In the heat of war, which is always a tragic matter because war is utterly destructive of the right to life, leaders must often make deeply burdensome decisions which profoundly affect innocent civilians as well as the enemy's ability to wage war. The dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was just such a decision. To understand well the why of it warrants an understanding of the many factors in play at the time.
The aura of invincibleness
For centuries trouble brewed in East Asia because of Japanese aggression. Never having known defeat - for its entire 2600 years the country was never conquered by any enemy - Japan believed in its invincibility which contributed to its belief in its superiority to all other peoples. While the Emperor and government leaders had agreed to open the country to foreigners in the mid 1800s under threat of force from Commodore Perry, underneath the embracing of western culture and ways lay a boiling distrust of the west and fear that their country would someday be conquered by western powers. They had seen Russia attempt to take part of Manchuria and Korea in a perceived march towards Japan in 1904-05 and fought to expel the Russians from lands they themselves had either conquered or colonized. In this Russo-Japanese war the Japanese victory over a much larger force stoked the historic self-concept of an unconquerable people.
As time went on, the aura of invincibleness coupled with distrust of Westerners caused a widespread militaristic belief that all of Asia needed to be under Japanese control with the inferior Westerners driven out. This mood led to even greater militaristic aspirations as during the Japanese expansion of the 1930s journalist Shiro Iwata wrote that Japan had a global mission: to "advance to lead the entire world." [1]
The Cult of the emperor and the growth of radical militarism
Devotion to the Emperor united the whole nation, which viewed him as a living god who demanded unquestioning obedience. Citizens believed they had a duty to die for the Emperor in any conquest. Using protection of the Emperor as an excuse for increasing control, aggressive militarists proliferated by the late 1920s. They spawned a thrust for ruling all of Asia while the Tokyo government proved ineffectual in halting actions which ultimately led to the shame of Japan and its occupation by the very people they feared. Many of these actions were approved by the Emperor.
In 1931 Japanese militarists seized control of Manchuria against the will of the Tokyo government and suffered no consequences. By 1936 radical militarists dominated the Japanese government thoroughly. Official parliamentary rule was from that time on an illusion and the emperor merely a ratifier of military actions.
Media control
Censorship of news media and the assassination of dissident publishers along with heavy propaganda kept the people in the dark. A civilian police force under military control called the Tokku [2], or "thought police," could arrest, imprison, or kill any Japanese expressing ideas deemed antithetical to the aggressive military doctrine. An attempted coup in 1936 resulted in the execution or ritual suicide of the nearly 2000 participants after a few government ministers were assassinated, ensuring that the goals of the militarists would proceed unhindered. The pro-peace factions were completely wiped out.
By 1937 Japan signed an anti-Soviet pact with Nazi Germany and started a full-blown war with the Chinese outside Beijing. Nanking fell that year amid unspeakable atrocities, and in 1938, Shanghai. Every conquered area was literally enslaved by the military and many civilians were sent to Japan to provide forced labor in military hospitals, coal mines, and other occupations under military control. Media censorship hid from the Japanese people the horrors committed by the soldiers upon the Chinese.
Later in the Pacific War, the swelling numbers of Japanese casualties and atrocities committed against civilians of occupied lands were kept from the Japanese people. Midway, the turning point, was touted as a great victory when in fact, it was a debilitating defeat costly in terms of lives of Japanese, Americans, and civilians.
Natural resource factor
The shortage of natural resources in Japan itself, such as oil and metals necessary for war and industrial growth, was also a factor in the growth of aggression. Coupled with the belief in its invincibility and superiority, Japan's desire to expand its access to resources became a part of a poisonous brew that killed the people of many nations.
