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By Root 1206 0

and certainly not one which deserved the atomic bomb. Few of those Asians who experienced Japanese conquest, however, and knew of the millions of deaths which it encompassed, believed that Japan possessed any superior claim on Allied forbearance to that of Germany. Post-war critics of U.S. conduct in the weeks before Hiroshima seem to demand from America’s leaders moral and political generosity so far in advance of that displayed by their Japanese counterparts as to be fantastic, in the sixth year of a global war. Their essential thesis is that America should have spared its enemies from the human consequences of their own rulers’ blind folly; that those in Washington should have displayed a concern for the Japanese people much more enlightened than that of the Tokyo government.

Why, however, should the U.S. either have welcomed a Soviet propaganda triumph in Asia, or humoured the self-esteem of a barbarous enemy? Truman’s “firmness” towards Japan certainly reflected a desire to impress his authority upon the Soviets, as well as upon the American people. Yet it is hard to believe that Roosevelt, architect of the doctrine of unconditional surrender, would have behaved much differently, had he survived. In the war against Germany, Stalin took much in return for paying most of the blood cost of victory. He profited from overrunning eastern Europe while the British and Americans dallied west of the Rhine. In the Japanese war, however, the U.S. was unequivocally the victor. It was irksome to see the Soviets on the brink of garnering rich rewards for attending curtain calls after missing all but the last minutes of the play. The principal and overwhelming reason for dropping the bomb was to compel the Japanese to end the war; but it seems entirely reasonable that the U.S. also wished to frustrate Soviet expansionism.

James Byrnes wrote in his memoirs: “Had the Japanese government surrendered unconditionally, it would not have been necessary to drop the atomic bomb.” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, author of one of the more significant recent studies of this period, comments: “Perhaps this statement842 can be read in reverse: ‘If we insisted on unconditional surrender, we could justify the dropping of the atomic bomb.’” Hasegawa’s words again prompt the question: why should the U.S. not have insisted upon unconditional surrender?

At Truman’s first bilateral meeting with Stalin at the “little White House,” 2 Kaiserstrasse, on 17 July, the Soviet leader announced that his armies would be ready to invade Manchuria in mid-August. The president wrote to his wife, Bess, next day: “I was scared I didn’t know whether things were going according to Hoyle or not. Anyway a start has been made and I’ve gotten what I came for—Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it. I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed.” How can this letter be squared with Churchill’s memorandum to Eden at Potsdam: “It is quite clear that the United States does not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan”? Truman, like many of his advisers, regretted the deal for Soviet intervention in the Far East. Yet at Potsdam he was obliged to make the best of the fact that Yalta could not be undone. The significant phrase in his letter is surely “with no strings on it.” Moscow had made no new demands that would further compromise Chinese or American interests. Stalin was not insisting upon a Soviet occupation zone in Japan, as he had intimated to Harry Hopkins that he would.

Yet the U.S. president’s words and deeds at Potsdam suggest a lingering confusion of mind about Soviet entry into the Japanese war. The issue is further muddled by false claims Truman made later, notably in his memoirs, about the circumstances surrounding the atomic decisions. All politicians seek to amend their own records. Roosevelt told many untruths, and Churchill’s war memoirs are shamelessly self-serving. Truman’s writings convey a sense that, at the very least, he was not afterwards wholly comfortable about some of the