Which of the following best reflects Trumans reasons as stated in this letter for using the atomic bombs against Japan in August of 1945?

The starting point for understanding Japan’s surrender in 1945 is to recognize it required two separate and equally vital steps. First, someone with legitimate authority had to make the political decision that Japan would capitulate. Second, Japan’s armed forces had to comply with the government’s surrender. Given the incredible history of defiance of government authority by Japan’s armed forces for at least the 15 years prior to 1945, not only American but also Japanese leaders including the emperor, understood that a surrender order by the government, even one from the emperor, might not secure compliance by the armed forces.

Emperor Hirohito meets War Minister Hideki Tojo, October 1941. Courtesy National Archives.

Emperor Hirohito’s path to making that political decision was scarcely straight. Through May 1945, he believed a major Japanese military victory must precede any move toward peace, or Japan’s hopes for something other than unconditional surrender would be vain. He thus urged that Japan should launch a new offensive in China. This was spurned by his military paladins—yet another signal the armed forces recognized no master.

Marquis Kido, Hirohito’s principal adviser, presented to him a memorandum proposing a path to peace in June 1945. Rejecting any direct approach to the United States, Kido urged a negotiated settlement achieved by Soviet mediation. As for settlement terms, Kido’s conjured up a copy of the Treaty of Versailles. Japan might have to give up her overseas conquests and endure a period of disarmament. But there would be no occupation of Japanese soil, thus assuring continuance of the imperial system and Hirohito’s seat on the throne. In view of Germany’s renewed war after the Treaty of Versailles, there is zero chance US leaders would have accepted that framework to end the war.

Based on Kido’s memorandum, the emperor met with the inner cabinet, termed the Big Six for its membership. He secured their agreement to approach the Soviets. As noted in another part of this series, this effort remained stillborn.

Emperor Hirohito. The National WWII Museum, Gift of Dylan Utley, 2012.019.721

Prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hirohito failed to intervene as the Soviet mediation effort went nowhere. Explanation for his inaction probably reflects three strands. Except for one extraordinary situation in 1936 when he moved forcefully to demand suppression of a military mutiny in Tokyo, Hirohito avoided any attempt to rule Japan directly. A second reason was Ketsu Go: the planned Armageddon battle on Kyushu to turn the military situation to Japan’s favor. Only gradually into July reports reaching the emperor raised his doubts about its likelihood of its success.

On the other hand, as the summer progressed, the emperor and other key members of the inner leadership experienced truly terrifying anxiety that the Japanese people were nearing a revolutionary moment. This was primarily because of the American campaign of devastating fire-bombing attacks on cities, and the increasingly dire food situation. “The domestic situation” became the euphemism these elite leaders employed to mask their real fear. They projected the real crisis would come in the fall, particularly when the rice crop was due.

Tokyo received news of a devastating but mysterious event in Hiroshima on August 6, but only the next day learned President Truman maintained it was an atomic bomb. The reaction by Japanese armed forces to Truman’s claim is extremely important. The Imperial Army declared they would only concede it was an atomic bomb after an investigation. But the stance of the Imperial Navy was much more ominous. Top naval leaders allowed that the Americans might have used an atomic bomb, but even so, they could not possess more atomic bombs, or if they did, they would not be that powerful.

This unfazed, immediate reaction stemmed from Japan’s own atomic bomb program. It produced no actual bomb, but it educated top officials that the production of fissionable material to make an atomic bomb was stupendously difficult. Hence, these top uniformed leaders refused to concede that the United States possessed more than one bomb, or perhaps a few, but not an arsenal of powerful atomic weapons. Given this reaction, it’s obvious that a one-bomb demonstration never would have convinced Japanese leaders to capitulate. The one thing the news of Hiroshima did do was to provide the warrant for a meeting of the Big Six. But military members forced postponement of the meeting to the morning of August 9.

Foreign Minister Togo was there at the beginning and the end. This is the letter from Togo to the American Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, informing the ambassador that Japan had declared war on the United States. Courtesy National Archives.

Meanwhile in the afternoon of August 8, before the entry of the Soviet Union into the war or the bombing of Nagasaki, the emperor met with Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo. Shortly after the war, Togo affirmed that the emperor stated the war must end at this meeting. New evidence now confirms Togo’s account that it was the atomic bomb that moved the emperor to decide to end the war.

But this did not mean the war assuredly would end because it remained very uncertain that Japan’s armed forces would comply even with the emperor’s order.

Meet the Author

Richard B. Frank is an internationally renowned expert on the Pacific war. After graduating from the University of Missouri, he was commissioned in the US Army, in which he served for nearly four years, including a tour of duty in the Republic of Vietnam as an aero rifle platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division.

Frank completed studies at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. Soon afterwards he began research on his first book, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, which was published in 1990 and won the US Marine Corps’ General Wallace M. Greene Award.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Washington, D.C.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE —August 6, 1945

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam” which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1’s and the V-2’s late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.

The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.

Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans.

The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of those plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and won.

But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brain child of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.          

It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

The Secretary of War, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details.

His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive forces in history they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety.

The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research.

It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.

But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.

I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.