By Walt Zlotow
Every year the four day period August 6 – 9 brings to mind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. This year marks the 81th anniversary of those horrific acts. We may now be closer to nukes fired in anger at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis 64 years ago. Major wars in Ukraine and Iran could both devolve into nuclear war. U.S. withdrawal from several nuclear treaties and planning to spend a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear stockpile add to nuclear anxiety. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in January, the closest it’s been set to nuclear winter in the entire nuclear age.
I learned of the atomic bombings 75 years ago at age 6 and have been haunted by them ever since. For the first decade or so afterward I swallowed whole the US fairytale that the military and political elite were unified in dropping the bombs to prevent a U.S. invasion and its estimate of a million U.S. casualties. A little research disabused me of that false narrative designed to justify the unjustifiable.
Few, if any reputable historians buy that version today. They point to a number of top military leaders who opposed the nuclear attacks, for good reasons. Most prominent was U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall who argued not using the Bomb would strengthen America’s prestige and position in post war Asia. He even advocated for inviting the Russians to view our July 16, 1945 test. Fleet Admiral William Leahy, senior US military officer on active duty in WWII, called the proposed bombings “barbarous”. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy told Truman that neither invasion nor atomic bombings were necessary. Japan would surrender if we avoided terminology ‘Unconditional Surrender’ since any surrender would amount to that without saying so. Allowing Hirohito to remain Emperor would bolster that view. McCloy even advocated telling Japanese leaders we had the Bomb as additional incentive to quit the war.
Tho not involved in the Bomb decision process, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was furious we dropped them, telling Secretary of War Harry Stimson shortly after the attacks “I voiced my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.” Japanese leaders never admitted US atomic bombings motivated their surrender. More likely it was the massive Russian invasion of Manchuria the day of the Nagasaki bombing that more motivated the Japanese surrender.
Ike, McCloy, Leahy, Forristall, Marshall and others were right; Truman and his supporters were wrong. Eighty-one years on America is still the only country to explode nukes in anger. Current senseless wars in Ukraine and Iran, refusal to maintain critically needed nuclear agreements, routinely threatening imagined enemies with “all military options are on the table”, spending a trillion dollars to build bigger and better nukes, all bode ill we’ll make another 81 years nuclear attack free.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glan Ellyn IL
Also by Walt
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If it was true that the real reason for using the atom bombs and all those civilians died and maimed was to put the wind up Russia, to demonstrate the power of the weapon that the US had and Russia didn’t, that would have been psychopathic.
There is little doubt today in the studies by historians, that the atomic bombing was unnecessary – “After the war had ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (a board consisting of more than 1,000 individuals, both military and civilian), was tasked by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson with the examination and analysis of U.S. involvement in WW II. The Survey concluded in 1946 that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
But it was not only with the advantage of hindsight that this conclusion was reached. General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of allied forces in Europe) and General MacArthur (Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific) came to the same conclusion before the bombs were ever dropped. I don’t think there’s any question that both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur would have done whatever was necessary to spare their troops the horrors of a ground invasion. But the fact is that neither of them believed that a ground invasion of mainland Japan was necessary https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=America-s-Nuclear-Madness-by-Robert-Quinn-130811-741.html
The military command will not accept such an order.
Except for chicken shit macarthur who wanted to use nukes in Korea, you are spot on, Noel.
When I was young, my dad, taught me to never accept anything as truth, from the septics. Consequently I became an americaphobe(I have seen nothing to change my position)
In the mid 50s, I got into strife by making the xstian germans the evils, the septics the nasties and having sympathy with Japan who revered the poms enough to join WW1. They were snubbed by britain, france and america at the carve up for the winners which was unfair and I argued that in 1945 if you were told ONE BOMB could do so much damage would you believe it? So the second bomb was too soon. But the atrocities of the prisoners of singapore, had made my historical interpretations insulting. So I shut up before I got belted.