The Atomic Bomb

A popular topic for debate is whether or not we should have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. I have heard a lot of different ideas. The most popular, of course, is that we wanted to save American lives which would have been lost if we had invaded the island. The bombs possibly saved Japanese lives...which would have been lost as they would have defended the island to the last. The Manhattan Project was the most expensive in the history of the U.S. up till that point. How can we politically spend that much money on a weapon and then not use it? There is also an argument that we were trying to end the war with Japan before the Soviet Union took much from them. We didn't want to have a half-communist Japan like we had a half-communist Germany.

This last argument, I believe, can be disregarded as we compelled the USSR to enter the war against Japan and they had eventually agreed to do so. Though one could speculate that we used the bomb so as to have more leverage in the diplomatic arena with the Soviets during the following peace conferences. In anycase, those are not the topics I wish to address.

I have often heard people ask why we didn't take some Japanese diplomats out to an island, test the bomb and show them the destructive capabilities of it. Surely Japan would surrender, they say. I must disagree. First off, the Japanese hadn't surrendered yet. Most of their major cities were being bombed into oblivion, they had completely lost any meaningful airforce and navy. Yet they did not surrender. They had fought to the death on many of the outlaying islands and it is not unreasonable to assume that they would have kept fighting so long as it was physically possible to do so. As events would show, they still refused to surrender after the first bomb was dropped. Only after Nagasaki when it became clear that we could destroy city after city if necessary did Japan surrender.

Another problem with simply showing Japanese diplomats the power of the bomb comes from the lessons of World War 1. By the end of that war, Germany's forces were getting pushed back all across the line. Yet the Allies never actually entered German territory. German armies in the field never actually surrendered. As a result, there was a feeling among the population that they had been betrayed and not really lost the war. Had Allied armies pushed all the way to Berlin (and they could have if the war had gone on), few would be able to state that Germany had not really lost. Had Japan surrendered because we "could" use the atomic bomb, the post-war situation would have been similar. Using the bomb was the key event to prove to the Japanese people that they had lost the war. Not only did we have the capability to end the war, we brought that capability to fruition in a way that no Japanese nationalist could deny.