Steve, please check the dates mate.
First you mention April 1945, and than you say that it was at the top of the list along with diplomatic efforts in June 1945.
But it was as early as mid June (after 18th June meeting) that the operation was highly unlikely, and 8th July "Estimate of the Enemy Situation" basically shattered all hopes for low casualty operation effectively dropping it off the board. No politician, especially Truman, would risk such operation when it was already known that Japan was defeated.
The whole current view is based on Washington insiders, who were concerned through 1946, about the view on A-bombs when multiple voices were raised if it was necessary or not, and if Truman did everything possible to avoid using it.
The result was a long article, in Stimson's name, sourced to a memorandum from his assistant, Harvey Bundy, and written largely by Bundy's precociously clever son, McGeorge. Groves, Conant and several senior officials edited the draft. The article first appeared in the February 1947 issue of Harper's Magazine, reappeared in major newspapers and magazines, and was aired on mainstream radio. It purported to be a straight statement of the facts, and quickly gained legitimacy as the official case for the weapon. The Harper's article (and a parallel piece in the Atlantic Monthly by Karl Compton) reinforced in the American mind the tendentious idea that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands (perhaps several millions, Compton claimed) of American lives by preventing an invasion of Japan. The article's central plank was that America had had no choice. There was no other way to force the Japanese to surrender than to drop atomic weapons on them. By this argument, the atomic bombings were not only a patriotic duty but also a moral expedient:
"In the light of the alternatives which, upon a fair estimate, were open to us I believe that no man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face.
The decision to use the atomic bomb brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of the clash of great land armies."
The essay made no mention of the long debate over the role of the Emperor and Japan's last (and only persuasive) offer to surrender on condition that the Emperor be preserved (a condition Washington, in the end, accepted). Nor did it mention the opposition of senior officials to bombing a city without warning – a target that only the most wilfully self-deceived could construe as 'military'; or the Soviet Union's role in the timing of the bomb; or the USSBS's (contested) claim that a defeated Japan would have surrendered without the bomb or an American invasion. Most erroneously it argued that a land invasion of Japan and the atomic weapons were mutually exclusive – a case of 'either-or'. This flawed nexus ignored the fact that Truman and senior military advisers had all but abandoned the land invasion by early July 1945, irrespective of whether Trinity bathed Alamogordo in neutrons.
As to Stimson's claim that America used the bomb reluctantly – 'our least abhorrent choice' – suggesting that Washington and the Pentagon had wrestled painfully with alternatives, the facts demonstrate precisely the opposite. Everyone involved expected, indeed hoped, to use the bomb as soon as possible, and gave no serious consideration to any other course of action. The Target and Interim Committees swiftly dispensed with alternatives – for example, a warning, a demonstration, or attacking a genuine military target. Indeed, Byrnes rejected these over lunch in the Pentagon – arguing that a warning imperilled the lives of Allied POWs whom the Japanese would move to the target area (the US Air Force had shown no such restraint in the conventional air war, which daily endangered POWs). As well as this, he argued, a demonstration might be a dud (unlikely, given Trinity's success, and the fact that Manhattan scientists saw no need even to test the gun-type uranium bomb used on Hiroshima); that they had only two bombs (untrue – at least three were prepared for August, and several in line for September through to November); and that there were no military targets big enough to contain the bomb. In fact, Truk Naval Base was considered and rejected; no other military target was seriously examined; only Kokura, a city containing a large arsenal, came close to that description, and the attempt to bomb it was abandoned due to the weather.
The nuclear attacks were an active choice, a desirable outcome, not a regrettable or painful last resort, as Stimson insisted. The administration never seriously considered any alternative; its members focused on how, not whether, to use atomic weapons. Every high office-holder believed the bomb would be dropped if Trinity proved successful. 'I never had any doubt it should be used,' Truman said on many occasions. 'The decision,' wrote Churchill later, 'whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never an issue.' Groves dismissed Truman's role as inconsequential. 'Truman's decision,' the general wrote, 'was one of non-interference – basically a decision not to upset the existing plans.'
In this frame, a complete Japanese surrender at an awkward time – that is, after Trinity's success and before the bombs arrived on Tinian – would have frustrated any hope of using the weapons. This is not to impute sinister motives to any man, whose heart and mind we may never truly know; simply to assert that Washington and the Pentagon were absolutely determined to use the two atomic bombs. 'American leaders did not cast policy in order to avoid using the atomic weapons,' in the historian Barton Bernstein's view.
