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Seventy-five years ago today, the United States unleashed the only nuclear war in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the truths held self-evident by millions of Americans is the notion that the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, both American and Japanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This narrative is deeply flawed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Anxious to terminate\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nJapan had in fact been trying to find a way to surrender for months and US leaders knew it. Japan could no longer defend itself from the relentless US air onslaught; ferocious firebombing had reduced most Japanese cities, including Tokyo, to ash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
General Curtis LeMay, commander of strategic bombing, even complained<\/a> that there was nothing left to bomb but \u201cgarbage can targets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Allies, through a secret cryptanalysis project codenamed Magic, had intercepted and decoded<\/a> secret transmissions from Shigenori Togo, the Japanese foreign minister, to Naotaki Sato, the ambassador in Moscow, stating a desire to end the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHowever, saving face was imperative to the Japanese, which meant retaining their emperor. Unconditional surrender was, for the time being, out of the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a secret memo<\/a> dated June 28, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A Bard wrote that \u201cthe Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender.\u201d In a 1960 interview, Bard reiterated that \u201cthe Japanese were ready for peace and had already approached the Russians\u201d about capitulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn July 26, the leaders of the US, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration<\/a>, demanding unconditional Japanese surrender and vowing \u201cprompt and utter destruction\u201d if Japan refused. The US had successfully tested<\/a> the first atomic bomb in New Mexico 10 days earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe declaration was originally written<\/a> so that Emperor Hirohito would not be removed from the Chrysanthemum Throne, with Japan to be ruled as a constitutional monarchy after the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHowever, secretary of state James Byrnes removed that language from the final declaration. It would be unconditional surrender or total annihilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Harry S Truman, who only learned about the Manhattan Project after being sworn in on April 12, approved a plan to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Planners sought undamaged cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tokyo, which in early March suffered firebombing<\/a> that killed more people than either atomic bomb, was off the table. Kyoto was spared<\/a> due to its cultural significance. Hiroshima, Japan\u2019s largest untouched target, would die first, then Nagasaki.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWidespread opposition<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nSeven of the eight five-star US generals and admirals in 1945 opposed<\/a> using the bomb. One of the opponents, General Dwight D Eisenhower, later said that<\/a> \u201cthe Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn\u2019t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cJapan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary,\u201d Eisenhower wrote in 1954<\/a>, by which time he was the president. \u201cI thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe idea of giving Japanese officials a live demonstration of an atomic bomb on a remote island, proposed by Strategic Bombing Survey vice-chairman Paul Nitze and supported by navy secretary James Forrestal, was rejected. It was believed the demonstration would likely not move the Japanese any more than the ongoing destruction of their actual cities via conventional bombing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Japanese could not fight a two-front war, and were more anti-communist than the Americans were,\u201d Martin Sherwin, a historian awarded the Pulitzer Prize for co-authoring a biography of Manhattan Project leader J Robert Oppenheimer, said during a recent webinar<\/a>. \u201cThe idea of a Soviet occupation of Japan was their worst nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHistorian and professor Peter Kuznick, co-author of the best-selling The Untold History of the United States<\/em>, also spoke at the webinar. \u201cThe joint chiefs of staff repeatedly reported that if the USSR should enter the war then Japan would realize that defeat is inevitable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKuznick also noted that General George Marshall, the only five-star US officer to approve of using the atomic bomb, said that a Soviet invasion would likely lead to Japan\u2019s swift surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truman knew this too. On the opening day of the Potsdam Conference, he had lunch with Josef Stalin. Afterwards he wrote in his diary<\/a> that the USSR \u201cwill be in the Jap war by August 15. Fini Japs when that occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nRegardless, Truman pressed ahead with the plan to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. \u201cI have told Secretary of War Stimson to use [the A-bomb] so that military objectives \u2026 are the target, not women and children,\u201d the president wrote in his diary<\/a> on July 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe nuclear era dawns<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nAt 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress dropped \u201cLittle Boy.