Nicholas Kristof
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August 6 marked the anniversary of one of the most controversial events of the 20th century: the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After 58 years, a consensus is emerging: we, the Americans, have blood on our hands.
Both here and outside the US, the claim is accepted that there is very little moral validity to our position regarding weapons of mass destruction - because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said in a speech he gave on January 31st: "Since they have decided to kill innocent people in Japan... who are they now to pretend to be the policeman of the world?"
The traditional American claim - according to which the purpose of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to end the war quickly and save lives - has been attacked from many directions. Revisionist historians such as Ger Alperowitz claim that the US believed that the bombing was not necessary from a military point of view, and that it was actually intended to establish American supremacy in the post-war world order. According to this claim, the probability that Japan would have surrendered without an atomic bomb was high.
This consensus is wrong, in my opinion. While American research has undermined America's moral position, Japanese historical research actually strengthens it. Studies by historians such as Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto claim that the Japanese leaders who supported the surrender saw the bombing as their safety net. The Japanese army stubbornly refused to surrender, and the peace camp held on to the bombings as a rationale for enforcing the surrender.
Documents testify that the emperor and some of his aides wanted to end the war in the summer of 1945, but hesitated and could not overcome an army that was determined to continue fighting, even if this meant, as a naval officer put it in one sitting, "sacrificing the lives of 20 million Japanese." The atomic bombings broke this political deadlock, and therefore were described by Mitsumasa Yonai, then the Minister of the Navy, as "a gift from heaven". Had it not been for them, Japan would have continued to fight and this would have meant more heavy bombing that caused major fires in Japanese cities and a planned November 1945 ground invasion of the main Japanese islands.
In the fighting on the sparsely populated small islands of Okinawa, 14,000 Americans and 200 Japanese were killed, and on the large islands the cost of blood was in the millions. "The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity that Japan received to end the war," said Hisatsuna Sakumizu, Cabinet Secretary in 1945.
Some argue that the US could demonstrate the power of the bomb on an empty island, or convince Japan to surrender with the promise that it could continue to hold its emperor. But unfortunately, from the records of the period it appears that this restraint was not effective. The Japanese military fiercely resisted surrender, even after two atomic bombs had been dropped and after the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan, and even as it expected another bomb to be dropped on Tokyo.
All this after the American pilot Marcus McDilda, who was captured by the Japanese and tortured, "admitted" that the US plans to destroy Tokyo "in the coming days". The Japanese War Minister delivered the grim news to the Cabinet, but still expressed firm opposition to surrender. Only in the atmosphere created after the dropping of the bombs were the emperor and the peace faction finally convinced to stand their ground and were able to gain control.
It does not seem appropriate to defend the erasure of two cities, an event that in some circles is considered one of the monstrous acts of the 20th century. But our historical duty is to appreciate that the great tragedy of Hiroshima was not the fact that so many people were burned to death in an instant, but that in a complex and cruel world the alternatives were worse.
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