First you mention April 1945, and than you say that it was at the top of the list along with diplomatic efforts in June 1945.
But it was as early as mid June (after 18th June meeting) that the operation was highly unlikely, and 8th July "Estimate of the Enemy Situation" basically shattered all hopes for low casualty operation effectively dropping it off the board. No politician, especially Truman, would risk such operation when it was already known that Japan was defeated.
No, no, no. Decision to use the Atomic bombs was not alternative to invasion.
The whole current view is based on Washington insiders, who were concerned through 1946, about the view on A-bombs when multiple voices were raised if it was necessary or not, and if Truman did everything possible to avoid using it.
The result was a long article, in Stimson's name, sourced to a memorandum from his assistant, Harvey Bundy, and written largely by Bundy's precociously clever son, McGeorge. Groves, Conant and several senior officials edited the draft. The article first appeared in the February 1947 issue of Harper's Magazine, reappeared in major newspapers and magazines, and was aired on mainstream radio. It purported to be a straight statement of the facts, and quickly gained legitimacy as the official case for the weapon. The Harper's article (and a parallel piece in the Atlantic Monthly by Karl Compton) reinforced in the American mind the tendentious idea that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands (perhaps several millions, Compton claimed) of American lives by preventing an invasion of Japan. The article's central plank was that America had had no choice. There was no other way to force the Japanese to surrender than to drop atomic weapons on them. By this argument, the atomic bombings were not only a patriotic duty but also a moral expedient:
"In the light of the alternatives which, upon a fair estimate, were open to us I believe that no man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face.
The decision to use the atomic bomb brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of the clash of great land armies."
The essay made no mention of the long debate over the role of the Emperor and Japan's last (and only persuasive) offer to surrender on condition that the Emperor be preserved (a condition Washington, in the end, accepted). Nor did it mention the opposition of senior officials to bombing a city without warning – a target that only the most wilfully self-deceived could construe as 'military'; or the Soviet Union's role in the timing of the bomb; or the USSBS's (contested) claim that a defeated Japan would have surrendered without the bomb or an American invasion. Most erroneously it argued that a land invasion of Japan and the atomic weapons were mutually exclusive – a case of 'either-or'. This flawed nexus ignored the fact that Truman and senior military advisers had all but abandoned the land invasion by early July 1945, irrespective of whether Trinity bathed Alamogordo in neutrons.
As to Stimson's claim that America used the bomb reluctantly – 'our least abhorrent choice' – suggesting that Washington and the Pentagon had wrestled painfully with alternatives, the facts demonstrate precisely the opposite. Everyone involved expected, indeed hoped, to use the bomb as soon as possible, and gave no serious consideration to any other course of action. The Target and Interim Committees swiftly dispensed with alternatives – for example, a warning, a demonstration, or attacking a genuine military target. Indeed, Byrnes rejected these over lunch in the Pentagon – arguing that a warning imperilled the lives of Allied POWs whom the Japanese would move to the target area (the US Air Force had shown no such restraint in the conventional air war, which daily endangered POWs). As well as this, he argued, a demonstration might be a dud (unlikely, given Trinity's success, and the fact that Manhattan scientists saw no need even to test the gun-type uranium bomb used on Hiroshima); that they had only two bombs (untrue – at least three were prepared for August, and several in line for September through to November); and that there were no military targets big enough to contain the bomb. In fact, Truk Naval Base was considered and rejected; no other military target was seriously examined; only Kokura, a city containing a large arsenal, came close to that description, and the attempt to bomb it was abandoned due to the weather.
The nuclear attacks were an active choice, a desirable outcome, not a regrettable or painful last resort, as Stimson insisted. The administration never seriously considered any alternative; its members focused on how, not whether, to use atomic weapons. Every high office-holder believed the bomb would be dropped if Trinity proved successful. 'I never had any doubt it should be used,' Truman said on many occasions. 'The decision,' wrote Churchill later, 'whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never an issue.' Groves dismissed Truman's role as inconsequential. 'Truman's decision,' the general wrote, 'was one of non-interference – basically a decision not to upset the existing plans.'
In this frame, a complete Japanese surrender at an awkward time – that is, after Trinity's success and before the bombs arrived on Tinian – would have frustrated any hope of using the weapons. This is not to impute sinister motives to any man, whose heart and mind we may never truly know; simply to assert that Washington and the Pentagon were absolutely determined to use the two atomic bombs. 'American leaders did not cast policy in order to avoid using the atomic weapons,' in the historian Barton Bernstein's view.
