Downfall: Refuting leftist lies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

First, yes, I can be almost as blunt about fellow leftist types (I'm a leftist, or at least a far-left left-liberal) as I can about wingnuts. And, yes, I believe most leftists who think the war against Japan could have been won about as easily and quickly without atomic bombs are not just engaging in wishful thinking, they're lying.

I don't like writing such things. But, as is shown below, the idea that Hiroshima was:
1. Uniquely evil
2. Easily avoidable (especially in senses beyond the purely psychological of making a different decision)
3. And thus should have been easily avoided

Are simply not true.

Often, this goes hand in hand with other lies of omission, commission, or both. Among these are the claim that the Red Army is what caused Japan to surrender when, instead, Hirohito's Imperial rescript specifically mentions the bomb.

With that, read on.

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Richard Frank conclusively shatters a number of myths about the end of the Pacific side of World War II.

First, Japan was NOT ready to accept unconditional surrender, even with the caveat of the preservation of the Japanese throne, until after both bombs were dropped. Frank uses extensive declassified transcripts of Ultra (military) and Magic (diplomatic) U.S. codebreaking to get members of the Japanese war cabinet's own words, or lack thereof, on this issue. Within that is the fact that Japan's attempt to use Russia as an intermediary-ally in negotiations was totally out of tune with reality, so much out of tune that Tokyo actually expected Moscow to honor the full one year's "down time" after abrogating the two countries' neutrality agreement.

Second, the Japanese Army was ramping UP the plans for Keisu-Go, the all-out defense of the Japanese homeland, after the spring firebombings of Tokyo and elsewhere. Top Army brass considered that the U.S. might well try blockade, and thought it had enough kamikazes, midget submarines, etc., to make the U.S pay enough a price for even the blockade that it would settle for a negotiated peace. Again, Frank looks in-depth at Magic and Ultra transcripts to show how much support there was for this.

Third, Frank demonstrates that U.S. casualty fears of an invasion of Kyushu were well-warranted and may even have been understated in some cases.

The determination of the Japanese Empire to resist was well-known by American troops in the Pacific who had seen the Japanese, on average, take 97 percent casualties in many of their defensive actions. A militaristic government was ready to exploit this to the death.

The atomic bomb was therefore used for reasons of the highest seriousness. It was NOT dropped on Hiroshima as a demonstration for Stalin. And, speaking of demonstrations, the fact that it took two atomic bombs on Japan to get it to surrender puts the lie to the idea that a "demonstration" bomb would have been enough to get the Japanese to a non-negotiated surrender with them attempting to hold on to territory.

(And, how "one," like Alex Wellerstein, can write an entire blog about nuclear security issues, and partially pontificate about options to the bombs in general, and apparently not even have read Frank's book [I know, I searched his blog], I "don't know." He does admit the bombs weren't that much worse than Dresden, Tokyo, etc., and also indicates he's young enough some of this seems kind of academic to him. Also to his positive, he says that a word like "justified" is not the right word. However, in that last link, he ignores what the Imperial Rescript says and claims that Russian intervention was a bigger shock. It's in this last link where Frank's book is most relevant of probably any post of his on the subject. He doesn't seem that far off from me through Hiroshima, but I think he's close to all wet on Nagasaki, and doesn't really grasp the depth of Japanese intransigence up to and through Aug. 9.)

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I re-read this 12 years later, and it's as pertinent as ever. Here's additional notes.

As for the “let blockade work” folks? Per Chapter 10 (149ff) a formal blockade started in early June, not too long after Okinawa was done. And, we’d been dropping aerial-placed sea mines on Japan’s Inland Sea, and selected spots elsewhere, already in March.

Rather than “unconditional surrender,” the Potsdam Guarantee not only (roundaboutly) guaranteed the Imperial House, it made other Atlantic Charter-based guarantees that were never offered to Germany, enough of them to appall the Aussie prime minister.

But, as of Aug. 9, that wasn’t good enough for many Japanese leaders, who also knew they were running ever lower on military goods and that the morale of many citizens was weakening.

On Aug. 9, in light of Hiroshima and hearing the first word about Soviet war entry, the Imperial War Cabinet met. The Kwantung Army did not know immediately how badly outnumbered it was, especially on armor, but they knew that this part of their self-deception had now vanished. Then, in the middle of the meeting, came first word of Nagasaki.

Sidebar, outside the review: As I have blogged about in HUGE DEPTH, Hirohito's surrender rescript did NOT mention the Russian entry. Just stop it. More on this being a lie here. This is why I say leftists in many cases tell outright lies about this issue. You do.