\u201d It exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT, destroying everything and everyone<\/a> within about a 1.6-kilometer radius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe heat, blast wave and ensuing inferno killed as many as 90,000. Tens of thousands more were injured, many mortally. Tens of thousands more people perished from radiation over the following weeks, months and years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three days later, \u201cFat Man,\u201d the second and so far the last nuclear weapon used in war, obliterated Nagasaki<\/a> in a 20-kiloton air burst. As many as 75,000 people died that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDespite Truman\u2019s self-delusion, most of the people<\/a> living in the two cities in 1945 were women, children and old people, as most of the men were away fighting the war, or dead from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe morning Nagasaki was destroyed, prime minister Kantaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese cabinet, declaring that<\/a> \u201cunder the present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy Japan really surrendered<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nSuzuki did not learn about Nagasaki until the afternoon of August 9. But he did know that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan the previous day. This, Japanese officials and historians on both sides of the Pacific agree, precipitated Japan\u2019s surrender more than the A-bombs, although it also slammed the door shut on attempts to negotiate a surrender via Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe destruction of another city was just the destruction of another city,\u201d said Sherwin. \u201cIt was the entry of the Soviets into the war that really threw the Japanese into a complete panic.\u201d They knew that if they didn\u2019t surrender soon to the US, they would lose not only their overseas empire, but also Hokkaido.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy in Washington, DC, states that<\/a> \u201cthe vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all,\u201d General LeMay stated flatly<\/a> in September 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan,\u201d agreed<\/a> Admiral William Leahy, Truman\u2019s chief of staff. \u201cThe Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is probably too much to say the atomic bombings had nothing<\/em> to do with ending the war. Hirohito spoke of \u201ca new and most cruel bomb\u201d that could \u201clead to the total extinction of human civilization,\u201d in his surrender broadcast. And the decision to capitulate was not unanimous; a cabal of hardline military officers attempted a coup<\/a> the day before the emperor\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAmerican leaders knew that the Soviet Union would feature prominently in the postwar world order. The US wanted to maximize its own position as the dominant world power \u2013 and what better way to do this than to show the Russians that the United States had the cold resolve necessary to unilaterally wage nuclear war and hold an atomic monopoly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stimson acknowledged<\/a> that some US officials saw nuclear bombs as \u201ca diplomatic weapon,\u201d and that \u201csome of the men in charge of foreign policy were eager to carry the bomb as their ace-in-the-hole\u201d and wanted \u201cto browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll certainly have a hammer on those boys,\u201d Truman reportedly said<\/a>, referring to the A-bomb and Soviet leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAccording to<\/a> Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, Byrnes believed that \u201ca demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.\u201d But some US officials admitted that waging nuclear war actually pushed Moscow rush to develop its own nuclear arsenal, which it did in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018A nice, round figure\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nAs for the common claim that a US invasion of Japan would have cost a million lives, Kai Bird, who shared the Pulitzer Prize with Sherwin for their Oppenheimer biography, said it is simply not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis figure was never given to Truman or bandied about by Stimson,\u201d Bird told the webinar audience. \u201cI asked [Stimson prot\u00e9g\u00e9] McGeorge Bundy about it, and he sheepishly admitted that he chose 1 million because it was a nice, round figure. He pulled it out of thin air.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no doubt that an invasion of Japan would<\/em> have been horrific for all involved, as demonstrated by the bloody battle for Okinawa, in which more than 12,000 American invaders and six times that number of Japanese defenders died \u2013 along with as many as half of the island\u2019s 300,000 civilians, many of whom committed mass suicide<\/a> rather than fall under enemy occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHowever, the probability of Japan remaining in the war by the time the US was ready to invade was extremely low, especially given the Soviet Union\u2019s declaration of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plus, the claim that the United States cared about the lives of Japanese people, who were portrayed in wartime propaganda as sub-human barbarians, is questionable. Back in the United States, Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals \u2013 who had been banned from even immigrating to the US since the 1920s \u2013 were still languishing in concentration camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would make perfect laboratories in which to test the atomic bomb, as some US officials later acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we didn\u2019t need to do it, and we knew we didn\u2019t need to do it, and they knew that we didn\u2019t need to do it, we used [the Japanese] as an experiment for two atomic bombs,\u201d said<\/a> General Carter Clarke, the intelligence officer in charge of intercepted Japanese cables.