Nevertheless, his diary suggests that military hard-liners were very much in charge and that Prime Minister Suzuki was talking tough against surrender, by evoking last ditch moments in Japanese history and warning of the danger that subordinate commanders might not obey surrender orders. Of course, the Allies ignored this for the reason that dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would intimidate Russia. Russia is very much in the minds of the people who give any thought to world affairs, and distrust and suspicion of her are very widespread. On July 16, the first atom bomb was tested successfully at Alamogordo, N.M. On July 17, Truman sat down to talk with Stalin. [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. 2130 H Street, NW See Bernstein (1995), 142. Truman read Stimsons proposal, which he said was powerful, but made no commitments to the details, e.g., the position of the emperor. The discussion of area bombing may have reminded him that Japanese civilians remained at risk from U.S. bombing operations. In light of those instructions, Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki agreed that the Supreme War Council should meet the next day. The bombings were the first time that nuclear weapons had been detonated in combat operations. That the Soviets had made no responses to Sato's request for a meeting was understood as a bad sign; Yonai realized that the government had to prepare for the possibility that Moscow might not help. [75]. This document is General Curtis LeMays report on the firebombing of Tokyo--the most destructive air raid in history--which burned down over 16 square miles of the city, killed up to 100,000 civilians (the official figure was 83,793), injured more than 40,000, and made over 1 million homeless. Atomic Bomb Dbq; Atomic Bomb Dbq. My analysis will provide some historical and political context and offer an initial assessment of these documents. Harriman opined that surrender is in the bag because of the Potsdam Declarations provision that the Japanese could choose their own form of government, which would probably include the Emperor. Further, the only alternative to the Emperor is Communism, implying that an official role for the Emperor was necessary to preserve social stability and prevent social revolution. Fax: 816-268-8295. Tagaki was soon at the center of a cabal of Japanese defense officials, civil servants, and academics, which concluded that, in the end, the emperor would have to impose his decision on the military and the government. Takagi kept a detailed account of his activities, part of which was in diary form, the other part of which he kept on index cards. 24, tab D, Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelts death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Projectfrom briefingsbySecretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves (who went through the back door to escape the watchful press). atomic bomb dropped to intimidate russia. For on-line resources on the first atomic test. Private collections were also important, such as the Henry L. Stimson Papers held at Yale University (although available on microfilm, for example, at the Library of Congress) and the papers of W. Averell Harriman at the Library of Congress. According to Herbert Bix, for months Hirohito had believed that the outlook for a negotiated peace could be improved if Japan fought and won one last decisive battle, thus, he delayed surrender, continuing to procrastinate until the bomb was dropped and the Soviets attacked.[52]. Thousands died later from radiation sickness. 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]. 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. When he learned of the atomic bombing from the Domei News Agency, Togo believed that it was time to give up and advised the cabinet that the atomic attack provided the occasion for Japan to surrender on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. The total area devastated by the atomic strike on Hiroshima is shown in the darkened area (within the circle) of the photo. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 "superbomber" dropped a uranium bomb over Hiroshima in an attempt to force Japan's unconditional surrender. 8). Consistent with his earlier attempts, Stimson encouraged Truman to find ways to expedite Japans surrender by using kindness and tact and not treating them in the same way as the Germans. Concerned with the long-run implications of the bomb, Franck chaired a committee, in which Szilard and Eugene Rabinowitch were major contributors, that produced a report rejecting a surprise attack on Japan and recommended instead a demonstration of the bomb on the desert or a barren island. Arguing that a nuclear arms race will be on in earnest not later than the morning after our first demonstration of the existence of nuclear weapons, the committee saw international control as the alternative. Evaluate this . The Supreme War Council comprised the prime minister, foreign minister, army and navy ministers, and army and navy chiefs of staff; see Hasegawa, 72. Also documented are U.S. decisions to target Japanese cities, pre-Hiroshima petitions by scientists questioning the military use of the A-bomb, proposals for demonstrating the effects of the bomb, debates over whether to modify unconditional surrender terms, reports from the bombing missions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and belated top-level awareness of the radiation effects of atomic weapons. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), A "Fat Man" test unit being raised from the pit into the bomb bay of a B-29 for bombing practice during the weeks before the attack on Nagasaki. Along with the ethical issues involved in the use of atomic and other mass casualty weapons, why the bombs were dropped in the first place has been the subject of sometimes heated debate.As with all events in human history, interpretations vary and readings of primary sources can lead to different conclusions. At 8:15 am Hiroshima time, Little Boy was dropped. For convenience, Barton Bernsteins rendition is provided here but linked here are the scanned versions of Trumans handwriting on the National Archives website (for 15-30 July). After the first minute of dropping Fat Man, 39,000 men, women and children were killed. The force of B-29 nuclear delivery vehicles that was being readied for first nuclear usethe Army Air Forces 509th Composite Grouprequired an operational base in the Western Pacific. Dropped the Atom Bomb One reason as to why the United States dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima was because it would have saved American lives and ended the war with Japan very quickly. [40]. The timing of the trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki within 40 days of the bombings illustrates the Soviet race to obtain its own atomic bomb, but the timing of the 2015 re-release of these documents is also significant: it came at a time when US-Russia relations were suffering a major deterioration. Nevertheless, Anami argued, We are still left with some power to fight. Suzuki, who was working quietly with the peace party, declared that the Allied terms were acceptable because they gave a dim hope in the dark of preserving the emperor. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. Russia hurried in and the war ended., Truman characterized the Potsdam Declaration as a fair warning, but it was an ultimatum. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. The parts that are highlighted in the report with a line on the left-hand margin are noteworthy. Within days after the bombing of Hiroshima, U.S. military intelligence intercepted Japanese reports on the destruction of the city. Second update - August 4, 2015 The Caribbean and Central America, Greenland, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands, Iraq, Syria, Burma, and the Arctic are a few of the little known places that were involved. As Russia wages war in Ukraine, experts have described what would happen in a nuclear strike, which is unlikely. On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear device ever created. The bomb was built in 1961 by a group of Soviet physicists that notably included . [38]. [5]. More intercepted messages on the bombing of Hiroshima. Frank and Hasegawa divide over the impact of the Soviet declaration of war, with Frank declaring that the Soviet intervention was significant but not decisive and Hasegawa arguing that the two atomic bombs were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. [80], Despite Trumans claim that he made the most terrible decision at Potsdam, he assigned himself more responsibility than the historical record supports. For early U.S. planning to detonate the weapon at a height designed to maximize destruction from mass fires and other effects, see Alex Wellerstein, The Height of the Bomb.. His implicit preference, however, was for non-use; he wrote that it would be better to take U.S. casualties in conquering Japan than to bring upon the world the tragedy of unrestrained competitive production of this material.. Still unaware of radiation effects, Truman emphasized the explosive yield. While post-war justifications for the bomb suggested that an invasion of Japan could have produced very high levels of casualties (dead, wounded, or missing), from hundreds of thousands to a million, historians have vigorously debated the extent to which the estimates were inflated. Also relevant to Japanese thinking about surrender, the author speculated, was the Soviet attack on their forces after a declaration of war. How is the current debate about immigration in the United States rooted in our nations past? The documents introduced here were published in Russian for the first time in 1990, and the English version was included in an issue of the Soviet journal International Affairs (1990, no. The 509th Composite Groups cover story for its secret mission was the preparation of Pumpkins for use in battle. The destruction was. Thus, he wanted Roosevelts instructions as to whether the project should be vigorously pushed throughout. Unlike the pilot plant proposal described above, Bush described a real production order for the bomb, at an estimated cost of a serious figure: $400 million, which was an optimistic projection given the eventual cost of $1.9 billion. If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for unconditional surrender by explicitly or implicitly guaranteeing a constitutional monarchy would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did? Herbert P. Bix,Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan(New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), 523. [1]. [9], RG 77, Correspondence ("Top Secret") of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, file 25M. By early August he decided that 