected because of political considerations.

So the first assumption – that the atomic bomb was the only
alternative for the United States to end the war – turned out to be
false, a myth. The fact is not only that Truman did not choose those
alternatives, but also that he just rejected them out of political
consideration.

HY: So your conclusion is that these two options were rejected and
abandoned on purpose by the American leaders. Is that right?

TH: That’s right. Those two options were presented, but they were
intentionally discarded for political purposes.

Earlier I mentioned that Truman faced two dilemmas. How could the
president solve those two dilemmas? The first plutonium bomb test was
successful, one day before the Potsdam Conference began. Eureka! They
had the winning weapon! With the atomic bomb, the United States would
be able to terminate the war before the Soviets entered the war, and
it would also be able to bring Japan to its knees. That’s why Truman
rejected all the conditions that Stimson presented.

That’s my argument on the first assumption. The atomic bomb was not
the only available option; there were two very important options
available. But they were rejected for political reasons.

To Deter the Soviets?

HY: Some argue that the bombs were intended not only to terminate the
war, but also to control or deter the Soviet Union, with a view to the
postwar era. What do you think of this?

TH: Revisionist historians argue that the atomic bombs were used even
though Japan had already been defeated. And therefore there’s no
reason why the United States would use the bomb. The only reason the
United States used them was to intimidate the Soviet Union. The Cold
War had already started.

My interpretation is different. Defeat is different from surrender
because surrender is a political decision. It’s quite clear that
Japan was defeated. There’s no way that Japan could win the war. But
the United States had to force the Japanese leadership to accept
surrender. That’s a very difficult challenge, particularly because
Japanese leaders had a fanatic belief in the emperor system.

Among Truman’s advisers, Secretary of State James Byrnes might have
been the most vocal about using the bomb to intimidate the Soviets.
But Byrnes also intended to intimidate the Japanese to induce them
into the termination of the war. It is difficult to say which
motivation had higher priority for Byrnes.

In my opinion, Truman himself and his administration as a whole used
the bomb primarily to terminate the war, but they did so in such a way
that – this is where the second motivation comes in – it would
prevent the Soviet Union from entering the war. So that’s quite
different from the interpretation by Gar Alperovitz or the
revisionists.

Impact on the Soviet Union

HY: I would like to know more about how the decision-making of the
Soviet Union was affected by the development of the American atomic
bombs.

TH: The Soviet Union was also facing a dilemma. They had decided, a
long time ago – by as early as October 1944 – to enter the war
against Japan. But there was one problem. The Soviet Union and Japan
had a neutrality pact. It had been concluded in 1941 and included the
provision that unless one party notified the other party one year
prior to the termination of the term of the pact, it would
automatically continue for another five years.

And so, in April 1945, the Soviet government notified the Japanese
government that they had no intention to renew the pact. The Japanese
ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, asked Soviet Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Molotov if the Soviet Union was going to abrogate
the pact right away. Molotov said no, the neutrality pact was still in
effect until April 1946. Of course, that was a lie. Stalin had a very
interesting expression – “We will lull the Japanese to sleep”.
Stalin wanted the Japanese to believe that the Soviet government was
observing the neutrality pact, while it in fact was preparing to send
troops to the Far East in anticipation of the war.

But there’s one problem. The Soviet had decided that the most
favorable moment for attack on Japan would be in August. This would be
a clear violation of the neutrality pact. So how were they to solve
this dilemma? Stalin’s solution was that, at the forthcoming Potsdam
Conference, Stalin would have the Allied nations invite the Soviet
Union to join the war. The Soviets’ commitment to the Allies,
especially for the higher cause of terminating the world war, would
trump its legal obligations to Japan, which meant prolonging the war.

But, after the United States acquired the atomic bomb, purpose was
totally to exclude the Soviet Union from the ultimatum to Japan,
betraying the earlier promise to place the joint ultimatum on the
agenda of the Potsdam Conference. Upon learning about Truman’s
Potsdam Proclamation, the Soviet Union hastily wrote up their own
joint proclamation and asked the United States to postpone its
issuance, presumably to present their own version at the conference.
The United States promptly rejected the request. It had already been
released to the press, and therefore it was too late, Byrnes
explained. The Soviets lost the chance to present their version, and
the draft was sent to the archives.

And what did Stalin do next? He proposed that Truman should invite him
to sign the proclamation. Truman rejected this offer as well. This
convinced Stalin, finally, that the United States was trying to force
Japan to surrender before the Soviet entry into the war. If that
happened, all the promises that the United States made at Yalta would
be nullified. Stalin became desperate.

