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| HIROSHIMA Before Bombing |
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| HIROSHIMA After Bombing |
The atomic bombings
of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were conducted by the United States during the final stages of World War II in August 1945. The two bombings were
the first and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare.
Following a firebombing campaign
that destroyed many Japanese cities, the Allies
prepared for a costly invasion of Japan.
The war in Europe
ended when Nazi Germany signed its
instrument of
surrender on May 8, 1945, but the Pacific War continued. Together with the United
Kingdom and China,
the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed
forces in the Potsdam Declaration
on July 26, 1945, threatening "prompt and utter destruction".
By August 1945, the
Allied Manhattan Project
had successfully tested an atomic device
and had produced weapons based on two alternate designs. The 509th Composite Group
of the U.S. Army Air
Forces was equipped with a Silverplate Boeing B-29
Superfortress that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. A uranium gun-type
atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped
on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a
plutonium implosion-type
bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki on August 9. Within the first two to
four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in
Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each
city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died
from the effect of burns, radiation sickness,
and other injuries, compounded by illness. In both cities, most of the dead
were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizeable garrison.
On August 15, just
days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war,
Japan announced its surrender to
the Allies. On September 2, it signed the instrument of
surrender, ending World War II. The bombings' role in Japan's
surrender and their ethical justification are still debated.
In 1945, the Pacific War between the Empire of Japan and the Allies
entered its fourth year. Of the 1.25 million battle casualties incurred by
the United States in World War II, including
both military personnel
killed in action and wounded in action, nearly one million occurred in
the twelve-month period from June 1944 to June 1945. December 1944 saw American
battle casualties hit an all-time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the
German Ardennes Offensive.[1] In the Pacific the Allies returned to
the Philippines,[2] recaptured Burma,[3] and invaded Borneo.[4] Offensives were undertaken to reduce the
Japanese forces remaining in Bougainville, New Guinea and
the Philippines.[5] In April 1945, American forces landed on Okinawa, where heavy fighting continued
until June. Along the way, the ratio of Japanese to American casualties dropped
from 5:1 in the Philippines to 2:1 on Okinawa.[1]
As the Allied advance
moved inexorably towards Japan, conditions became steadily worse for the
Japanese people. Japan's merchant fleet declined from 5,250,000 gross tons in
1941 to 1,560,000 tons in March 1945, and 557,000 tons in August 1945. Lack of
raw materials forced the Japanese war economy into a steep decline after the
middle of 1944. The civilian economy, which had slowly deteriorated throughout
the war, reached disastrous levels by the middle of 1945. The loss of shipping
also affected the fishing fleet, and the 1945 catch was only 22% of that in
1941. The 1945 rice harvest was the worst since 1909, and hunger and
malnutrition became widespread. In February 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe advised the Emperor Hirohito that defeat was inevitable, and urged him
to abdicate.[6]
The role of the
bombings in Japan's surrender
and the U.S.'s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly
and popular debate for decades. J. Samuel Walker wrote in an April 2005
overview of recent historiography on the issue, "the controversy over the
use of the bomb seems certain to continue." He wrote that "The
fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four
decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the
war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States."[255]
Supporters of the
bombings generally assert that they caused the Japanese surrender, preventing
casualties on both sides during Operation Downfall. One figure of speech,
"One hundred million [subjects of the Japanese Empire] will die for the
Emperor and Nation,"[256] served as a unifying slogan, although
that phrase was intended as a figure of speech along the lines of the "ten thousand years"
phrase.[257] In Truman's 1955 Memoirs,
"he states that the atomic bomb probably saved half a million U.S. lives—
anticipated casualties in an Allied invasion of Japan planned for November.
Stimson subsequently talked of saving one million U.S. casualties, and
Churchill of saving one million American and half that number of British lives."[258] Scholars have pointed out various
alternatives that could have ended the war without an invasion, but these
alternatives could have resulted in the deaths of many more Japanese.[259] Supporters also point to an order
given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944, ordering the execution of
Allied prisoners of war when the POW camp was in the combat zone.[260]
Those who oppose the
bombings cite a number of reasons for their view, among them: a belief that
atomic bombing is fundamentally immoral, that the bombings counted as war
crimes, that they were militarily unnecessary, that they constituted state
terrorism,[261] and that they involved racism against
and the dehumanization of the Japanese people. The bombings were part of an
already fierce conventional bombing campaign. This, together with the sea
blockade and the collapse of Germany (with its implications regarding
redeployment), could also have led to a Japanese surrender. At the time United
States dropped its atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union
launched a surprise attack
with 1.6 million troops against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. "The
Soviet entry into the war", noted Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, "played a much greater
role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any
hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation".[262]