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMany of the very men who invented the A-bomb had grave misgivings, even before its use. These Manhattan Project scientists wrote what came to be known as the Franck Report<\/a> in May 1945. It recommended a demonstration of the bomb to the Japanese and questioned whether using it would really bring Japan to its knees when massive conventional bombing had not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIf no international agreement is concluded immediately after the first detonation, this will mean a flying start of an unlimited armaments race,\u201d the report prophetically stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A false choice<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nSeventy-five years later, millions of Americans believe the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of \u201cnecessary evil,\u201d while ignoring alternatives to the standard narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What if the United States had clarified its unconditional surrender stance to assure that Hirohito would not be hanged? Or announced that he would be allowed to remain in a position of ceremonial leadership? After all, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander, ultimately allowed Hirohito to remain emperor, albeit as a figurehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is possible,\u201d wrote Stimson<\/a> in his memoir, \u201cthat an earlier exposition of American willingness to retain the emperor could have produced an earlier ending to the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe official US narrative blames the Soviet Union for starting the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, which on numerous occasions<\/a> over the following decades brought the world within reach, and once to the brink, of thermonuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut it was the United States that fired the first salvo, resulting in the Soviets scrambling to develop their own deterrent and launching an arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are now thousands of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of a record number of countries. The risk of nuclear armageddon as real as it has ever been<\/a>. Humans have the power to bring about our own extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIf we\u2019d lost the war, we\u2019d all have been tried as war criminals,\u201d General LeMay remarked. \u201cWhat makes it immoral if you lose, but not immoral if you win?\u201dTAGGED:<\/strong>Atomic bomb<\/a>Emperor HIrohito<\/a>Firebombing<\/a>General Curtis LeMay<\/a>Harry S Truman<\/a>Manhattan Project<\/a>Nagasaki<\/a>Northeast Asia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBRETT WILKINS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based journalist and author who contributes regularly to Common Dreams and Counterpunch. He is also a member of Collective 20, a new anti-war collective with Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and others. More by Brett Wilkins<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US belief that atomic bombings were necessary to obviate even deadlier invasion of Japan is as false 75 years later as it was at the time By\u00a0BRETT WILKINS AUGUST 6, 2020 (asiatimes.com) Seventy-five years ago today, the United States unleashed the only nuclear war in history. Among the truths held… Continue reading
The Allies, through a secret cryptanalysis project codenamed Magic, had intercepted and decoded<\/a> secret transmissions from Shigenori Togo, the Japanese foreign minister, to Naotaki Sato, the ambassador in Moscow, stating a desire to end the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, saving face was imperative to the Japanese, which meant retaining their emperor. Unconditional surrender was, for the time being, out of the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a secret memo<\/a> dated June 28, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A Bard wrote that \u201cthe Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender.\u201d In a 1960 interview, Bard reiterated that \u201cthe Japanese were ready for peace and had already approached the Russians\u201d about capitulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On July 26, the leaders of the US, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration<\/a>, demanding unconditional Japanese surrender and vowing \u201cprompt and utter destruction\u201d if Japan refused. The US had successfully tested<\/a> the first atomic bomb in New Mexico 10 days earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The declaration was originally written<\/a> so that Emperor Hirohito would not be removed from the Chrysanthemum Throne, with Japan to be ruled as a constitutional monarchy after the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, secretary of state James Byrnes removed that language from the final declaration. It would be unconditional surrender or total annihilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Harry S Truman, who only learned about the Manhattan Project after being sworn in on April 12, approved a plan to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Planners sought undamaged cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tokyo, which in early March suffered firebombing<\/a> that killed more people than either atomic bomb, was off the table. Kyoto was spared<\/a> due to its cultural significance. Hiroshima, Japan\u2019s largest untouched target, would die first, then Nagasaki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seven of the eight five-star US generals and admirals in 1945 opposed<\/a> using the bomb. One of the opponents, General Dwight D Eisenhower, later said