FUMIHIKO YOSHIDA (FY): When Stalin was notified about the atomic bomb
by Truman during the Potsdam conference, what kind of impact did this
have on Stalin? I presume the Soviet Union had some preparation for
its own nuclear-weapon programs.

TH: That’s a very interesting question. The Soviet had spies in the
Manhattan Project; the most important was Klaus Fuchs. The Soviet
Union was aware of what the United States was doing.

When the first US nuclear test succeeded on July 16, the Soviet secret
police had no knowledge of this test. Stalin was very angry about the
failure of intelligence.

During the Potsdam Conference, when a report about the successful test
in New Mexico reached Truman, he conferred with UK Prime Minister
Winston Churchill about what to do with this information. They agreed
that something had to be reported to Stalin but that they should not
reveal that this was the atomic bomb.

So during recess at the conference, Truman approached Stalin.
Everybody on the American and British sides was watching, because they
wanted to know what Stalin’s reaction would be. Truman told Stalin:
“I have to tell you that our country has acquired a new weapon of
unusual destructive force”. Stalin looked at Truman and said,
“Well, I hope you make good use of it”. Truman and everyone else
thought Stalin didn’t know that Truman was talking about the atomic
bomb without specifically referring to it as such.

But Stalin was fully aware. When he came back to his villa, he was
angry and called a conference. He said: “We are not going to let the
Americans use this to intimidate us”. In fact, he ordered his
scientists to speed up his own atomic-bomb project.

The question is whether Stalin expected the United States to use the
bomb. I don’t think that he expected the United States to make the
bomb operational so soon. That was the end of July, and the first bomb
was dropped on August 6. When the bomb was dropped, I believe Stalin
was in real shock. And in fact, if you take a look at Stalin’s daily
schedule book, he met all kinds of people on August 5, when he
returned to Moscow from Berlin, to discuss with them preparations for
the war.

But on August 6, the day when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped,
Stalin’s appointment book was blank. This blank page speaks volumes.
I suspect that he was in deep shock. But on August 7, Ambassador Sato
requested a meeting with Molotov to inquire about Japan’s pending
request for mediation. From this request, Stalin learned that the game
was not over yet. He sprang into action. He ordered his military to
move up the date to start the war by 48 hours, to midnight of August
9.

What Was the Decisive Factor in Ending the War?

HY: Now we would like to discuss the second assumption that you have
mentioned. You rebut the argument that the atomic bombs were the
decisive factor in making Japan surrender. Could you expand on that?

TH: We have to go back a little bit. Japan also faced a dilemma. The
Battle of Okinawa began on 1 April 1945. The Japanese military and the
Japanese emperor himself thought that they would inflict damage on the
Americans and gain favorable conditions under which they could
terminate the war. But the Battle of Okinawa was over by mid-June with
a decisive defeat for Japan.

This was the first time that Japanese leaders seriously started to
discuss how to terminate the war. But the Japanese government was
hopelessly divided. The highest decision-making body, the Supreme War
Council, consisting of the Big Six (prime minister, foreign minister,
Army minister, Army chief of staff, Navy minister and Navy chief of
staff), required unanimity before this decision was brought to the
emperor for approval. But the military – the war party – (except
for the Navy minister) continued to insist that for the anticipated
American invasion on Kyushu, the Japanese would be able to inflict
tremendous damage on the Americans and break their morale.

The people who favored immediate peace – the peace party – led by
Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, and
Marquis Koichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, who was not the
member of the Big Six, thought that continuing the war would diminish
the possibility of gaining favorable terms. What did they mean by
that?

There was a consensus between the war party and the peace party: the
minimal condition for the termination of the war should be the
preservation of the _kokutai_. The _kokutai_ was centered around
emperor worship, which the Japanese considered the essence of their
nationhood. If this condition was not met, Japan would continue the
war to the bitter end and to the last soldier.

And so what did they decide? There was only one major country that
remained neutral. That was the Soviet Union. So they decided to
approach the Soviet Union and seek help to mediate the termination of
the war.