9-10 August 1945 would be the best dates for striking Japanese forces in Manchuria. The documents may even provoke new questions. Conflict in the Pacific began well before the official start of World War II. [6], In its discussion of the effects of an atomic weapon, the committee considered both blast and radiological damage. For example, Bernstein cites the entries for 20 and 24 July to argue that American leaders did not view Soviet entry as a substitute for the bomb but that the latter would be so powerful, and the Soviet presence in Manchuria so militarily significant, that there was no need for actual Soviet intervention in the war. For Brown's diary entry of 3 August 9 1945 historians have developed conflicting interpretations (See discussion of document 57). Therefore, we are publishing an excised version of the entry, with a link to the Byrnes note. Officially named AN602 hydrogen bomb, it was originally intended to have a . Moscow's was 3,000 times . [15]. Explain your answer. How much Power does a President actually have? The United States decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the Soviet Union in the post- Second-War era rather than a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional surrender. [72]. The notion that the atomic bombs caused . [31], RG 107, Office of Assistant Secretary of War Formerly Classified Correspondence of John J. McCloy, 1941-1945, box 38, ASW 387 Japan. The Soviet atomic bomb was the result of miraculous synergistic fusion between scientists and engineers on the one hand, and the police state, with its awesome ability to mobilize resources, on. [58]. Three days later another atomic device was exploded over Nagasaki. Moreover, the atrocities of the bombs were not made graphically public to the Japanese people until August 6, 1952, when Asahi Graphpublished the issue titled Genbaku higai no shokkai (the first publication of the damages of the atomic bomb). Counterfactual issues are also disputed, for example whether there were alternatives to the atomic bombings, or would the Japanese have surrendered had a demonstration of the bomb been used to produced shock and awe. 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. [23] It is possible that Truman was informed of such discussions and their conclusions, although he clung to a belief that the prospective targets were strictly military. In late February 1945, months before atomic bombs were ready for use, the high command selected Tinian, an island in the Northern Marianas Islands, for that base. Bernstein (1995), 144. Did President Truman make a decision, in a robust sense, to use the bomb or did he inherit a decision that had already been made? Some may associate this statement with one that Eisenhower later recalled making to Stimson. For more on the Uranium Committee, the decision to establish the S-1 Committee, and the overall context, see James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age(Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995), 140-154. Barton Bernstein has also pointed to this as additional evidence of the influence on Stimson of an an older morality. While concerned about the U.S.s reputation, Stimson did not want the Air Force to bomb Japanese cities so thoroughly that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength, a comment that made Truman laugh. The final decision to drop the atomic bomb, when it was made the following day, July 25, was decidedly anticlimactic. An important question that Stimson discussed with Marshall, at Trumans request, was whether Soviet entry into the war remained necessary to secure Tokyos surrender. Also still debated is the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, compared to the atomic bombings, on the Japanese decision to surrender. The president, however, wrote in long-hand a text that that might approximate what he said that evening. Riabevs notes, it is possible that Berias copy of this letter ended up in Stalins papers. Gaimusho [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], ed., Shusen Shiroku [Historical Record of the End of the War] (Tokyo: Hokuyosha, 1977-1978), vol. I am lost! Stimsons account of the events of 10 August focused on the debate over the reply to the Japanese note, especially the question of the Emperors status. For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. The U.S. documents cited here will be familiar to many knowledgeable readers on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki controversy and the history of the Manhattan Project. [37], RG 165, Army Operations OPD Executive File #17, Item 13 (copy courtesy of J. Samuel Walker), The day after the Togo message was reported, Army intelligence chief Weckerling proposed several possible explanations of the Japanese diplomatic initiative. National Archives Identifier 535795] The 12 July 1945 Magic summary includes a report on a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow concerning the Emperors decision to seek Soviet help in ending the war. Former Secretary of War Henry Stimson found the criticisms troubling and published an influential justification for the attacks inHarpers. The weapon is in the pit covered with canvas. With the material that follows, the National Security Archive publishes the most comprehensive on-line collection to date of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. They caused terrible human losses and destruction at the time and more deaths and sickness in the years ahead from the radiation effects. With Truman having ordered a halt to the atomic bombings [See document 78], Marshall wrote on Grove's memo that the bomb was not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President., Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 10-12, 1945, Japans prospective surrender was the subject of detailed discussion between Harriman, British Ambassador Kerr, and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov during the evening of August 10 (with a follow-up meeting occurring at 2 a.m.). If you were President Truman in 1945, would you have dropped the bomb? This account hints at discussion of the atomic bomb (certain other matters), but no documents disclose that part of the meeting. Over 200,000 people were killed. Searle, `It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers, 118. Victims who looked healthy weakened, for unknown reasons and many died. Moscows opening to Japan in 2015 then engendered a shift in Japan-Russia relations, as confirmed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs visit to Tokyo in April, Prime Minister Shinzo Abes bold visit to Moscow in May and Naryshkins visit to Tokyo in June 2016, right after President Obamas historical visit to Hiroshima at the end of May. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 306-NT). Eisenhower and McCloys Views on the Bombings and Atomic Weapons, National Security Archive Information from the late John Taylor, National Archives. In any event, historians have used information from the diary to support various interpretations. 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]. J. Samuel Walker has cited this document to make the point that contrary to revisionist assertions, American policymakers in the summer of 1945 were far from certain that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would be enough in itself to force a Japanese surrender. [24], In a memorandum to George Harrison, Stimsons special assistant on Manhattan Project matters, Arneson noted actions taken at the recent Interim Committee meetings, including target criterion and an attack without prior warning., Henry Stimson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress), Stimson and Truman began this meeting by discussing how they should handle a conflict with French President DeGaulle over the movement by French forces into Italian territory. On August 6, a B-29 nicknamed the 'Enola Gay ' dropped a single bomb containing 64 kilograms of highly enriched uranium over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. More than seventy years after the end of World War II, the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains controversial. Beginning in September 1940, U.S. military intelligence began to decrypt routinely, under the Purple code-name, the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. According to Bix, Hirohito's language helped to transform him from a war to a peace leader, from a cold, aloof monarch to a human being who cared for his people but what chiefly motivated him was his desire to save a politically empowered throne with himself on it.[70], Hirohito said that he would make a recording of the surrender announcement so that the nation could hear it. [66], Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 926-927 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima], As various factions in the government maneuvered on how to respond to the Byrnes note, Navy Minister Yonai and Admiral Tagaki discussed the latest developments. [76]. Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 531-534. As Farrell observed in his discussion of Hiroshima, Summaries of Japanese reports previously sent are essentially correct, as to clinical effects from single gamma radiation dose. Such findings dismayed Groves, who worried that the bomb would fall into a taboo category like chemical weapons, with all the fear and horror surrounding them. A few weeks later, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed surrender documents on the USS Missouri, in Tokyo harbor.[71]. The contacts never went far and Dulles never received encouragement to pursue them. [65], Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, Transcript/Draft B. August 4, 2015 A few months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Dwight D.Eisenhower commented during a social occasion how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the atomic bomb. This virtually unknown evidence from the diary of Robert P. Meiklejohn, an assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, published for the first time today by the National Security Archive, confirms that the future President Eisenhower had early misgivings about the first use of atomic weapons by the United States. Try again Those and other questions will be subjects of discussion well into the indefinite future. [57], How influential the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and later Nagasaki compared to the impact of the Soviet declaration of war were to the Japanese decision to surrender has been the subject of controversy among historians. 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. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (civil war), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by Big Six. Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. Concerned that President Roosevelt had an overly cavalier belief about the possibility of maintaining a post-war Anglo-American atomic monopoly, Bush and Conant recognized the limits of secrecy and wanted to disabuse senior officials of the notion that an atomic monopoly was possible. After Suzuki gave the war party--Umeda, Toyoda, and Anami--an opportunity to present their arguments against accepting the Byrnes Note, he asked the emperor to speak. bobert. Washington, D.C., August 4, 2020 To mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the National Security Archive is updating and reposting one of its most popular e-books of the past 25 years. [17], Scientists and officers held further discussion of bombing mission requirements, including height of detonation, weather, radiation effects (Oppenheimers memo), plans for possible mission abort, and the various aspects of target selection, including priority cities (a large urban area of more than three miles diameter) and psychological dimension. But I couldnt help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants. Japanese kamikaze pilots could turn planes into guided missiles. . Russias military intervention in Syria and Putins speech at the 70th UN General Assembly in September 2015 further aggravated the US-Russia bilateral relations. As these cables indicate, reports of unfavorable weather delayed the plan. Later that year, the Uranium Committee completed its report and OSRD Chairman Vannevar Bush reported the findings to President Roosevelt: As Bush emphasized, the U.S. findings were more conservative than those in the British MAUD report: the bomb would be somewhat less effective, would take longer to produce, and at a higher cost. How familiar was President Truman with the concepts that led target planners chose major cities as targets? For discussion of the importance of this memorandum, see Sherwin, 126-127, and Hershberg, James B. Conant, 203-207. How did the U.S. government plan to use the bombs? Meiklejohn recounted Harrimans visit in early October 1945 to the Frankfurt-area residence of General Dwight Eisenhower, who was finishing up his service as Commanding General, U.S. Army, European Theater. 576 words. Photo restoration by TX Unlimited, San Francisco, A nuclear weapon of the "Little Boy" type, the uranium gun-type detonated over Hiroshima. [59a]. As indicated by the L.D. Togo asked Sato to try to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov as soon as possible to sound out the Russian attitude on the declaration as well as Japans end-the-war initiative. Besides material from the files of the Manhattan Project, this collection includes formerly Top Secret Ultra summaries and translations of Japanese diplomatic cable traffic intercepted under the Magic program. coinspot deposit not showing. In fact, after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese militarys Information Division, in charge of media control, intended to announce that the bomb was an atomic one. A modern-day nuclear bomb . Hasegawa cited it and other documents to make a larger point about the inability of the Japanese government to agree on concrete proposals to negotiate an end to the war. Ramsey, a physicist, served as deputy director of the bomb delivery group, Project Alberta. The conventional justification for the atomic bombings is that they prevented the invasion of Japan, thus saving countless lives on both sides. . The discussion depicted a Japan that, by 1 November, would be close to defeat, with great destruction and economic losses produced by aerial bombing and naval blockade, but not ready to capitulate. With direct access to the documents, readers may develop their own answers to the questions raised above. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.. This update presents previously unpublished material and translations of difficult-to-find records. The United States used the bomb to end the war with Japan, which began in 1941 when Japan launched an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor. Noteworthy publications since 2015 includeMichael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, eds., The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Sheldon Garon, On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the United States Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in the Second World War, Past and Present 247 (2020): 235-271; Katherine E. McKinney, Scott Sagan, and Allen S. Weiner, Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76 (2020); Gregg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood and America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (New York: The New Press, 2020); Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020); Neil J. Sullivan, The Prometheus Bomb: The Manhattan Project and Government in the Dark (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2016); Alex Wellerstein; Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming, 2020), a memoir by a Hiroshima survivor, Taniguchi Sumitero, The Atomic Bomb on My Back: A Life Story of Survival and Activism (Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2020), and a collection of interviews, Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020). [73]. The U.S believed the bomb was the only way to send out a warning.When the bombs were dropped on Japan, it was world shocking news which was what the U.S wanted from the start.

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