The Tripartite Pact
As Japan claimed more and more Asian soil, on September 26, 1940, it signed the Tripartite Pact, an agreement with Germany and Italy which meant that Hitler could conquer Britain and then wage war on Russia while Japan could expand south in the Pacific without interference. Japan's plans to establish a new world order in Greater Asia were now enshrined in an international agreement. [3]
As Chief of Operations for the 25th Japanese army, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji wrote in his diary, "Japan's next great mission is to bring the blessing of freedom to the natives of south Asia. To these people the Westerners are mere armed robbers, while we Japanese are their brothers, so we must beat them into submission." [4] Beat them they did. By 1942 Japan dominated fully 1/5 of the globe.
Japanese conduct of the War in the Pacific
Two factors opening a window on what to expect if America was forced to invade Japan itself to bring the war to an end were the fight-to-the-death mentality of the Japanese soldiers and the brainwashing of the civilian populations leading to mass suicides. Surrender was disgraceful and suicide the only acceptable and honorable alternative. Captured Japanese soldiers often begged to be killed so as not to be disgraced or to have their families back home shunned - a very real problem that led to extreme poverty, the inability to contract a good marriage, and loss of any wealth.
Both soldiers and civilians believed that the Americans were devils who would run them over with tanks, attack them with ferocious dogs, and rape and murder them all. Such brainwashing, especially of the people, led to the death of more than 22,000 civilians on Saipan in June of 1944, most of who jumped or were forced by suicidal Japanese soldiers off the cliffs. The Americans lost 16,525 soldiers and the Japanese lost close to 30,000 in that battle. [5] Okinawa was worse. By July 2, 1945 over 142,000 Japanese soldiers and citizens were dead, a large number by suicide in the manner at Saipan. More than 13,000 Americans died and the wounded totaled over 37,000. [6] These numbers are but a shadow of what could be expected in an invasion of the main islands.
Japanese biomedical experimentation
Perhaps the least publicly known factor Americans were aware of when they decided to drop the atom bomb was the extensive biomedical experimentation on civilians and POWs, including Americans. Japan engaged in these atrocities with no compunction throughout her conquered lands. "…[E]xtraordinary quantities of resources were allotted by the authorities in Tokyo for projects that ultimately “sacrificed” (the euphemism formally employed to describe killing victims) the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, Formosan, Indonesian, Burmese, Thai, and other Asian nationalities. (There is also evidence that some European and American prisoners were “sacrificed” during the course of BW and CW research.)" [7]
Vivisection was only one crime. Chinese of many villages were deliberately infected with bubonic plague by means of air-dropped grain infested with infected fleas. Thousands died. Experiments with napalm on conscious civilians were recorded in all their gory detail and many more experiments using biological and chemical weapons took lives wherever Japan ruled. As early as 1943 the Americans learned the ugly truth of the infamous Unit 731 and others like it. [8] The longer the war lasted the longer these atrocities would be committed and the greater the danger that Communist Russia would come into possession of the knowledge and use it to advance their own imperialist goals. Moreover, many Allied soldiers would have succumbed to biological and chemical weapons in an invasion of the home islands. To this day many people in Japan and elsewhere are ignorant of the inhuman experiments that went on in all Japanese occupied territory, nor the total number of people murdered.
The Communist Russian factor
At Yalta in early February of 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to plan Germany's defeat. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan three months after the German surrender. The allies also agreed that Russia would receive the Sakhalin and Kurile Islands when Japan was defeated. All agreed that the European countries were to be restored to their own governance with democratic elections.
When Roosevelt died in April, Stalin broke the Yalta agreement to allow democratic elections in Eastern Europe and installed puppet communist governments under his control. This disturbed Britain and America greatly and created a sense of heightened urgency to prevent Russia from taking over Japan. Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost large island was highly desired by the Soviets. Divisions of the home islands such as happened in East and West Germany because of the Russians would have broken the integrity of the country and made any lasting peace impossible.