That was a colossal diplomatic mistake, because, as I mentioned
earlier, the Soviet Union had already decided it was going to wage war
against Japan and was making preparations for it in earnest,
especially after the German capitulation. And even Japanese
intelligence sources detected that the Soviets were sending troops and
equipment on a massive scale to the Far East and warned that Soviet
entry into the war was imminent. But the Japanese top leaders cut off
any approach to peace feelers in Switzerland and Sweden, and decided
to put all their eggs in the Soviet basket. They confused strategic
thinking with wishful thinking, hoping that they could persuade the
Soviet Union to mediate by offering generous territorial concessions.
These concessions were actually much smaller than Stalin had been
offered at Yalta.

One crucial point that was to become a contentious issue later – and
remains contentious today – was the possession of the southern
Kurils, which the Japanese now call the Northern Territories. (They
didn’t do so then.) As I mentioned before, the entire Kuril chain
was included in the reward promised to Stalin by the Yalta secret
protocol, but the southern Kurils were not included in the concessions
that Japan was willing to grant to the Soviet Union. That was because
this part of the Kurils had been recognized as belonging to Japan by
the Russians in the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855, and had always been a
part of Hokkaido, that is, an inherent part of Japanese territory.
Whether this part should be included in the territorial concessions to
the Soviet Union was not debated in the Japanese government, most
likely because this fact was taken for granted. But given the dire
situation which Japan found itself in, and the desperate effort to
seek Soviet mediation as the only remaining hope to terminate the war,
I believe that the Japanese would have given up the southern Kurils as
well, as a bargaining chip to secure Soviet mediation.

A couple of days before the Potsdam Conference, Foreign Minister Togo
sent a telegram to Ambassador Sato, instructing him to approach the
Soviet government for mediation and saying that the emperor would send
Prince Fumimaro Konoye as his special envoy to Moscow for that
purpose.

When the Potsdam Proclamation was issued on July 26, the Japanese
government was still patiently waiting for the Soviet answer on
mediation.

How then did the Japanese government react to the Potsdam
Proclamation? First, they immediately noticed that Stalin did not sign
it. So they still continued to stay the course: to seek the
termination of the war through Soviet mediation. Secondly, the
proclamation did not say anything about the fate of the emperor, which
was the most important concern for Japan. Togo thought that there was
room for negotiation with the Allies on the terms specified by the
Potsdam Proclamation.

The Japanese made another cardinal mistake here. Prime Minister
Kantaro Suzuki allegedly declared at a press conference that Japan was
going to _mokusatsu_ the proclamation. But _mokusatsu_ is not
total rejection. It just means they were going to “keep silent”,
and “ignore” it. I say “allegedly” because it is not clear
that it was Suzuki who made this declaration or if the press
interpreted his ambiguous statement and used the term _mokusatsu_.

But the US government took it as rejection. Presumably, Truman and his
advisers had not expected the Japanese to accept their ultimatum in
the first place. The removal of any reference to the preservation of
the monarchical system from the ultimatum ensured that the Japanese
would most likely not accept the ultimatum. They took Suzuki’s
unofficial _mokusatsu_ statement promptly as Japan’s official
rejection of the ultimatum, providing a convenient justification for
the use of the atomic bombs.

Actually, the order to use the atomic bombs (not only the first bomb
but also the second) was given on July 25, not by the president – no
presidential order was given – but by General Thomas Handy, the
acting chief of staff of the Army, while General Marshall was away in
Potsdam, one day before the Potsdam Proclamation was issued. The use
of the atomic bomb was treated as a routine military matter, as was
the decision for conventional strategic bombing.

HY: The United States then dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6.

TH: Yes. So what was the impact of the Hiroshima bomb? Of course, it
was a tremendous shock. But it cannot be said to be decisive. Right
after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, later on the afternoon of August
6, Foreign Minister Togo immediately sent an urgent dispatch to
Ambassador Sato in Moscow, telling him that they were in a dire
situation with the new bomb and urging Sato to meet Molotov
immediately to inquire about Japan’s request for Soviet mediation.
That meant that despite the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Japanese
government was still pursuing the policy to terminate the war through
Soviet mediation. That was also the first response of the Japanese
government to the bomb in Hiroshima. This is telling evidence that the
Hiroshima bomb turned out to be not decisive.

And then, in the early morning of August 9, the Soviet tanks rolled
into Manchuria, and planes attacked Japanese forces. This surprise
attack was totally unexpected. It was only then that the Supreme War
Council was convened for the first time. It had not met immediately
after the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But it was convened immediately
after the Soviet attack.

It was during the heated debate that the first news of the second
atomic bomb on Nagasaki was conveyed to the Japanese leaders at the
Supreme War Council. The original report said that the bomb caused
minimal damage. The Imperial General Headquarters record of this
meeting simply stated that the bombing had no impact on the group’s
deliberations. There were altogether six reports on the impact of the
atomic bomb on Nagasaki dispatched to the Imperial General
Headquarters, each conveying progressively more alarming news of the
damage. Nevertheless, there exists no record indicating that the
second atomic bomb had an impact on the debate within the top echelons
of the Japanese leaders. In other words, not only the first atomic
bomb on Hiroshima but also the two bombs combined were not decisive,
to use the terminology of boxing, providing no “knock-out” punch,
in terms of the Japanese decision to terminate the war. Even then,
they could not decide, because the Japanese government was still
divided. Unable to come to a consensus, they had to resort to an
unprecedented decision – to defer the final decision to the emperor
by holding an imperial conference.

At the imperial conference, the emperor said Japan had to accept the
terms spelled out by the Potsdam Proclamation, with one condition that
the prerogatives of the emperor would be preserved.

The United States rejected this condition. The emperor’s
prerogatives included _tosuiken_, the control of the military. That
prerogative was a crucial factor for Japanese militarism. The United
States had been fighting the war to eradicate Japanese militarism, and
there was no possibility – whether they be hawks or doves – that
they would accept this condition. In fact, the objections to this
condition came from the Japan specialists who had advocated the
softening the unconditional-surrender demand. Secretary of State
Byrnes sent the so-called Byrnes note to Japan making it clear that
after the acceptance of the ultimatum, the Japanese emperor should be
subject to the control of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.
As far as the Japanese future polity was concerned, it would be
determined by freely expressed will of people.

The Byrnes note led the Japanese government to even more serious
division than on previous days. Even those people who initially
favored peace questioned what the United States meant by saying that
the Japanese emperor was “to be subject to the Supreme Commander of
the Allied Powers”. The Japanese emperor was divine and not to be
subjected to anything, the hard-liners insisted. Furthermore,
the _kokutai_ was not the issue on which the emperor’s
“subjects” could make a determination. Since this was the accepted
view in Japan, the peace advocates had a hard time countering the
hard-liner’s counter-attack.

As a result, there was a backlash. Even Suzuki, Togo and Yonai began
to waver, but the second-tier peace factions, who had worked hard to
secure peace in the Prime Minister’s Office (Hisatsune Sakomizu),
the Foreign Ministry (Shunichi Matsumoto) and the Naval Ministry
(Sokichi Takagi), conspired behind the back of the strengthened war
party. They managed to mobilize the wavering Kido, Togo, Yonai and
eventually Suzuki to arrange the second imperial conference. And it
was at this second imperial conference that the emperor decided to
accept the terms specified by the Potsdam ultimatum unconditionally.
Japan would accept defeat, although it did not use the term
“defeat” (_kofuku)_, merely “the termination of the war”
(_shusen_). It was also announced that the emperor was going to
broadcast the imperial rescript of the “termination of war” on the
radio, another unprecedented event, since until then the emperor’s
real voice had never reached his “subjects”.

So that’s the way that the war was terminated. This is my long
answer to the second assumption that the atomic bomb was a very
decisive factor on the Japanese decision to surrender. Neither the
first bomb on Hiroshima nor the combined two bombs had any immediate
impact on Japan’s decision to surrender.

So the two very important justifications for the US decision to drop
the bomb were false. They were merely a myth.

FY: Do you think then the Soviet entry into the war was a decisive
factor?

TH: It can be argued that the Soviet entry into the war was not a
decisive factor either since even after Soviet tanks entered
Manchuria, the Supreme War Council could not reach a consensus and had
to ask the emperor to make the decision.

There is no smoking gun to determine which – the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima, the two atomic bombs combined, or the Soviet entry into the
war – had a more decisive impact on Japan’s decision to surrender.
I think that everything is speculation. That’s partly because the
Japanese government burned all the documents at the end of the war, so
we lack documentary evidence to have definitive conclusions. And
secondly, very important documents and archives still are not
available. For instance, the Imperial Household Agency (_Kunaicho_)
has the records, but these have not been made available. And so we
don’t know what the emperor thought and what he discussed with his
advisers, especially Kido, and others. There exists Army minister
Korechika Anami’s diary, but it has not been made public.

But from the circumstantial evidence, I would say, again, that the
Soviet factor is more important than not only the first bomb on
Hiroshima, but also the two atomic bombs combined. The Japanese
government relied heavily on Soviet neutrality. It clung to the hope
of Soviet mediation right up until the Soviets entered the war. It is
important to stress that even after the Soviet attack, Japan did not
declare war against the Soviet Union, limiting the military resistance
merely to self-defense.

But Japan was betrayed when it was clinging to the hope of Soviet
mediation. The Japanese characterized the Soviet action as a fire
thief (_kajiba-dorobo_). The betrayal had a tremendous psychological
effect. The sight of Soviets tanks rolling into Manchuria, Korea, then
Sakhalin and the Kurils was indeed alarming, prompting a fast
turnaround by the top policy-makers, including the emperor, with
regard to the role of the Soviet Union. If the Soviets continued to
march, they might even gain a decisive voice in the Allied Occupation
Council and might claim a part of Japan as their occupation zone,
making even the preservation of the current imperial dynasty
uncertain. In fact, in the negotiations with Truman, Stalin demanded
that the Soviets have an occupation zone in a part of Hokkaido and a
slice of Tokyo.

Suddenly, the fourth provision of Byrnes’ note, which stipulated
that Japan’s future polity would be determined by freely expressed
will of people, became more attractive. And this was the point that
the emperor made to Kido for unconditional acceptance of the Potsdam
terms. In other words, in order to preserve the current imperial
dynasty, if not the _kokutai_ as they understood it, Japanese
policy-makers, including the emperor, bet on the American side hoping
that the United States would be willing to preserve the Imperial
House. It is important to note that in the imperial rescript as well
as the prime minister’ announcement of the termination of the war,
they pretended that the _kokutai_ was preserved although the meaning
of the _kokutai_ was transformed from the traditional mythical term
into the preservation of the Imperial House.

For these reasons, I think that the Soviet entry into the war had a
more important impact on Japan’s decision to surrender than the two
atomic bombs combined.

The Third Justification: Revenge

HY: Do you think any kind of domestic political considerations
contributed to the US decision to drop the bomb?

TH: That’s very important. There is a third, hidden justification
that Americans don’t say very openly. That is revenge. The United
States suffered the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States
and the Allies, including China, suffered atrocious treatments of
their prisoners of war and civilians – the Nanjing Massacre, the
Bataan Death March, experiments using poison gas and chemical warfare
on live prisoners, comfort women, beheadings and torture, and
innumerable other atrocities in violation of the rules of warfare.

When there were carpet bombings, such as the Nazis’ attacks on
Rotterdam and Warsaw and Japanese attacks on Chongqing and Shanghai,
President Roosevelt issued a statement that these were totally
unethical. There are certain things that you cannot do even in time of
war. There are the rules of conduct in warfare. For instance, the use
of poison gas is banned by the Hague Convention.

But these high principles gradually eroded when the Pacific War began.
As John Dower argues in his book _War Without Mercy_, both sides
demonized the other side (Dower Citation1986
[[link removed]]).
And pretty soon, the American side began to think that the only way
the Japanese could learn their lesson was to completely annihilate
them physically. Truman said that the Japanese were just beasts, and
they should be treated as such. To kill civilians, including women and
children, one of popular progressive journal declared, was the only
language they could understand. This was the philosophy of the
strategic bombing of Tokyo and other cities in Japan.

So, by the time the United States used the atomic bomb, that moral
divide that President Roosevelt had espoused had already been crossed.
Once that divide was crossed, it was easier to go one step further
from incendiary bombings to the atomic bombings.

FY: In case of the Tokyo bombing, they killed 100,000 people in one
night. So even in Japan, there is an argument about what the
difference between Tokyo and Hiroshima is.

TH: But there are qualitative differences between conventional
strategic bombing and the atomic bombing. While the Tokyo bombing were
carried out by 279 B-52s, dropping 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, one
single atomic bomb could kill as many people. That is, one bomb over
one city. The second issue is radiation. If poison gas was prohibited
by international law, then certainly the atomic bomb should be
prohibited, too, since it is more atrocious than poison gas. Truman
himself became aware of the horrible consequences of atomic bombings.
That’s why when he received the news of the enormous number of
victims of the Hiroshima bomb after the second bomb was dropped on
Nagasaki, he ordered that any future use of atomic bombs would require
presidential authorization. Later on, before he fulfilled his term of
office, he admitted that the atomic bomb was many times worse than
poison gas.

