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THE DECISION TO USE
THE ATOMIC BOMB

Gar Alperovitz
Vintage Books, New York.

The United States which lectures to all and sundry the virtues of signing the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty (CTBT) which, incidentally, the U.S. Senate has still to ratify has much to answer for, as also the first few nuclear weapon powers which manufactured nuclear weapons in total secrecy. It will be remembered that the American decision to make the first atom bomb was that of a single individual, President Roosevelt. Even Vice-President Harry Truman was kept in the dark and was briefed on the subject only when he succeeded Roosevelt following the latter’s death. Was there a need to drop those two nuclear bombs, one on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki in Japan at the time they were dropped? The U.S. excuse has been that it had become necessary to save the lives of American soldiers in the event of the war being prolonged. That was a lie and the American Establishment knew it quite well. The Japanese Government in 1945 was on its last legs. The United States had all the evidence to prove it. It had intercepted a message from Japanese Foreign Minister Togo to Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, Stato,which said that "His Majesty, the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated". There could have been no doubt that Japan was ready to surrender. It was a question of days. Japan was desperately trying to get the Soviet Union to act as an intermediary. But the United States was determined to teach the Japanese people a terrible lesson. As President Truman once remarked: "When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true." The American people were not told that the Japanese were ready to surrender. That would have made the decision to atomise the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like calculated madness. So the Americans were lied to. As Gen.George A. Lincoln wrote in a Memorandum to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on 2 April 1946, "the implication that the atomic bombs were dropped on a people who had already sued for peace should not be included in a paper prepared for release to the public". So much for America’s adherance to truth. Eisenhower was not very happy with that official order. As he saw it : "It wasn’t necessary to hit them (the Japanese) with that awful thing (nuclear bomb)". The real decision-maker was a despicable character called James F. Byrnes who was Secretary of State for Truman, until the two fell-out, and Byrnes was replaced by George Marshall. Byrnes had a contempt for Truman. He thought of the President as "a nonentity with no abilities to speak of, no knowledge of how to conduct foreign policy or much else for that matter". Byrnes was opposed to a prompt and early warning to Japan. That would have cramped the poor man’s style of dealing with the enemies. Byrnes had no interest in issuing a warning bell in advance as to give Japanese officials time to digest the implications of a nuclear bomb being dropped on their cities. So the two bombs were dropped to the eternal shame of America. The destruction caused appalled even General MacArthur who saw "no military justification for the dropping of the bomb" as the war might have ended weeks earlier, if the United Sates had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the Emperor.

In his book The President Is Calling, Milton Eisenhower, brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote of the nuclear bombing that "its use violated the normal standards of warfare by wiping out entire populations, mostly civilians, in the target cities" adding that "what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will forever be on the conscience of the American people".

There have been several books written on the subject of America’s first nuclear bomb and the use to which its prototypes was put, but this work is replete with references to secret documents and constitutes the most damning indictment of American insensitivity to human suffering. The author, Alperovitz has had access to State Department papers and other essential documents to prove his case that the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki knowing full well that military that was not at all necessary. The bombs were dropped in the spirit of pure vengeance on the theory that the Japanese were "beasts" who deserved no better treatment. It was racialist viciousness at its worst. The pages of this remarkable volume of arduous research are sprinkled over and over again with quotes from secret papers. Beginning with the trajectory of Japan’s decline and the general efforts to end the second world war (this is the period between April to July 1945) the author takes us step by step to the options then open to the Allies, gives us insights into what went on among the American leaders and their top military officials on the important issue of whether to use the atomic bombs or not, and the final efforts to ‘manage’ history. History, indeed, was brilliantly managed. Repeated polls over the years have shown that the vast majority of Americans have raised very few questions about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands – perhaps a million – lives persists, But the best comment on the whole issue comes from George Kennan in his A Christian View of the Arms Race. Wrote Kennan: "The readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings – against people whom we do not know, whom we have never seen, and for whose guilt or innocence it is not for us to establish – and in doing so, to place in jeopardy the natural structure upon which all civilisation rests – this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity – an indignity of monstruous dimensions – offered to God!".

But Americans have never learnt their lesson. Real politique is everything to Washington. Even in full knowledge of the rogue nature of the Pakistan Government, the United States has, in the words of a leading American Think Tank "not been candid about China’s help to Pakistan’s nuclear arms and missile fields". The charge was made by the California-based Monterrey Institute of International Studies and has so far not been refuted.

Alperovitz’ book should be must reading to India’s Nuclear Policy Makers who may some day have to make up their minds on how to handle an irresponsible nation like Pakistan out to seek vengeance against India. All of the good intentions of several leading Americans did not prevent Washington from ordering the wholesale destruction of two Japanese cities. Can anyone really trust the United States not to be repeat the performance in an emergency, even if today it remains the Sole Super Power? Alperovitz’ book provides an answer – howsoever unsatisfactorily.