that<\/a> \u201cthe Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn\u2019t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJapan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary,\u201d Eisenhower wrote in 1954<\/a>, by which time he was the president. \u201cI thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of giving Japanese officials a live demonstration of an atomic bomb on a remote island, proposed by Strategic Bombing Survey vice-chairman Paul Nitze and supported by navy secretary James Forrestal, was rejected. It was believed the demonstration would likely not move the Japanese any more than the ongoing destruction of their actual cities via conventional bombing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Japanese could not fight a two-front war, and were more anti-communist than the Americans were,\u201d Martin Sherwin, a historian awarded the Pulitzer Prize for co-authoring a biography of Manhattan Project leader J Robert Oppenheimer, said during a recent webinar<\/a>. \u201cThe idea of a Soviet occupation of Japan was their worst nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Historian and professor Peter Kuznick, co-author of the best-selling The Untold History of the United States<\/em>, also spoke at the webinar. \u201cThe joint chiefs of staff repeatedly reported that if the USSR should enter the war then Japan would realize that defeat is inevitable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kuznick also noted that General George Marshall, the only five-star US officer to approve of using the atomic bomb, said that a Soviet invasion would likely lead to Japan\u2019s swift surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Truman knew this too. On the opening day of the Potsdam Conference, he had lunch with Josef Stalin. Afterwards he wrote in his diary<\/a> that the USSR \u201cwill be in the Jap war by August 15. Fini Japs when that occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless, Truman pressed ahead with the plan to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. \u201cI have told Secretary of War Stimson to use [the A-bomb] so that military objectives \u2026 are the target, not women and children,\u201d the president wrote in his diary<\/a> on July 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress dropped \u201cLittle Boy.\u201d It exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT, destroying everything and everyone<\/a> within about a 1.6-kilometer radius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The heat, blast wave and ensuing inferno killed as many as 90,000. Tens of thousands more were injured, many mortally. Tens of thousands more people perished from radiation over the following weeks, months and years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three days later, \u201cFat Man,\u201d the second and so far the last nuclear weapon used in war, obliterated Nagasaki<\/a> in a 20-kiloton air burst. As many as 75,000 people died that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite Truman\u2019s self-delusion, most of the people<\/a> living in the two cities in 1945 were women, children and old people, as most of the men were away fighting the war, or dead from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The morning Nagasaki was destroyed, prime minister Kantaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese cabinet, declaring that<\/a> \u201cunder the present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suzuki did not learn about Nagasaki until the afternoon of August 9. But he did know that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan the previous day. This, Japanese officials and historians on both sides of the Pacific agree, precipitated Japan\u2019s surrender more than the A-bombs, although it also slammed the door shut on attempts to negotiate a surrender via Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe destruction of another city was just the destruction of another city,\u201d said Sherwin. \u201cIt was the entry of the Soviets into the war that really threw the Japanese into a complete panic.\u201d They knew that if they didn\u2019t surrender soon to the US, they would lose not only their overseas empire, but also Hokkaido.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy in Washington, DC, states that<\/a> \u201cthe vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all,\u201d General LeMay stated flatly<\/a> in September 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan,\u201d agreed<\/a> Admiral William Leahy, Truman\u2019s chief of staff. \u201cThe Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is probably too much to say the atomic bombings had nothing<\/em> to do with ending the war. Hirohito spoke of \u201ca new and most cruel bomb\u201d that could \u201clead to the total extinction of human civilization,\u201d in his surrender broadcast. And the decision to capitulate was not unanimous; a cabal of hardline military officers attempted a coup<\/a> the day before the emperor\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n American leaders knew that the Soviet Union would feature prominently in the postwar world order. The US wanted to maximize its own position as the dominant world power \u2013 and what better way to do this than to show the Russians that the United States had the cold resolve necessary to unilaterally wage nuclear war and hold an atomic monopoly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stimson acknowledged<\/a> that some US officials saw nuclear bombs as \u201ca diplomatic weapon,\u201d and that \u201csome of the men in charge of foreign policy were eager to carry the bomb as their ace-in-the-hole\u201d and wanted \u201cto browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ll certainly have a hammer on those boys,\u201d Truman reportedly said<\/a>, referring to the A-bomb and Soviet leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to<\/a> Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, Byrnes believed that \u201ca demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.