But I have one more important thing to add. Since I am both Japanese
and American, I would like to make clear which voice I use to make the
following points. Although as an American citizen, I believe that the
use of atomic bomb should be recognized as a war crime, as a Japanese,
I would like to stress that when we talk about Japan as a victim, we
also have to think that Japan was also a perpetrator of war. Japan
colonized Korea, invaded China, attacked Pearl Harbor, and committed
all kinds of atrocities during the war. An immeasurable number of
people suffered at the hands of the Japanese. We must acknowledge that
Japan must also take responsibility for war crimes, recognizing that
our hands were also soaked with blood. There is also the issue of
political responsibility for prolonging the war. If Japan had
terminated the war earlier, there would not have been the atomic
bombings or Soviet entry into the war. Very few Japanese will voice
their opinion on this issue, including the responsibility of the
Japanese emperor. He could have more decisively intervened to
terminate the war if his “voice of the crane” (_tsuruno hitokoe_)
had a decisive influence on Japan’s decision to terminate the war.
He could have abdicated from the throne after the war to assume his
responsibility for supporting the war. That’s taboo, and few
historians touch upon it. We cannot only shout that we are the
innocent victims without atoning for the crimes that Japan committed.
Tears that pour out for the victims of the atomic bombs must also be
accompanied by prayers for those who fell victim to Japan’s criminal
acts during the war.

Nuclear Weapons as a War Crime

RADOMIR COMPEL (RC): In your book you write that the possession of
nuclear weapons, or the potential for use of those weapons changed the
attitude of the United States (e.g. with regard to the Imperial system
or early Soviet entry into the war). In general terms, would it be
conceivable that possession of nuclear weapons hardens policy makers
into trying to pursue their goals more harshly or more assertively?

TH: I think there are two types of military men and women or even
policy-makers with regard to the use of the atomic bomb. The first
category of men and women consider that it should be used only for
deterrence. But there is another category of men and women who believe
that the atomic bomb could be used as a legitimate war-fighting
weapon. It is for that reason that nuclear weapons have been
constantly improved and miniaturized, so that they could be used in
war.

My fear is that, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they could possibly
and ultimately be used. President Donald Trump thinks that new types
of nuclear weapons can easily be used against rogue states. He or
other authoritarian leaders would not think twice about using them.

The only way to prevent another use of the atomic bomb is the slogan
that Nagasaki adopts – let Nagasaki be the last city of the atomic
bomb.

When I was thinking about nuclear weapons in the middle of the Cold
War, I was more interested in arms control or how to prevent the use
of the atomic bomb. But after serious reflection for many years, I
have finally come to the conclusion that nuclear weapons must be
abolished altogether. That’s the only way to prevent them from being
used.

And another very important conclusion I have come to espouse – I did
not make this point in my book – is that the use of nuclear weapons
should be considered a war crime. They must be condemned and banned.

RC: In the system, as it is today, we can condemn only a very few
cases out of the many war crimes that occur. For example, there have
been convictions for war crimes in Yugoslavia and in places where
great powers do not have their vital interests involved, like Africa.
At the same time, many incidents in the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, or
Iraq are not being prosecuted, because they are kept outside of ICC
(International Criminal Court) jurisdiction. Also, despite the fact
that war crimes may be committed by other parties to the conflict,
often only one party is being tried and found guilty. This leaves an
impression that the other party has not committed any war crimes. Does
this not apply to cases like Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And do you think
there might be a way to address such imbalances?

TH: Between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Allied powers – the United
States, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France – got together and
talked about their policy for trials of war crimes. And they
eliminated strategic bombings from the category of war crimes. So that
meant atomic bombing would not be addressed in war trials. Judge
Radhabinod Pal of India presented a dissenting view, raised the
question of the use of atomic bombs as a war crime at the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East, but his opinion was
ruled out.

Your question is about how to make it happen. I don’t know. It’s a
very difficult task, particularly in the current climate. But we have
to keep working. As Voltaire said in his _Candide_, “We must
cultivate our garden”.

_HIBIKI YAMAGUCHI_ is managing editor of the _Journal for Peace and
Nuclear Disarmament_ (J-PAND).

_FUMIHIKO YOSHIDA_ is editor-in-chief of J-PAND. He also serves as
director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition,
Nagasaki University.

_RADOMIR COMPEL_ is associate professor in the School of Global
Humanities and Social Sciences at Nagasaki University.

References

* Dower, J. 1986. _War without Mercy: Race and Power in the
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