Hiroshima bombing necessary

Graeme St. John is normally a humane voice on the pages of The Jakarta Post and I respect his right to believe that were it not for the Atomic-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki neither he nor his children would be here.

There are, however, certain practical considerations to be made before we accept the official American wisdom that the bombings were what was necessary to force the Japanese surrender. And then we need to be sure that there weren't other, equally strong, motivations powering Harry Truman when he gave the go ahead to drop the bombs.

Had the Americans admitted the ministrations of the Japanese several months earlier, the signs are that they, the Japanese, would have capitulated; one condition in particular held them back, and that was the position of the Emperor. Far-sighted members of Truman's cabinet saw that the Japanese were willing to surrender if the Emperor was not charged as a war criminal. If this had happened in May, June, or July then the projected U.S. invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been unnecessary and so would Hiroshima, by definition. Many lives lost in the battle for Okinawa would also have been saved.

The arguments have always centered around whether the U.S. would have had to send troops to Honshu, Kyushu and Hokkaido, where huge costly battles were foreseen. That is the only rationale you can allow, if you view the U.S. as Japan's lone adversary in the Pacific War, but this deletes the Soviets from the equation.

For months, before successful testing of the first nuclear device on July 16, at Alomogordo, Truman and Churchill had been urging Stalin to enter the war against Japan. Twenty-four hours after the test, Truman was no longer interested with such zeal in Soviet participation.

There are persuasive arguments to the effect that the bombs were eventually dropped not to destroy Japanese resolve once and for all, but to send a powerful message to Moscow; just as there are persuasive arguments which say that Washington's failure to pursue earlier peace overtures from Tokyo more creatively, had unnecessarily lengthened the war.

Outside and beyond the argument about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki issue, there are other questions of some interest, not least of which is whether General Curtis "Bombed North Vietnam Back Into The Stone Age".

LeMay's Air Command carried out a last raid on Tokyo after which leaflets were dropped saying, "The war is over, Japan has surrendered."

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta