[written spring 1995]
 Does winning World War II and the Cold War mean never having
to say you're sorry? The Germans have apologized to the Jews and
to the Poles.  The Japanese have apologized to the Chinese and
the Koreans, and to the United States for failing to break off
diplomatic relations before attacking Pearl Harbor.  The Russians
have apologized to the Poles for atrocities committed against
civilians, and to the Japanese for abuse of prisoners.  The
Soviet Communist Party even apologized for foreign policy errors
that "heightened tension with the West".{1}  
	Is there any reason for the U.S. to apologize to Japan for
atomizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 
	Those on opposing sides of this question are lining up in
battle formation for the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the
atom bombs on August 6 and 9.  During last year's raw-meat
controversy surrounding the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay
exhibit, U.S. veterans went ballistic.  They condemned the
emphasis on the ghastly deaths caused by the bomb and the
lingering aftereffects of radiation, and took offense at the
portrayal of Japanese civilians as blameless victims.  An Air
Force group said vets were "feeling nuked".{2}  
	In Japan, too, the anniversary has rekindled controversy. 
The mayors of the two Japanese cities in question spoke out about
a wide "perception gap" between the two countries.{3}  Nagasaki
Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima, surmounting a cultural distaste for
offending, called the bombings "one of the two great crimes
against humanity in the 20th Century, along with the
Holocaust".{4}  
	Defenders of the U.S. action counter that the bomb actually
saved lives: It ended the war sooner and obviated the need for a
land invasion.  Estimates of the hypothetical saved-body count,
however, which range from 20,000 to 1.2 million, owe more to
political agendas than to objective projections.{5}  
	But in any event, defining the issue as a choice between the
A-bomb and a land invasion is an irrelevant and wholly false
dichotomy.  By 1945, Japan's entire military and industrial
machine was grinding to a halt as the resources needed to wage
war were all but eradicated.  The navy and air force had been
destroyed ship by ship, plane by plane, with no possibility of
replacement.  When, in the spring of 1945, the island nation's
lifeline to oil was severed, the war was over except for the
fighting.  By June, Gen. Curtis LeMay, in charge of the air
attacks, was complaining that after months of terrible
firebombing, there was nothing left of Japanese cities for his
bombers but "garbage can targets".  By July, U.S. planes could
fly over Japan without resistance and bomb as much and as long as
they pleased.  Japan could no longer defend itself.{6}   
	After the war, the world learned what U.S. leaders had known
by early 1945: Japan was militarily defeated long before
Hiroshima.  It had been trying for months, if not for years, to
surrender; and the U.S. had consistently rebuffed these
overtures.  A May 5 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S.,
dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue
for peace.  Sent to Berlin by the German ambassador in Tokyo,
after he talked to a ranking Japanese naval officer, it read:

     Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, 
     large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not 
     regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation
     even if the terms were hard.{7}
    
	As far as is known, Washington did nothing to pursue this
opening.  Later that month, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson
almost capriciously dismissed three separate high-level
recommendations from within the Roosevelt administration to
activate peace negotiations.  The proposals advocated signaling
Japan that the U.S. was willing to consider the all-important
retention of the emperor system; i.e., the U.S. would not insist
upon "unconditional surrender".{8}
	Stimson, like other high U.S. officials, did not really care
in principle whether or not the emperor was retained.  The term 
"unconditional surrender" was always a propaganda measure; wars
are always ended with some kind of conditions.  To some extent
the insistence was a domestic consideration -- not wanting to
appear to "appease" the Japanese.  More important, however, it
reflected a desire that the Japanese not surrender before the
bomb could be used.  One of the few people who had been aware of
the Manhattan Project from the beginning, Stimson had come to
think of it as his bomb, "my secret", as he called it in his
diary.{9}  On June 6, he told President Truman he was "fearful"
that before the A-bombs were ready to be delivered, the Air Force
would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon "would not
have a fair background to show its strength".{10}  In his later
memoirs, Stimson admitted that "no effort was made, and none was
seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to
have to use the bomb".{11}  
	And that effort could have been minimal.  In July, before
the leaders of the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met
at Potsdam, the Japanese government sent several radio messages
to its ambassador, Naotake Sato, in Moscow, asking him to request
Soviet help in mediating a peace settlement.  "His Majesty is
extremely anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible", said
one communication.  "Should, however, the United States and Great
Britain insist on unconditional surrender, Japan would be forced
to fight to the bitter end."{12}
	On July 25, while the Potsdam meeting was taking place,
Japan instructed Sato to keep meeting with Russian Foreign Minister
Molotov to impress the Russians "with the sincerity of our desire to 
end the war [and] have them understand that we are trying to end 
hostilities by asking for very reasonable terms in order to secure 
and maintain our national existence and honor" (a reference to 
retention of Emperor Hirohito).{13}
	Having broken the Japanese code years earlier, Washington
did not have to wait to be informed by the Soviets of these peace
overtures; it knew immediately, and did nothing.  Indeed, the
National Archives in Washington contains U.S. government documents 
reporting similarly ill-fated Japanese peace overtures as far back 
as 1943.{14}  
	Thus, it was with full knowledge that Japan was frantically
trying to end the war, that President Truman and his hardline
secretary of state, James Byrnes, included the term  "unconditional 
surrender" in the July 26 Potsdam Declaration.  This "final warning" 
and expression of surrender terms to Japan was in any case a charade.  
The day before it was issued, Harry Truman had approved the order to 
release a 15 kiloton atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima.{15}  
	Many U.S. military officials were less than enthusiastic
about the demand for unconditional surrender or use of the atomic
bomb.  At the time of Potsdam, Gen. Hap Arnold asserted that
conventional bombing could end the war.  Adm. Ernest King believed a 
naval blockade alone would starve the Japanese into submission.  
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, convinced that retaining the emperor was 
vital to an orderly transition to peace, was appalled at the demand 
for unconditional surrender.  Adm. William Leahy concurred.  Refusal 
to keep the emperor "would result only in making the Japanese desperate 
and thereby increase our casualty lists," he argued, adding that a 
nearly defeated Japan might stop fighting if unconditional surrender 
were dropped as a demand.  At a loss for a military explanation for use 
of the bomb, Leahy believed that the decision "was clearly a political 
one",  reached perhaps "because of the vast sums that had been spent on
the project".{16}  Finally, we have Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's account of 
a conversation with Stimson in which he told the secretary of war that:

     Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb
     was completely unnecessary. ... I thought 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".  
     The secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, 
     almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick 
     conclusions.{17}


     If, as appears to be the case, U.S. policy in 1945 was based
on neither the pursuit of the earliest possible peace nor the desire
to avoid a land invasion, we must look elsewhere to explain the 
dropping of the A-bombs.  
	It has been asserted that dropping of the atomic bombs was
not so much the last military act of the Second World War as the
first act of the Cold War.  Although Japan was targeted, the
weapons were aimed straight to the red heart of the USSR.  For
three-quarters of a century, the determining element of U.S. 
foreign policy, virtually its sine qua non, has been "the
communist factor"  World War II and a battlefield alliance with
the Soviet Union did not bring about an ideological change in the
anti-communists who owned and ran America.  It merely provided a
partial breather in a struggle that had begun with the U.S. 
invasion of the Soviet Union in 1918.{18}  It is hardly 
surprising then, that 25 years later, as the Soviets were
sustaining the highest casualties of any nation in WW2, the U.S. 
systematically kept them in the dark about the A-bomb project --
while sharing information with the British.   
	According to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard,
Secretary of State Byrnes had said that the bomb's biggest
benefit was not its effect on Japan but its power to "make Russia
more manageable in Europe".{19}   
	The United States was thinking post-war.  A Venezuelan 
diplomat reported to his government after a May 1945 meeting that
Assistant Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller "communicated to
us the anxiety of the United States Government about the Russian
attitude".  U.S. officials, he said, were "beginning to speak of
Communism as they once spoke of Nazism and are invoking
continental solidarity and hemispheric defense against it".{20}   
	Churchill, who had known about the weapon before Truman,
applauded and understood its use:  "Here then was a speedy end to
the Second World War," he said about the bomb, and added,
thinking of Russian advances into Europe, "and perhaps to much
else besides. ... We now had something in our hands which would
redress the balance with the Russians."{21}   
	Referring to the immediate aftermath of Nagasaki, Stimson
wrote:	

     In the State Department there developed a tendency to 
     think of the bomb as a diplomatic weapon.  Outraged by 
     constant evidence of Russian perfidy, some of the men in 
     charge of foreign policy were eager to carry the bomb for 
     a while as their ace-in-the-hole. ... American statesmen 
     were eager for their country to browbeat the Russians with 
     the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip.{22}  

     This policy, which came to be known as "atomic diplomacy", did
not, of course, spring forth full-grown on the day after Nagasaki. 
     "The psychological effect on Stalin [of the bombs] was
twofold,"  noted historian Charles L. Mee, Jr.  "The Americans
had not only used a doomsday machine; they had used it when, as
Stalin knew, it was not militarily necessary.  It was this last
chilling fact that doubtless made the greatest impression on the
Russians."{23}    
	After the Enola Gay released its cargo on Hiroshima, common
sense -- common decency wouldn't apply here -- would have
dictated a pause long enough to allow Japanese officials to
travel to the city, confirm the extent of the destruction, and
respond before the U.S. dropped a second bomb.   
	At 11 o'clock in the morning of August 9, Prime Minister
Kintaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese Cabinet:  "Under the
present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative
is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war."  
Moments later, the second bomb fell on Nagasaki.{24}  Some
hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died in the two
attacks; many more suffered terrible injury and permanent genetic
damage.  
	After the war, His Majesty the Emperor still sat on his
throne, and the gentlemen who ran the United States had
absolutely no problem with this.  They never had.  
	_____________________

It has been argued, to the present day, that it wouldn't have
mattered if the United States had accepted the Japanese peace
overtures because the emperor was merely a puppet of the
military, and the military would never have surrendered without
the use of the A-bombs.  This is an argument that not even the
American policymakers of the time placed weight upon because
they knew it was false.  In any event, this doesn't excuse the US
government for not at least trying what was, from humanity's
point of view, the clearly preferable option.  Moreover, the fact
is that "the emperor as puppet" thesis was a creation out of
whole cloth by General MacArthur, the military governor of Japan,
to justify his personal wish that the emperor not be tried as a
war criminal along with many other Japanese officials.
Exonerating Hirohito was also in line with the strategic needs of
the Truman administration.{25}


  NOTES
 
  1.  Los Angeles Times , June 26, 1988, p.8  
   
  2. Ibid., Aug. 3, 1994 
   
  3. Ibid., Mar. 16, 1995, p.1 
   
  4. Ibid. 
   
  5. In June and July 1945, Joint Chiefs of Staff committees 
  predicted that between 20,000 and 46,000 Americans would die in 
  the one or two invasions for which they had drawn contingency 
  plans.  While still in office, President Truman usually placed 
  the number at about a quarter of a million, but by 1955 had 
  doubled it to half a million.  Winston Churchill said the attacks 
  had spared well over 1.2 million Allies.  (Barton Bernstein, "The 
  Myth of Lives Saved by A-bombs," Los Angeles Times, July 28,  
  1985, IV, p.1; Barton Bernstein, "Stimson, Conant, and Their 
  Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,"  Diplomatic    
  History, Winter 1993, p.48.)   
       
    6. Stewart Udall, The Myths of August (Pantheon Books, NY, 1994),   
    pp.73, 75; Martin S. Quigley, Peace Without Hiroshima (Madison 
    Books, Lanham, MD, 1991), pp.105-6; Charles L. Mee, Jr.,  Meeting    
    at Potsdam (M. Evans, NY, 1975), p.76    
         
     7. Tim Weiner, "U.S. Spied on its World War II Allies," New York    
     Times, Aug. 11, 1993, p.9    
         
     8. Udall, pp.73-79    
         
     9. Ibid., p.73.  Vice President Truman was never informed about    
     the bomb.  After Roosevelt's death, when he assumed office, it    
     was Secretary of State James Byrnes who briefed him on the project. 
     (Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service    
      in Peace and War (Harper, NY, 1947).  Bundy is recognized as the    
      principal author of these Stimson memoirs.    
          
       10. Udall, p.76     
           
       11. Stimson, p.629     
           
       12. Mee, p.23     
           
       13. Ibid., pp.235-6; See also: Hearings Before the Committee on     
       Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations (US Senate),
      June 25, 1951, p.3113, for reference to another peace overture. 
        
       14. Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9, 1995, p.5     
           
       15. Mee, p. 239     
           
       16. Ibid., pp.75, 78-9; and William Manchester, American Caesar:     
       Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (Little Brown, Boston, 1978), p. 437     
           
       17. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change,     
       1953-1956 (Doubleday, NY, 1963), pp.312-3     
           
       18. In an attempt, as Churchill said, to "strangle at its birth" the 
      infant Bolshevik state, the US launched tens of thousands of troops 
      and sustained 5,000 casualties.     
           
       19. Mee, p.22     
           
       20. Weiner, op. cit.     
           
       21. Mee, pp.89, 206; the first item is from Churchill's diary; in     
       the second, Churchill's aide is paraphrasing him.     
           
       22. Bernstein, Diplomatic History, pp.66-8.  This passage, actually 
      written by Bundy for On Active Service, was deleted from that book 
      because of pressure from State Department official George F. Kennan.     
           
       23. Mee, p. 239     
           
       24. Ibid., pp. 288-9     
           
       25. Edward Behr, Hirohito: Beyond the Myth (Random House:
       Villard Books, NY, 1989), chapter 24; The Guardian (London),
       June 18, 1983     
       

Written by William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II; email:bblum6@aol.com