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

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

“The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands – perhaps a million – lives persists.” (p.627)

How do powerful people distort what actually happened? They lie, sometimes outrightly but more often by omission. Although he rarely, if ever, uses that word Alperovitz walks us through this dishonest process in Book Two. By doing so, he has done a great service for those who want to get to the truth about the bomb, but also for students of history who want to see a masterclass in source analysis. His command of the historical material is so strong that Alperovitz can guide us through the distortions.

How does a myth start? Those with power get their version out to the public first, or they get it out on such a scale that it drowns out any alternative versions. Indeed, in the months after the dropping of the two bombs, there was a small but growing group of men who criticised the decision publicly. These critics needed to be silenced or at least reduced to a whisper. Since this was 1940s America and not the Soviet Union, those with power had to be subtle. Alperovitz demonstrates that Truman’s former Secretary of Defense, Henry L. Stimson, future national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy and the president of Harvard University, James B Conant, were key players in getting the official version of events out to the public. The result was Stimson’s, but really Bundy’s, famous Harper’s article, “‘The Decision to Use the Bomb’, which “shut down all but the most independent-minded critics for most of the early postwar era.” (p. 459) These were critics who questioned “why the bombs were dropped, whether their use was ethically justified and what role the bomb’s use and America’s related policy had on the Cold War.” (p. 459)

One might ask at this point “could one article have had such an impact?” Absolutely, so long as it was given front-page treatment in the New York Times and reprinted in countless other papers including The Washington Post. Of course, this was partially due to the fame of the “author” and the subject matter. However, Alperovitz proves that there was a concerted effort to get the article out to as many outlets as possible. Harper’s allowed the article to be reprinted anywhere without charge and the magazine’s editor told Stimson, “You may be interested to know that we mailed out at appropriate intervals before the publication date some four hundred copies of the article to press associations, radio networks, columnists and commentators, and a long list of newspapers.” (p. 456)

If the Harper’s article neutralised scrutiny, more work was needed to solidify the official narrative. Stimson made another contribution through his ghost-written memoirs. It is worth repeating that Alperovitz enjoys total command of the source material; his skills are wholly on display in his treatment of Stimson’s On Active Service in Peace and War. Because so many documents, letters and other primary sources have been made public since the publication of Stimson’s memoirs, Alperovitz is able to show where Stimson omits key facts from his diary in order to “mislead the American people, and it cannot be denied that the decisions were made with full awareness of what was being done.” (p. 487) What kind of omissions? How about Stimson’s entry from July 24, 1945:

I then spoke [to Truman] of the importance which I attributed to the reassurance of the Japanese on the continuance of their dynasty, and I felt that the insertion of that in the formal warning was important and might be just the thing that would make or mar their acceptance, but that I had heard from [Secretary of State] Byrnes that they preferred not to put it in. (p. 489)

Should not the former Secretary of Defense told the reading public he believed it was important to reassure the Japanese people that surrender did not mean losing their Emperor but the President and Secretary of State both rejected this reassurance? Had he done so, readers could have started asking the wrong questions.

What of Truman? What role did he play in creating the myth? First, Alperovitz civilly explodes the caricature of the simple, honest, moral, straight-shooting man from Missouri. This is a myth in its own right. Indeed, the president, like us all, was a flawed man. After reading this book, I would say deeply flawed. Truman’s key contribution to the myth was his memoirs, Year of Decisions. Again, using his mastery of the primary and secondary sources, Alperovitz concludes that “Many discrepancies are also evident when various articles, speeches, and related books by Truman are compared with the presently available documents.” (p. 535)

These discrepancies are then dissected across several pages. For instance, Truman makes only a passing reference to the utter destruction of the Japanese economy brought about by conventional American bombing and total American control of the sea. As Alperovitz states “One would not know from reading Year of Decisions that in July 1945 the United States controlled the seas surrounding Japan and dominated the sky over Japan, and shipments of food and essential raw materials to the home islands had been almost entirely cut off.” (p.536) The implication here is that readers of Truman’s memoirs would have no idea that the Japanese were on their last legs and possibly open to surrender without using the bombs. This is just one example of dozens where the President omitted key information from his memoirs in order to mislead readers about the decision to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another omission, regarding the altering of the unconditional surrender formula, is worth quoting at length:

In his memoirs Truman provides only a very brief, superficial (and misleading) treatment of the advice he received regarding unconditional surrender. He mentions only one of the more than a dozen (known) occasions in which he was advised by U.S. officials and Prime Minster Churchill to clarify the surrender terms.

One would not know that Truman himself had initiated a modification of the surrender terms in his May 8 public statement, that he had substantially retreated from this position on June 1, and that, following Byrnes’ advice, he had resisted all proposals for change thereafter.

Nor does the president reveal to the reader the related but slightly different point that U.S. experts also had advised him repeatedly that unless the Japanese were given assurances for the Emperor, the war would likely continue indefinitely.

Truman also does not explain why he accepted Byrnes’ advice not to modify the terms as against the position of almost every other top administration advisor and Prime Minister Churchill. Nor (except for a brief passing acknowledgment of his support for [Undersecretary of State, Joseph] Grew on May 28) does the president indicate that he personally had no serious objection to such changes, as several documents show.” (p. 536)

Here the reader might think of giving Truman the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the writing process was out of his hands (Year of Decisions was another exercise in ghost-writing) or he was getting on and his memory was playing tricks. Such generous speculations would be wrong. This chapter ends with Francis H. Heller, Truman’s ghost-writer, stating “there simply is not a word in his memoirs that he [Truman] did not personally review.” (p. 542)

The book does not end with Truman. James F Byrnes, and his many lies by omission, gets his own chapter. So too does Leslie Groves who oversaw the Manhattan Project. A public relations whiz and spin doctor long before the term was coined, Groves did great work managing information which deflected from asking the wrong questions about the bomb. Yet, one of the most interesting aspects of Book Two regards the suppression of information. There is so much that we do not know about this period, despite the work of historians like Alperovitz, because hundreds of thousands of documents (maybe millions) are still classified. Nonetheless, the author proves that reliable, “safe” historians were granted access to some classified material. Unsurprisingly, these writers did not rock the historical boat.

So powerful actors deftly got their story out first, distorted the facts and the rest is history. Not quite. Writing in 1995, Alperovitz laments that Americans have rarely asked questions about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This “Complicity of Silence” goes deeper than Truman, Stimson and a few hundred powerful men. It goes straight to the collective American psyche since “it is quite clear that we Americans did not wish to probe for the truth.” (p. 629) Indeed, Alperovitz states “As we have extensively shown in this narrative, if Americans had wished to know more than the official myth – or had merely wished even to ask hard questions – it is quite clear they could have done.” (p. 629) This certainly goes to the heart of the architecture of an American myth; it is the fact that most Americans do not wish to consider that two cities were incinerated and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians murdered not out of necessity but for diplomatic leverage in the burgeoning Cold War. They simply do not care about these questions.

This was a wonderful book. All books are one of a kind, yet juggling a great source investigation with a historical narrative is exceptional. To do it so seamlessly and entertainingly is a rare gift. In my review of Book I, I mentioned that two academics smeared this book. They have no foundation for their attack. As far as possible with the available evidence, Alperovitz proves what he set out to prove. Bravo!