Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [129]
Depending upon duration, a blockade could have inflicted more deaths upon Japan than continued bombing. Those who advocated “starving the Japs into surrender” overlooked a critical fact: the huge majority of the resultant deaths would have been civilians, especially the old, the very young, and the enfeebled. Additionally, the long-term physical and psychological effects upon the younger generation could have been immense. As in every despotic nation, in times of hunger the army eats before the civilians, be it Kim Il-sung’s Korea or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
A major factor widely ignored in the debate about the bomb is the American public. With troops redeploying from Europe to the Pacific, and the prospect of a horrific invasion of a fanatical enemy’s homeland, Harry Truman the president (let alone the politician) simply could not have ignored the bomb’s war-ending potential. Had the invasion proceeded without first using atomic weapons, he likely would have been impeached by politicians responding to the outraged parents of thousands of dead sons.
So the atoms would be loosed. As Truman later wrote, “The final decision had to be made by the President, and was made after a complete survey of the whole situation had been made. . . . The Japanese were given fair warning, and were offered the terms which they finally accepted, well in advance of the dropping of the bomb.”
Death figures for Hiroshima vary widely, as do population estimates. The most specific sources cite from 90,000 to 140,000 deaths prior to 1946, among 320,000 to 345,000 residents. An approximate toll of 90,000 slightly exceeds the acknowledged loss in the Tokyo firebombing of March 9–10.
Figures for total radiation deaths from the two bombings vary hugely: from fewer than 800 named individuals to a claimed 100,000-plus. Partisans on both sides of the controversy have reason to manage the numbers, but scientific study leans well to the lower end—hundreds rather than thousands.
Much—perhaps most—of the criticism of 1945 U.S. military policy seems imposed by post-Vietnam attitudes rather than in context of World War II. In that regard the debate about use of the A-bomb, and bombing generally, resulted in a peculiar inversion. The Japanese, who embarked upon a brutal war of conquest, were increasingly cast as victims while the Americans who responded to that action became the aggressors. Thus was born the concept of “equivalency,” with the response to the war makers somehow becoming as objectionable as the actions that launched the aggression.
The voices protesting the use of nuclear weapons spanned the political spectrum: from scientists who helped produce the bombs to some of America’s most senior military leaders. Since many of the Los Alamos personnel were refugees from Occupied Europe, their prime motivation had been to produce a weapon before Hitler did. Once Nazi Germany collapsed, presumably the need for A-bombs diminished. But those opposed to using A-bombs against Japan reckoned without Tokyo’s samurai zeal for national extinction.
Among the postwar critics of the bombs was Admiral Ernest King, the chief of naval operations. Widely known for his abrasive personality (“When they get into trouble they call for the sons of bitches”), his alleged moral objections to nuclear weapons appear disingenuous at best, only appearing after the fact. Certainly he had no qualms about ordering his submarines to violate international law by sinking Japanese merchant ships without warning—the only effective tactic. His seeming preference for blockade and/or invasion also falls afoul of the 5,000 kamikazes his fleet would have faced in late 1945. Far more likely he issued his statements with an eye toward the forthcoming battle over creating an independent air force rather than any queasiness about killing the enemy.
Meanwhile, the moral question about atomic weapons was shared at other rarefied levels. Former President Herbert Hoover and General Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that Tokyo