The National Security Archive is committed to digital accessibility. [9], RG 77, Correspondence ("Top Secret") of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, file 25M. This 10 July 1945 letter from NKVD director V. N. Merkulov to Beria is an example of Soviet efforts to collect inside information on the Manhattan Project, although not all the detail was accurate. Stimson did not always have Trumans ear, but historians have frequently cited his diary when he was at the Potsdam conference. Whether Eisenhower expressed such reservations prior to Hiroshima will remain a matter of controversy. For discussion of the importance of this memorandum, see Sherwin, 126-127, and Hershberg, James B. Conant, 203-207. The US and Japan suffered major casualties, and the American people and the president were getting tired of it. [74]. If the Japanese decided to keep fighting, G-2 opined that Atomic bombs will not have a decisive effect in the next 30 days. Richard Frank has pointed out that this and other documents indicate that high level military figures remained unsure as to how close Japan really was to surrender. Not knowing that the Soviets had already made a commitment to their Allies to declare war on Japan, Tokyo fruitlessly pursued this option for several weeks. Hasegawa cited it and other documents to make a larger point about the inability of the Japanese government to agree on concrete proposals to negotiate an end to the war. Why the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Were there alternatives to the use of the weapons? Upon becoming president, Harry Truman learned of the Manhattan Project, a secret scientific effort to create an atomic bomb. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.. RG 77, Harrison-Bundy Files (H-B Files), folder 69 (copy from microfilm), While Groves worried about the engineering and production problems, key War Department advisers were becoming troubled over the diplomatic and political implications of these enormously powerful weapons and the dangers of a global nuclear arms race. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows, nuclear threats are real, present, and dangerous. The National Security Agency kept the Magic diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the entire series for 1942 through August 1945 until the early 1990s.[36]. [2] During the 1960s the availability of primary sources made historical research and writing possible and the debate became more vigorous. Is control of nuclear weapons necessary to maintain peace? [59a]. The Japanese goal was to cripple the U.S. Pacific fleet, and they nearly succeeded. At the time, the American people cheered the . As Farrell observed in his discussion of Hiroshima, Summaries of Japanese reports previously sent are essentially correct, as to clinical effects from single gamma radiation dose. Such findings dismayed Groves, who worried that the bomb would fall into a taboo category like chemical weapons, with all the fear and horror surrounding them. If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? An intercepted message from Togo to Sato showed that Tokyo remained interested in securing Moscows good office but that it is difficult to decide on concrete peace conditions here at home all at once. [W]e are exerting ourselves to collect the views of all quarters on the matter of concrete terms. Barton Bernstein, Richard Frank, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, among others, have argued that the Magic intercepts from the end of July and early August show that the Japanese were far from ready to surrender. Atomic Bomb Pros 1. Note: The second page of the diary entry includes a newspaper clipping of the Associated Presss transmission of the Byrnes note. atomic bomb dropped to intimidate russia - joinclasses.com RG 77, MED, H-B files, folder no. The continued controversy has revolved around the following, among other, questions: This compilation will not attempt to answer these questions or use primary sources to stake out positions on any of them. After reviewing the impact of various atomic bomb effects--blast, heat, flash radiation (prompt effects from gamma and neutron radiation), and radiation from radioactive substances--they concluded that it seems highly plausible that a great many persons were subjected to lethal and sub-lethal dosages of radiation in areas where direct blast effects were possibly non-lethal. It was probable, therefore, that radiation would produce increments to the death rate and even more probable that a great number of cases of sub-lethal exposures to radiation have been suffered.[74], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. When he learned of the atomic bombing from the Domei News Agency, Togo believed that it was time to give up and advised the cabinet that the atomic attack provided the occasion for Japan to surrender on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. Tsar Bomba's yield is estimated to have been roughly 57 megatons, about 1,500 times the combined power of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki . A collectionoftranscribed documents is Gene Dannens Atomic Bomb: Decision. For a print collection of documents, see Dennis Merrill ed.,Documentary History of the Truman Presidency: Volume I: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan(University Publications of America, 1995). Information from the late John Taylor, National Archives. Historians Herbert Feis and Gar Alperovitz raised searching questions about the first use of nuclear weapons and their broader political and diplomatic implications. By the summer, once production plants would be at work, he proposed that the War Department take over the project. It is commonly believed that the awesome devastation of the atomic bombs caused the Japanese government to capitulate. The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 AM on August 6th, and the second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki on August 9th at 11:02 AM. See also Malloy (2008), at 116-117, including the argument that 1) Stimson was deceiving himself by accepting the notion that a vital war plant surrounded by workers houses was a legitimate military target, and 2) that Groves was misleading Stimson by withholding the Target Committees conclusions that the target would be a city center. See Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 541-542. US bombings on Hiroshima & Nagasaki were not to end WWII but to - RT Two days later an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated . Despite its. The author recommended issuing the declaration just before the bombardment program [against Japan] reaches its peak. Next to that suggestion, Stimson or someone in his immediate office, wrote S1, implying that the atomic bombing of Japanese cities was highly relevant to the timing issue. Reasons Why the U.S. Explain your answer. See Bernstein (1995), 142. Early the next day, General Anami committed suicide. Beginning in September 1940, U.S. military intelligence began to decrypt routinely, under the Purple code-name, the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Copy of How Should We Remember the Dropping of the A-Bomb? Docs.pdf Would the Soviet declaration of war have been enough to compel Tokyo to admit defeat? Bix, Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War,Japan Focus. [57], How influential the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and later Nagasaki compared to the impact of the Soviet declaration of war were to the Japanese decision to surrender has been the subject of controversy among historians. [20], Harrison-Bundy Files relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1108 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), File 77: "Interim Committee - International Control.". [40]. The warning would draw on the draft State-War proclamation to Japan; presumably, the one criticized by Hull (above) which included language about the emperor. Was the Hiroshima atomic bomb a measure to intimidate - Russian Best [58]. At the outset, three possibilities were envisioned: radiological warfare, a power source for submarines and ships, and explosives. Alperovitz, Bernstein, and Sherwin made new contributions as did other historians, social scientists, and journalists including Richard B. Frank, Herbert Bix, Sadao Asada, Kai Bird, Robert James Maddox, Sean Malloy, Robert P. Newman, Robert S. Norris, Tsuyoshi Hagesawa, and J. Samuel Walker.[4]. If Putin goes nuclear, Biden has a stark menu of options - NBC News Suite 701, Gelman Library The discussion of available targets included Hiroshima, the largest untouched target not on the 21st Bomber Command priority list. But other targets were under consideration, including Yawata (northern Kyushu), Yokohama, and Tokyo (even though it was practically rubble.) The problem was that the Air Force had a policy of laying waste to Japans cities which created tension with the objective of reserving some urban targets for nuclear destruction. Some historians believe President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb in order to intimidate the Soviet Union whereas others believe it was a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional surrender. What Hirohito accepted, however, was a proposal by the extreme nationalist Kiichiro Hiranuma which drew upon prevailing understandings of the kokutai: the mythical notion that the emperor was a living god. [14]. Atomic Bomb Dbq; Atomic Bomb Dbq. The peace party, however, deftly maneuvered to break the stalemate by persuading a reluctant emperor to intervene. To a great extent the documents selected for this compilation have been declassified for years, even decades; the most recent declassifications were in the 1990s. In light of those instructions, Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki agreed that the Supreme War Council should meet the next day. On August 6th, 1945 at 8:15 A.M. the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Noteworthy publications since 2015 includeMichael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, eds., The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Sheldon Garon, On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the United States Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in the Second World War, Past and Present 247 (2020): 235-271; Katherine E. McKinney, Scott Sagan, and Allen S. Weiner, Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76 (2020); Gregg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood and America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (New York: The New Press, 2020); Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020); Neil J. Sullivan, The Prometheus Bomb: The Manhattan Project and Government in the Dark (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2016); Alex Wellerstein; Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming, 2020), a memoir by a Hiroshima survivor, Taniguchi Sumitero, The Atomic Bomb on My Back: A Life Story of Survival and Activism (Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2020), and a collection of interviews, Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020). This document is a typed-up version of the hand-written original (which Browns family has provided to Clemson University). In reply, Roosevelt wrote a short memo endorsing Bushs ideas as long as absolute secrecy could be maintained. Did Truman drop the atomic bombs to "impress" the Soviets? The weapon is in the pit covered with canvas. The traditional argument was that Stalin was angry because Truman did not tell him about the Atomic Bomb. [19]. But how exactly did the bomb help start the Cold War? As for targeting, however, he had a more significant role. [51] Togos private position was more nuanced than Suzukis; he told Sato that we are adopting a policy of careful study. That Stalin had not signed the declaration (Truman and Churchill did not ask him to) led to questions about the Soviet attitude. If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an atomic diplomacy capability as a bonus? The reason for why America dropped the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a contentious, emotive and particularly relevant issue, there are lots of speculations, however these are usually based on lies such as the "to save 500,000 American soldiers" which is clearly untrue. The 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is an occasion for sober reflection. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. Pumpkins referred to bright orange, pumpkin-shaped high explosive bombsshaped like the Fat Man implosion weapon--used for bombing run test missions. Unaware of the findings of Health Division scientists, Groves and Rhea saw the injuries as nothing more than good thermal burns.[75], Documents 94A-B: General Farrell Surveys the Destruction, RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 17, Envelope B, A month after the attacks Groves deputy, General Farrell, traveled to Japan to see for himself the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For useful discussion of this meeting and the other Target Committee meetings, see Norris, 382-386. With Prime Minister Suzuki presiding, each of the ministers had a chance to state their views directly to Hirohito. Nor does it include any of the interviews, documents prepared after the events, and post-World War II correspondence, etc. Eisenhowers son John cast doubts about the memoir statements, although he attested that when the general first learned about the bomb he was downcast. Social critic Dwight MacDonald published trenchant criticisms immediately after Hiroshima-Nagasaki; seePolitics Past: Essays in Political Criticism(New York: Viking, 1972), 169-180. Meanwhile, junior Army officers plotted a coup to thwart the plans for surrender. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese people became commonplace. That the Soviets had made no responses to Sato's request for a meeting was understood as a bad sign; Yonai realized that the government had to prepare for the possibility that Moscow might not help. There were battles and military posts in surprising places. RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein). More than seventy years after the end of World War II, the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains controversial. [38], Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, Magic Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. 961 Words4 Pages. Zenshiro Hoshina, a senior naval official, attended the conference and prepared a detailed account. That the original copy is missing from Berias papers suggests that he may have passed it on to Stalin before the latter left for the Potsdam conference. [28], In a report to Stimson, Oppenheimer and colleagues on the scientific advisory panel--Arthur Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Enrico Fermitacitly disagreed with the report of the Met Lab scientists. Truth or Consequences - Los Angeles Times - News from California, the The US bombed Japan in 1945 to demonstrate its power to the USSR Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog. For the distances, see Norris, 407. That possibility would be difficult if the United States made first military use of the weapon. Pogue only cites the JCS transcript of the meeting; presumably, an interview with a participant was the source of the McCloy quote. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), This shows the "Little Boy" weapon in the pit ready for loading into the bomb bay of the Enola Gay. The Soviet source reported that the weight of the device was 3 tons (which was in the ball park) and forecast an explosive yield of 5 kilotons. Obama in Hiroshima: Why the U.S. Dropped the Bomb in 1945 | Time How the Hiroshima Bombing Ended WWIIAnd Started the Cold War - HISTORY The U.S believed the bomb was the only way to send out a warning.When the bombs were dropped on Japan, it was world shocking news which was what the U.S wanted from the start. Read more, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NWWashington, DC 20004-3027, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project. Did America Have To Drop the Bomb?Not to End the War, But Truman Wanted For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. John HerseysHiroshima, first published in the New Yorkerin 1946 encouraged unsettled readers to question the bombings while church groups and some commentators, most prominently Norman Cousins, explicitly criticized them. Sadao Asada, The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japans Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration,Pacific Historical Review67 (1998): 101-148; Bix, 523; Frank, 348; Hasegawa, 298. By citing an inflated casualty figure, the president was giving a trial run for the rationale that would become central to official and semi-official discourse about the bombings during the decades ahead. We will do our utmost to complete the war to the bitter end. That, Bix argues, represents a missed opportunity to end the war and spare the Japanese from continued U.S. aerial attacks. What was at stake was the definition of the kokutai (national policy). [68], George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein), While Truman had rescinded the order to drop nuclear bombs, the war was not yet over and uncertainty about Japans next step motivated war planner General John E. Hull (assistant chief of staff for the War Departments Operations Division), and one of Groves associates, Colonel L. E. Seeman, to continue thinking about further nuclear use and its relationship to a possible invasion of Japan. The task of compilation involved consultation of primary sources at the National Archives, mainly in Manhattan Project files held in the records of the Army Corps of Engineers, Record Group 77, but also in the archival records of the National Security Agency. The president, however, wrote in long-hand a text that that might approximate what he said that evening. [3] The NASM exhibit was drastically scaled-down but historians and journalist continued to engage in the debate. For Stimsons article, see The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,Harpers194 (February 1947): 97-107. Whether this meant that Truman was getting ready for a confrontation with Stalin over Eastern Europe and other matters has also been the subject of debate. The Truman Library has published a helpful collection of archival documents, some of which are included in the present collection. With respect to the point about assembling the weapons, Groves and Stimson informed Truman that the first gun-type weapon should be ready about 1 August 1945 while an implosion weapon would also be available that month. The reference to our contact may refer to Bank of International Settlements economist Pers Jacobbson who was in touch with Japanese representatives to the Bank as well as Gero von Gvernitz, then on the staff, but with non-official cover, of OSS station chief Allen Dulles. Today, historians continue to debate this decision. The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan's Decision Barton J. Bernstein has suggested that Trumans comment about all those kids showed his belated recognition that the bomb caused mass casualties and that the target was not purely a military one.[64]. Members of the Supreme War Councilthe Big Six[62]wanted the reply to Potsdam to include at least four conditions (e.g., no occupation, voluntary disarmament); they were willing to fight to the finish. [46]. An importanton-line collection focuses on the air-raids of Japanese cities and bases, providing valuable context for the atomic attacks. This point is central to Alperovitzs thesis that top U.S. officials recognized a two-step logic: relaxing unconditional surrender and a Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Japans surrender without the use of the bomb. By James Rothwell 5 October 2022 7:25am. Truman, already on his way to Europe, never saw the petition.[35]. What did senior officials know about the effects of atomic bombs before they were first used. Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945. [34], On the eve of the Potsdam conference, Leo Szilard circulated a petition as part of a final effort to discourage military use of the bomb. With direct access to the documents, readers may develop their own answers to the questions raised above. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-AEC), The polar cap of the "Fat Man" weapon being sprayed with plastic spray paint in front of Assembly Building Number 2. NYTimes Tsar Bomba | History, Location, Megatons, & Facts | Britannica [79]. Another statementFini Japs when that [Soviet entry] comes abouthas also been the subject of controversy over whether it meant that Truman thought it possible that the war could end without an invasion of Japan.[45]. Stimsons diary mentions meetings with Eisenhower twice in the weeks before Hiroshima, but without any mention of a dissenting Eisenhower statement (and Stimsons diaries are quite detailed on atomic matters). To this day, this is the largest nuclear weapon detonated. Moreover, he may not have known that the third bomb was still in the United States and would not be available for use for nearly another week. Hirohito asked the leadership to accept the Note, which he believed was well intentioned on the matter of the national polity (by leaving open a possible role for the Emperor). On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the National Security Archive updates its 2005 publication of the most comprehensive on-line collection of declassified U.S. government documents on the first use of the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. Moreover, the role of an invasion of Japan in U.S. planning remains a matter of debate, with some arguing that the bombings spared many thousands of American lives that otherwise would have been lost in an invasion. The embassy teams included GRU members Mikhail Ivanov and German Sergeev in August, and TASS correspondent Anatoliy Varshavskiy, former acting military attach Mikhail Romanov, and Naval apparatus employee Sergey Kikenin in September. The notion that the atomic bombs caused . Something went wrong. 24, tab D, Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelts death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Projectfrom briefingsbySecretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves (who went through the back door to escape the watchful press). How and when it should be used had been the subject of high-level debate for months. Thus, Groves and others would try to suppress findings about radioactive effects, although that was a losing proposition.[76]. The combination of the first bomb and the Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Tokyos surrender. Bernstein, however, notes that Bard later denied that he had a meeting with Truman and that White House appointment logs support that claim. On August 6, 1945, just days after the Potsdam Conference ended, the U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb known as "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The releasing of the atomic bombs to intimidate the Soviets in the years after World War Two is a valid claim because the . None of these sections are about damage to human beings. Maddox, 102; Alperovitz, 269-270; Hasegawa, 152-153. By contrast, Maddox argues that Nagasaki was necessary so that Japanese hardliners could not minimize the first explosion or otherwise explain it away. Pages 12 through 15 of those notes refer to the atomic bombing of Japan: You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam.