Japan and the atomic bomb: 50 years on

By S.P. Seth

SYDNEY (JP): It will be 50 years on Aug. 6 when the first-ever atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the United States. The exercise was repeated three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, on Nagasaki, another Japanese city.

Japan has had the singular misfortune of being the only victim so far of a nuclear attack and that rankles with most Japanese. So much so that many regard Japan as the real victim of World War II, which simply is escaping from the reality of Japan's enormous war crimes.

But there are genuine questions about the exigency and morality of dropping the bomb on Japan.

From the outset, it is important to remember that the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb in the United States was undertaken against the fear of Nazi Germany acquiring it first.

The emigre scientists who had fled German persecution against the Jews and came to play a pioneering role in helping the United States to develop the atomic bomb had no doubts that Hitler and his cohorts would unhesitatingly use the bomb if they were to get it first.

Japan was nowhere in the picture as a nuclear threat, or target, until towards the closing stages of the Pacific War. It simply happened to be a convenient target soon after the first atomic test on July 15, 1945.

It is generally believed in the United States that the use of the bomb on Japan cut short the war in the Pacific and hence saved many lives on both sides. But there is a minority view among Western analysts which disputes this.

Murray Sayle, a well-known journalist and long-time resident of Japan, has argued that the dropping of the bomb on Japan was unnecessary and has only created resentment and guilt feelings which still fester today, half a century on.

Because Japan was in no position to continue the war with its economy in ruin and infrastructure destroyed; its cities in flames from American B-29 fire raids; its sea-lanes blocked; its merchant fleet destroyed; and military power in tatters. Within the Japanese power structure the army was losing its grip and Emperor Hirohito was throwing his weight behind the pro-peace faction.

Americans could not have been unaware of Japan's extreme vulnerability, with their domination of Japanese skies and seas, and in clear view of the wreckage of its burning cities. And a reading of Japanese diplomatic intercepts, decoded by the Americans, particularly Tokyo's approaches to Moscow seeking Soviet mediation for a negotiated peace settlement with Washington, was further proof of Japan's imminent and inevitable fall.

Why, then, use such a horrible weapon on a foe already on its last gasp? Particularly when its enormous destructive power was known to the American establishment?

President Truman wrote at the time: "... It seems the most terrible thing ever discovered but it can be made the most useful vis-a-vis Japan." Within America's scientific community there was clear recognition of its tremendous destructive potential.

Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, who had significantly helped to advance the American project by calculating how much Uranium- 235 would be needed to produce a bomb, regarded it as "unsuitable for use as a weapon: because of the immense destruction from explosion and radiation against which effective protection is hardly possible ... ."

Indeed, the warnings and petitions of scientists against the use of the bomb on Japanese cities were suppressed by Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan project. He seemed keen to test it on the Japanese before their surrender.

It is no secret that Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the research team that produced the atomic bomb, was never able to come to terms with the monster they had unleashed.

According to Robert Jungk, who wrote the book Brighter than a Thousand Suns, a passage from the Bhagavadgita, the sacred epic of the Hindus, in which Lord Krishna says, "I am become Death the shatterer of worlds", flashed into Oppenheimer's mind after watching the first atomic test in the New Mexico desert. It was as if apocalypse had arrived on earth.

Even Dr. Edward Teller, who at 87 is still in love with the bomb -- atomic, hydrogen and all its destructive panoply -- is reported to have said recently that its use against Japan in August 1945 was rather premature.

According to him, "... the demonstration at an altitude of 10 kilometers over Tokyo Bay would have been quite effective because we knew that at that altitude nobody would have been killed and 10 million people would have seen it and heard, including the Emperor. And that may have helped end the war without killing anybody. Which we did not do. (And) that was a mistake ..."

Whether or not the concerned scientists were culpable by failing to articulate their fears and objections at higher levels and or by spelling out alternatives is arguable.

But it certainly was the duty of the country's political- military establishment to actively explore other avenues of conveying to the Japanese the gravity of America's intent -- at the very least giving them a warning about the use of the bomb.

Although President Truman seemed to have issued instructions, as he wrote in his diary, that the bomb should be targeted on "military objectives" and "not women and children", and "we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives", this is not what happened.

The casualties from both the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were predominantly civilians, including women and children. Nobody, including President Truman himself, bothered to find out why his explicit instructions were not followed.

There was therefore an element of gung-ho about America's nuclear attack on Japan -- a feeling that the Japanese somehow were savages and hence expendable. And that feeling still persists -- of American moral superiority and Japanese resentment across the entire spectrum of their bilateral relationship.

And this doesn't bode well for U.S.-Japan relations in the years to come, with its inevitable impact on the world at large.