And YET, half the War Cabinet kept a “four-condition” stance.

The “one condition” stance was surrender based on the Potsdam Declaration, with the assumption its wording meant that, in some way, shape or form, the Emperor stayed.

The “four condition” stance was, well, in light of reality, intransigent. The other three conditions were that Japanese troops would disarm themselves, that Japan would itself oversee any war crimes trials, and that Japan would not be occupied.

(Up to the time of Okinawa, at least, many Japanese military leaders had been “five-condition” persons, though Frank doesn’t talk about this in detail. That fifth condition was that Japan keep at least part of the territory it had gained in the 1895-1914 period. And, Hirohito himself held to this, as well as holding at that time to a refusal to negotiate until Japan won once more. To overview that?

In the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, Japan crushed China. China ceded the Liaotong Peninsula and Taiwan to Japan. But Russia, in part fronting for other European powers, forced Japan to surrender it and the strategic Port Arthur to Russia in exchange for a bigger Chinese indemnity, with Russia also working to supplant Japanese influence in Korea. That set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War. Japan got Korean influence, Port Arthur, and southern half of Sakhalin Island. But Teddy Roosevelt, in reaty negotiations, backed Nicholas II in refusing to pay an indemnity. That was the first incident to raise Japanese suspicions of US plans for Asia.

Japan then, working off its 1902 alliance with Britain, entered World War 1 with the Allies. Its goal, met successfully, was to take German holdings in China and the Pacific. That was the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands, important in World War II. The not quite totally nutters among the Japanese military believed America would be OK with those surrendered to them but Japan keeping everything else up to 1905.

Hirohito himself was a "five conditioner" until the end of the Okinawa campaign.

At the end of the book, Frank refutes a number of misconceptions, starting with the “bombs vs invasion” one. Yes, the two bombs did save as many as 500,000 casualties and 100,000 US deaths just for the invasion of Kyushu, and yes, that was mentioned soon after the war, but that wasn’t the primary concern at the time, or at least not the sole primary concern.

Rather, and especially before Trinity and it being known we had a working plutonium bomb, the issue was “blockade and bombardment alone” vs “that plus invasion” on getting Japan to surrender and even more, getting Japan to surrender IN AN ORDERLY FASHION.

Caps-lock is needed on this.

Even after the two bombs AND Hirohito’s rescript, Truman and the brass weren’t 100 percent sure all Japanese troops in Japan would surrender in an orderly fashion and they were VERY unsure about troops in outlying areas of Japanese occupation. In fact, Japanese military leaders were also unsure.

Now, those casualties.

There was no final, formal assessment by US planners after the war was done about what Olympic would have cost. But we know that casualty estimates were going up and Nimitz had already soured on it because of this. The numbers above are reasonable estimates.

And, that’s just US military casulties.

From the start of the war in non-Manchuria parts of China in the last 1930s, Frank shows that Japanese occupation had been killing a million Chinese a year. From 1941 on, it had been killing half a million residents in other occupied countries.

So, every month the war continued was a month, even with the loss of parts of the Empire, for 100,000 or more civilians to die.

Then there is the issue of how many more Japanese would have died.

Frank does a good job of showing how, if we had continued the full blockade, and then intensified disruption of Japanese transportation as planned, a million or more Japanese might have died of malnutrition and starvation.

And, for moralizers? He points out that blockades are wars against civilians, women and children just like either atomic bombs or napalm incendiaries. Period.

Related to that, he notes that within early military moralizers, many, like Ike, have faulty memories. In other cases, like Leahy, their memories might not be faulty, but they might have been guilty of turf wars. Plenty of Army and Navy people “found” a conscience. Army Air Force / Air Force brass, not so much; per Bomber Harris, after all, the ultimate bomb had gotten through.


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So, we the US had nothing to apologize for with the use of the atomic bombs, as I said about Obama's visit to Hiroshima several years ago. (As part of that, I noted that modern Japan has itself been half-hearted on some of ITS apologies.)

Does this mean it was "good" to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki? No; as I said before, the word "justified" is not the right word to use. Rather, they were the "least bad option," a phrase I have used in modern foreign policy about things like keeping Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria.

And, outside the header, that's the first time I mentioned Nagasaki. But, while we're here? The blockade, the mining AND the world's first nuclear weapon, and the Japanese Imperial War Cabinet still refused to surrender.