The cost in lives if Operations Olympic and Coronet were enacted
By Victory in Europe Day many Americans were tired of the war, yet the War Department estimated they would need a continuing monthly draft of 100,000 men to end the Pacific conflict by invading Japan. Soldiers would encounter the same terrain and same Japanese behavior as they did at Iwo Jima, Saipan, Okinawa and the other conquered islands. On the home islands, Japanese civilians, even children, were armed with bamboo spears, bows and arrows, stones and other weapons to inflict as much personal damage on the enemy as possible as they assisted the military in attempts to repulse the enemy. Thus, the invaders would face not just military might but civilians as well, making it impossible to tell who were noncombatants, if any.
While the War Department believed that the Americans would have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese, costing between 1.7 and 4 million casualties with between 400,000 to 800,000 dead to effect surrender, Japanese War Minister General Korechika Anami and his government were prepared to sacrifice what they believed would be 20,000,000 Japanese. [9] By the time the bombs were dropped, over 900,000 Japanese soldiers were installed on Kyushu, many in caves and underground bunkers in expectation of invasion. The Americans projected the necessary complete victory would take until some time in 1947, or in the worst case, until 1948.
With all this in mind, Truman and his advisors determined that only drastic action could bring the Japanese to their knees, and even then they were not sure. A repeat of the Treaty of Versailles was unthinkable. It would only have enveloped the world in a future, even more deadly war. The Japanese had to be forced into a surrender where there were no points of negotiation and no possibility of them re-arming themselves and starting another conflict.
Conclusion
The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 demanded unconditional surrender. Militarists and those who desired peace for the Japanese people wrangled amongst themselves in Parliament and the Cabinet for days over the benefits of a "decisive battle" on Japanese main islands, not responding to the ultimatum. This silence was the cause of Truman's decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima August 6, 1945.
As proof of the Japanese mindset, General Anami and the other militarists continued to hold out for the "decisive battle" and refused to believe the atomic bomb horrors reported to them. Finally, with the government deadlocked, the Prime Minister asked the Emperor to make the decision. It was during the meeting of August 9, 1945 when the Emperor told the ministers he wanted to accept the Potsdam Declaration that the second and more devastating bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. That the original targets on August 9th were the military facilities at Kokura and not the civilians of Nagasaki was no consolation to those who died.
Amidst fanatical attempts by factions in the army to kill the palace guards and take the Emperor into custody, Hirohito issued his "sacred rescript" on August 14th, speaking for the first time on the radio to all the Japanese people. In his famous statement, “We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable, and suffering what is insufferable,” [10] the word "surrender" was not used, but the Japanese people knew the war was over and after 2600 years of superiority in battle, they had lost.
After the surrender ceremony on September 2nd, 1945, the Americans learned the extent of the secret preparations and true capabilities of the Japanese had the war continued. Facts show that invading Japan would have resulted in more than the horrific estimates of loss of life made by the War Department. Moreover, America had at least six more atomic bombs General MacArthur planned to use tactically had the invasion occurred, endangering not only the Japanese but the Allied troops.
Given the nature of the Japanese psyche and civilian brainwashing, the fanatical militarists in the government, the advantages the Japanese had in their home terrain and preparedness, the likely failure of a blockade to bring about unconditional surrender and the prospective loss of life on both sides of the conflict, dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was most definitely an unavoidable tragedy.
[1] DVD: Japan's War in Color - actual war and prewar footage with quotes from Japanese diaries and newspapers
[2] http://www.ozatwar.com/sigint/tokku.htm
[3] http://www.wfu.edu/history/StudentWork/AsiaPacificWa r/asia-pacific-scott/commentary.htm
[4] DVD: Japan's War in Color
[5] http://www.worldwar2database.com/html/saipan.htm
[6] Hell to Pay by D.M. Giangreco, Naval Institute Press, ©2009, p. x
[7] http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/published_volume s/ethicsvol2/ethics-ch-16.pdf Japanese Biomedical Experimentation During the World War II Era, Sheldon H. Harris, Ph. D., p. 467-468.
[8] http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/published_volume s/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-16.pdf
[9] Hell to Pay by D.M. Giangreco, ©2009, p.99
[10 DVD: Japan's Longest Day