Atomic Myths
 
>From 1986 to 1992 I had the opportunity to participate in teaching a
course at Harvard University on the relationship between atomic weapons
and international relations.  Each year the discussion over the dropping
of the first atomic bomb elicited most of the arguments that are now
being heard in relation to the Enola Gay exhibit.  There are some very
powerful arguments on both sides, and some historically invalid ones as
well.  Here are some of the bad arguments I have heard:
 
1.  The decision to drop the bomb was obviously inhuman and evil.
 
     There's nothing obvious about this situation.  Most of those who
argue reflexively against the bomb, in my experience, have been too
young to have participated in the war, or to have read _Guadalcanal
Diary_ or seen "Bridge on the River Kwai" or otherwise absorbed the
stories of Japanese military fanaticism and atrocity that were part of
the national consciousness until the 1970s.  Most college students today
know more about the US internment camps than the Bataan death march, and
lack a visceral sense of moral horror at what the Japanese did in the
1930s and 1940s.  Without this it's impossible even to comprehend, much
less agree with, the idea of just retribution in connection with the
atomic bomb.
 
2.  The decision to drop the bomb was obviously morally justifiable.
 
     Again, there's nothing obvious.  I have found that those who regard
the bomb's use as necessary are often brought up short by this question:
"Had the bomb been invented six months earlier, would you have
authorized its use on Berlin?"  Certainly the Nazi atrocities were as
bad as anything the Japanese were doing, and worse for being more
systematic.  Yet the idea of wiping out a famous European city rather
than an obscure Japanese one seems more difficult for many people.
 
3.  Truman decided to drop the bomb because...
 
     It's not really accurate to talk about Truman's decision to drop
the bomb.  The decision to drop the bomb was not a decision at all;
instead, there was no decision NOT to drop the bomb.
     Why should there have been a decision?  Do you attend a daily staff
meeting to decide whether to continue collecting specimens or preparing
exhibits or conducting educational programs or conserving artifacts?
Just as a museum keeps on performing its basic missions without
conscious thought, so with the war effort.  No one would have thought of
asking the President to consider not using the P-51 fighter plane in
place of the P-40, just because it was more effective and would kill
more of the enemy.  Similarly, it would have been highly unexpected had
anyone proposed not to use the atomic bomb.  To many, the bomb was just
the next step in strategic bombing, which was already leveling cities;
indeed, the atomic raids killed fewer people than did a number of
conventional firebomb raids in 1945.
     Racial prejudices played a role as well.  When Secretary of the
Army Stimson removed Kyoto from the prospective target list because of
its historic and cultural importance, he showed an understanding of
Japan rare among high officials at the time.  Had Germany been the
 
 
 
 
 
proposed target, I venture to guess that more voices might have been
raised in question.
     Two other factors caused the non-decision not to drop the bomb.
One was the enormous commitment of resources that FDR had authorized for
the development of the bomb since the early 1940s.  At the time, the
threat of a Nazi bomb seemed very real, and a crash program was
necessary to be sure that Hitler would never hold the world's only
atomic bomb.  Even after that threat ended, the project maintained a
momentum that was hard to stop.  No individual spoke up to propose that
all the time and money spent should be forgotten and the project
cancelled.
     Finally, the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project made it
difficult for even the highest government officials to discuss it
openly.  Truman knew few details about the bomb until he became
President.  John McCloy once mentioned the bomb at a Cabinet level
meeting and compared the shocked reaction of the others in the room to
that of Yale "Skull and Bones" men at hearing the name of their secret
society spoken in public.
     Most of the same factors apply to the non-decision not to drop the
second bomb.  Two bombs were dropped because two were available.  Had
there been three ready to go before the Japanese government communicated
its desire to surrender, a third one probably would have been dropped as
well.
 
4.  The bomb should have been shown to Japanese representatives.
 
     This is simply not realistic.  Very few contacts existed between
the warring governments.  Had it been done, why would the Japanese
government have believed its representatives when they returned from a
sojourn in enemy hands to report of a magically powerful new weapon?
They would sooner suspect some kind of "brainwashing," just as Americans
did when they heard statements of POWs in Korea supposedly extolling the
virtues of communism.  In any case, consider that the Japanese
government did not surrender immediately after a bomb was dropped on one
of its cities; why expect that second-hand reports of such bomb in the
American desert would have any more effect?
 
5.  The bomb was dropped to scare the Russians.
 
     The record plainly contradicts this.  Until almost the very end of
the war, one of the goals of US foreign policy was to get the USSR to
help defeat Japan.  There was no reason to scare them at the time.
 
6.  The Japanese would have surrendered anyway.
 
     Again, the record of Japanese military behavior through the war
contradicts this.  The mass suicide of civilians on Saipan suggests that
the same, on a much greater scale, might have occurred in the home
islands.  An invasion would eventually have forced a surrender, at some
unknown but appalling cost to both sides.
     Personally, I find this argument decisive, in the context of the
times.  In a war that had seen standards of conduct toward civilians
spiral downwards between 1939 and 1945 to a level of barbarism unmatched
in Europe since the Thirty Years' War ended in 1648, the use of the
atomic bomb was not an egregiously immoral act.
 
 
 
 
 
My thinking on this topic has been particularly shaped by three books.
For the veteran's viewpoint, as opposed to that of the comfy armchair
academics, see Paul Fussell, _Thank God for the Atom Bomb_.  Fussell is
today a comfy armchair academic who served as an infantryman during the
war and was in the invasion of Okinawa; he brings the two perspectives
together well.  For a lucid definition of what should and should not be
done in war, see Michael Walzer, _Just and Unjust War_.  For an
explanation as to how humanity came to accept the long-rejected concept
of killing unarmed civilians to win a war, see Michael Sherry's book on
the evolution of strategic bombing.  I would be interested to hear
others' views, on or off the list.
 
Gerry Prokopowicz, Ph. D.
Historian, The Lincoln Museum
Fort Wayne, IN
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***All opinions expressed are my own, and not necessarily those of The
Lincoln Museum.***