\u201d But some US officials admitted that waging nuclear war actually pushed Moscow rush to develop its own nuclear arsenal, which it did in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the common claim that a US invasion of Japan would have cost a million lives, Kai Bird, who shared the Pulitzer Prize with Sherwin for their Oppenheimer biography, said it is simply not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis figure was never given to Truman or bandied about by Stimson,\u201d Bird told the webinar audience. \u201cI asked [Stimson prot\u00e9g\u00e9] McGeorge Bundy about it, and he sheepishly admitted that he chose 1 million because it was a nice, round figure. He pulled it out of thin air.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no doubt that an invasion of Japan would<\/em> have been horrific for all involved, as demonstrated by the bloody battle for Okinawa, in which more than 12,000 American invaders and six times that number of Japanese defenders died \u2013 along with as many as half of the island\u2019s 300,000 civilians, many of whom committed mass suicide<\/a> rather than fall under enemy occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the probability of Japan remaining in the war by the time the US was ready to invade was extremely low, especially given the Soviet Union\u2019s declaration of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, the claim that the United States cared about the lives of Japanese people, who were portrayed in wartime propaganda as sub-human barbarians, is questionable. Back in the United States, Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals \u2013 who had been banned from even immigrating to the US since the 1920s \u2013 were still languishing in concentration camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would make perfect laboratories in which to test the atomic bomb, as some US officials later acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we didn\u2019t need to do it, and we knew we didn\u2019t need to do it, and they knew that we didn\u2019t need to do it, we used [the Japanese] as an experiment for two atomic bombs,\u201d said<\/a> General Carter Clarke, the intelligence officer in charge of intercepted Japanese cables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the very men who invented the A-bomb had grave misgivings, even before its use. These Manhattan Project scientists wrote what came to be known as the Franck Report<\/a> in May 1945. It recommended a demonstration of the bomb to the Japanese and questioned whether using it would really bring Japan to its knees when massive conventional bombing had not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf no international agreement is concluded immediately after the first detonation, this will mean a flying start of an unlimited armaments race,\u201d the report prophetically stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seventy-five years later, millions of Americans believe the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of \u201cnecessary evil,\u201d while ignoring alternatives to the standard narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if the United States had clarified its unconditional surrender stance to assure that Hirohito would not be hanged? Or announced that he would be allowed to remain in a position of ceremonial leadership? After all, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander, ultimately allowed Hirohito to remain emperor, albeit as a figurehead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is possible,\u201d wrote Stimson<\/a> in his memoir, \u201cthat an earlier exposition of American willingness to retain the emperor could have produced an earlier ending to the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The official US narrative blames the Soviet Union for starting the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, which on numerous occasions<\/a> over the following decades brought the world within reach, and once to the brink, of thermonuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it was the United States that fired the first salvo, resulting in the Soviets scrambling to develop their own deterrent and launching an arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are now thousands of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of a record number of countries. The risk of nuclear armageddon as real as it has ever been<\/a>. Humans have the power to bring about our own extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we\u2019d lost the war, we\u2019d all have been tried as war criminals,\u201d General LeMay remarked. \u201cWhat makes it immoral if you lose, but not immoral if you win?\u201dTAGGED:<\/strong>Atomic bomb<\/a>Emperor HIrohito<\/a>Firebombing<\/a>General Curtis LeMay<\/a>Harry S Truman<\/a>Manhattan Project<\/a>Nagasaki<\/a>Northeast Asia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based journalist and author who contributes regularly to Common Dreams and Counterpunch. He is also a member of Collective 20, a new anti-war collective with Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and others. More by Brett Wilkins<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US belief that atomic bombings were necessary to obviate even deadlier invasion of Japan is as false 75 years later as it was at the time By\u00a0BRETT WILKINS AUGUST 6, 2020 (asiatimes.com) Seventy-five years ago today, the United States unleashed the only nuclear war in history. Among the truths held… Continue reading Widespread opposition<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The nuclear era dawns<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Why Japan really surrendered<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u2018A nice, round figure\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A false choice<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
BRETT WILKINS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n