President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: Was there a realistic alternative to this course of action?

Résumé du document

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped, on the city of Hiroshima, the first of the only two nuclear bombs ever employed against human population, killing more than 115.000 people - probably as many as 250.000 according to the highest estimates - and injuring at least another 100.000. Three days later, on the date the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, a second, bigger , atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, bringing the toll to 200.000 dead and 300.000 wounded. After the war, the bombings raised a series of ethical and historical questions about the causes, circumstances and motives that underlay Truman's far-reaching decision to implement them. The official explanation - provided by President H. Truman himself in his memoirs and strongly backed by the American public and many politicians in the wake of the war – insisted that the only issue was that of obtaining unconditional Japanese surrender without further unnecessary loss of American lives. However, a different perspective based on more recently declassified documents was put forward by so-called “revisionist” historians. In their view, the use of the atomic bomb was not necessary as the Japanese leadership was already defeated and on the verge of surrendering.

Extraits

[...] And how to explain the decision to destroy both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in such a brief interval of time? If the object was solely Japanese surrender, then one bomb or a demonstration test would have been enough. A possible reason for this double destruction was to ensure that both the uranium-based bomb, used on Hiroshima, and the plutonium-based one, used on Nagasaki, would function under combat conditions, and that the Soviets would fully grasp the scope of their efficiency and the will of the Americans to use them[32]. [...]

[...] Such decision required unanimity of views and it was hampered by a small core of extremist military chiefs. Army Minister Anami Korechika and Chief of the Naval General Staff Umezu Yoshjiro in particular, insisted on conditions stronger than the mere protection of Emperor Hirohito before surrendering. They wanted the guarantee that no foreign troop would occupy the Japanese homeland, that war trials would be conducted by the Japanese government only and that the armed forces would be allowed to demobilise and disarm voluntarily. [...]

[...] President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: was there a realistic alternative to this course of action? On the morning of August the United States dropped on the city of Hiroshima the first of the only two nuclear bombs ever employed against human population, killing more than 115.000 people - probably as many as 250.000 according to the highest estimates[1] - and injuring at least another Three days later, on the date the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, a second, bigger[2], atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, bringing the toll to 200.000 dead and 300.000 wounded. [...]

[...] Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York, 1950): 441. Robert P Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995). Ibid. Robert J. C. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender (Stanford, CA, 1954). Ibid. Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1995). Ibid. Ibid. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Pacific Wars, Washington, D.C., July 1946. [...]

[...] But as Gar Alperovitz remarks, is one thing to note such statements and such plans, and it is quite another to accept them as prima facie evidence that this was also what would in fact have happened”[29]. Given the context Japan faced, propaganda was increasingly needed to maintain a minimum of cohesion in the country. Fanatism was not restricted to the military; the population was also thoroughly indoctrinated[30]. The kind of reaction exemplified by some Japanese military chiefs was exactly what was expected from them according to their code of honour. [...]