A new book, "Unconditional," largely confirms Frank's take on Imperial Japan while putting this all within contemporary US politics, including people trying to tie what terms of surrender we offered Japan into trying to end the New Deal. That continued to play out in both postwar occupation and rebuilding of Japan, on the far side of the Pacific, and on continued assessments of Truman's decision over here. 

I have since the previous update read "Unconditional" myself and it's just as good as "Downfall."

Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II by Marc S. Gallicchio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating new look at the last months of the Pacific War, told from inside Washington, and how the policy of unconditional surrender was being politicized even before the war was over, and how some of the first politicization of the atomic bomb tied to this.
It was mainly conservative Republicans, some of whom were also “old Japan hands” like Stimson and Grew, who wanted Truman to drop unconditional surrender.

Their reasons were laughable. First, like many Reaganites believing moderates in Iran were ready, willing, able and empowered enough to work around the mullahs, these people believed the same about moderates or liberals in Japan being able to work around the militarists. Second, many of them believed that Hirohito was more sinned against by the militarists than a willing fellow sinner.

Then, there was the geopolitics that some of them wanted ANY end to the war before the Russkies jumped in.

Marc Gallicchio sketches this all out in detail.

Countering this?

New president Truman had a policy he had inherited from FDR and was politically loathe to abandon it. At the same time, before July 16, 1945, he felt very sure — per Marshall — that he needed Stalin to enter the war. At the third time, he rejected Stimson, Grew and Herbert Hoover’s beliefs, not so much about mythical moderates as about Hirohito. (And was right.)

Gallicchio shows a Truman who was not as much a naïf (well, other than about Stalin, but he disabused himself of that to some degree by the end of Potsdam) as someone who kept his own council and held his cards close to his vest.

Behind all of this are Army and Navy wrangling about Olympic vs blockade. (Contra Gar Alpherowitz, and all of his ilk who politicized the bomb in the 1960s and later, IF a blockade had forced Japanese surrender [A VERY BIG IF] the hundreds of thousands that died from starvation, the hundreds of thousands that died from ongoing fighting, the likely hundreds of thousands of POWs that would have died, would have FAR outnumbered bomb deaths. BUT … all of this, outside of what the bomb actually DID achieve, is outside Gallicchio’s remit.)

Behind all of THAT are administrators of the various war economy agencies, and the general public, begging for military demobilization as soon as possible.

And, in Japan? Well, actually in Moscow? One realist. Ambassador Sato, who laughed at the idea that Moscow would be an intermediary, and not for a negotiated, conditional surrender, but for “peace talks.”

I already knew that, up to pre-Okinawa 1945, Hirohito himself was a last-ditcher enough to still have hope of holding on to everything Japan had conquered through the end of World War 1.

But, Gallicchio goes further. First, he notes something that either isn’t in a book like Frank’s “Downfall” or else that I missed seeing there. On meeting with Foreign Minister Togo on Aug. 8 — AFTER Hiroshima — Hirohito accepted the need for surrender, but still believed it could be a negotiated one.

Second?

Some of the militarists were ready to drive loopholes through the “retain the imperial polity” asterisk to unconditional surrender. (It should be noted that keeping Hirohito on the throne DID facilitate Japanese troop surrender immensely.)

More specifically, they were worried that Hirohito would be exiled to China and Akihito taken to America for re-education and being held hostage. They proposed taking a scion of a collateral line to a hideaway in Niigata prefecture until the Americans left Japan.

Third, forward to 1946, a year after the occupation started. Truman told MacArthur it was time to get that new Japanese constitution. And, that it would include definite limits on imperial power. A Japanese committee was given first crack at it, and basically tried to keep Hirohito as MUCH more than a figurehead head of state. Supreme Command Allied Powers then said move over, and wrote Japan’s constitution in a week.

And, Gallicchio notes that Hirohito PERSONALLY resisted. And, his family turned on him! His youngest brother told the Privy Council, indirectly, that Hirohito should abdicate. An uncle by marriage told the AP that many members of the family supported abdication. The same uncle, weeks later, said there were plans to have another brother of Hirohito serve as regent for Akihito.

And, here’s the fantastic way Gallicchio ices the cake.

He turns Hirohito’s imperial rescript of surrender against him. In its exact language.

I quote:

“Seeing that the situation had developed not necessarily to his advantage, Hirohito finally relented.”

AND, lest I be accused of spoiler alerts? Details of the allied occupation of Japanese territory, mainly Korea and the Kuriles, and other items? Not mentioned in this review.

And, this is all in a book of right at 200 pages.

Gallicchio has set the new benchmark for studies here.

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