The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, Book I

Gar Alperovitz
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995
xiv + 847 pages

Most Americans believe the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. The bombs saved American (and Japanese) lives. The Japanese were fanatics and did not believe in surrender. An American invasion of the home islands would have resulted in over a million US casualties and countless more Japanese. Were the bombings tragic, even brutal? Yes, but the alternative was much worse.

Professor Alperovitz obliterates this long-cherished fantasy. The Japanese had been trying to surrender for much of 1945. However, their leadership was hung up on the Anglo-American call for “unconditional surrender.” From the Japanese point of view, this could have led to their semi-divine emperor, Hirohito, being deposed or even hanged as a war criminal. Peace feelers sent through neutral Sweden, Portugal and the Soviet Union were unambiguous by the summer of 1945: let us keep our Emperor and we will surrender. President Truman and his Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, ignored these overtures and dropped the bombs anyway. Why? In order to have political leverage over the Soviet Union and any other challengers to American power.

Although Alperovitz is a renowned historian, this book did not get much of a hearing when it came out in 1995. Academic historians mostly ignored it. A search through JSTOR came up with one scathing, and frankly dishonest, review. This is not a surprise. After all, revisionist history of this kind does not get much traction with tenured professors. It is just too “extreme,” and the arguments are too controversial and scary for many of them. Upon reading this book, one would be forced to ask difficult questions. Would American politicians really be so ruthless and barbaric as to murder tens of thousands of Japanese civilians for political leverage? What would this say about the American state? The state is a good thing, is it not? These are questions that mainstream historians, most of whom are committed statists, do not want to ask. As a rule, their view of the state is “we’re from the government and we’re here to help!” Unsurprisingly then, the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb dropped down Orwell’s memory hole when it was published.

How does Alperovitz prove his thesis? Simply put, he has total command of the primary sources and uses them judiciously. Indeed, the author lets us know in the introduction that this is not your typical history book:

As the reader will soon see, much of the information contained in the following pages is not presented in the usual narrative mode of most history writing (including my own previous work). Instead, I have chosen to reproduce substantial passages from White House and other documents at numerous points of the argument. Often the reader is spared the details of the living documents of the time. In my experience – and especially in connection with some of the truly critical issues – the documents themselves are far more compelling than any interpretation offered by after-the-fact writers. (p. 8)

Readers might conclude this approach would produce a very dry book. They would be wrong. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb is a page-turner. Some of that is due to Alperovitz’s considerable skill as a writer; however, it is also because of the sources themselves.

One example of dozens is the thinking of British leaders at Potsdam. The author concludes that “Most of these officials also did not believe use of the atomic bomb was dictated by military necessity – and several offered at least indirect reports of the thinking of American leaders with whom they were in day-to-day contact.” (p. 370) To come to this conclusion Alperovitz quotes extensively from evidence that emerged after 1945. Sir Alan Brooke, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, believed that:

[U]nconditional surrender was an objective which we did not require and which, if achieved, might even impede the liberation of territory now occupied by the Japanese, as it appeared likely that the Japanese forces in those territories would only capitulate if instructed to do so by the Emperor. (p. 370)

Churchill’s chief military assistant General Hastings Ismay was even more blunt about the Japanese situation in the summer of 1945:

The Japanese were already on their last legs: but if they were given to think that a rigid interpretation would be placed on the term “Unconditional Surrender,” and that their Emperor – to them the Son of Heaven – would be treated as a war criminal, every man, woman and child would fight on till Domesday. If, on the other hand, the terms of surrender were phrased in such a way as to appear to preserve the right of their Emperor to order them to lay down their arms, they would do so without a moment’s hesitation.” (p. 370)

Continuing to build his case, Alperovitz then quotes from the head of the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office who observed, after the destruction of Hiroshima, that:

The present tactics in the employment of the bomb…seems likely to do the maximum damage to our own cause…A more intelligent way of proceeding would surely have been to have given publicly to the discovery and its possible effects, to have given an ultimatum with a time limit to the Japanese before using it, and to have declared the intention of the Allies to drop a bomb on a given city after a given date by way of demonstration, the date being fixed so as to give time for the evacuation of the city. (p. 371)

This is the right way to write history. Let the sources, as much as possible, tell us what really happened.

With regards to the above example, the author does not finish there. He concludes with a “slam dunk” in the form of Winston Churchill’s views on unconditional surrender which he shared with Harry Truman. Note, this was before Churchill learned of the successful atomic bomb test in New Mexico:

I dwelt upon the tremendous cost in American life and, to a smaller extent, in British life which would be involved in forcing “unconditional surrender” upon the Japanese. It was for him [Truman] to consider whether this might not be expressed in some other way, so that we got all the essentials for future peace and security, and yet left the Japanese some show of saving their military honour and some assurances of their national existence, after they had complied with the safeguards necessary for the conqueror. (p. 371)

Taken together, the primary sources tell us that the British did not believe that cleaving to unconditional surrender was necessarily the correct policy. Moreover, a Japanese surrender could likely be achieved if the demand for unconditional surrender was dropped. Marshalling sources in this way is Alperovitz’s modus operandi throughout the work. As an aside, it is worth noting the author documents that Churchill dramatically changed his tune once he learned of Trinity’s success. After this, Churchill latched on to unconditional surrender as strongly as Truman and Byrnes did. And it was for the same reason. (p.371)

The reader might ask, “this is all well and good, but maybe Alperovitz’s is cherry-picking sources to make his case?” This is a fair question; my answer is that the sources are used so judiciously, so carefully that this concern can be dismissed. Moreover, the author follows the documents as far as they will take us in order to make his conclusions. To give but one example, Alperovitz spends about seven pages (pp. 358-65) examining sources concerning General George Marshall’s contradictory accounts on the need to drop the bombs. Primary documents from 1945 suggest he did not think they were needed for a Japanese surrender; however, in retrospective interviews, the general supported the orthodox argument that the bombs saved lives. How does our author deal with these contradictions? Very carefully indeed:

At present, there is no satisfactory way to resolve the contradictions in the evidence concerning Marshall’s views. Given the 1945 documentary record, however, it is difficult to believe that Marshall advised Truman that using the atomic bomb without warning against an urban population center was the only option available.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is the most obvious: Although Marshall had ardently sought to change the surrender formula, once Truman rejected his advice and decided not to offer assurances concerning the Emperor, then the only plausible way to achieve the commander in chief’s stated objective of “unconditional surrender” was, indeed, to use the atomic bomb. (p. 365)

Suffice to say, the author is equally prudent with the historical evidence across all the 420 pages of Book One.

Although an academic work, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb is eminently accessible to the intelligent layman. The prose is lucid and easy to follow. Those who have suffered through awful academic writing have nothing to fear with this book. Moreover, this is history at its best: challenging long-held myths written by the victors. For anyone interested in learning what really happened in the lead up to the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, this is the place to start.