Brown Papers, box 10, folder 12, Byrnes, James F.: Potsdam, Minutes, July-August 1945, Walter Brown, who served as special assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes, kept a diary which provided considerable detail on the Potsdam conference and the growing concerns about Soviet policy among top U.S. officials. The proposed script for the Smithsonian exhibition can be seen at Philipe Nobile. This latest iteration of the collection includes corrections, a few minor revisions, and updated footnotes to take into account recently published secondary literature. Conflict in the Pacific began well before the official start of World War II. Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent the point of no return in the history of world politics: they mark the dramatic culmination and end of the war, while symbolizing the beginning of an era of nuclear fear. Hiroshima - view of Hiroshima Castle and surroundings; [2]. [3] The NASM exhibit was drastically scaled-down but historians and journalist continued to engage in the debate. [15]. a. Despite the interest of some senior officials such as Joseph Grew, Henry Stimson, and John J. McCloy in modifying the concept of unconditional surrender so that the Japanese could be sure that the emperor would be preserved, it remained a highly contentious subject. Thus, he wanted Roosevelts instructions as to whether the project should be vigorously pushed throughout. Unlike the pilot plant proposal described above, Bush described a real production order for the bomb, at an estimated cost of a serious figure: $400 million, which was an optimistic projection given the eventual cost of $1.9 billion. [27], Commenting on another memorandum by Herbert Hoover, George A. Lincoln discussed war aims, face-saving proposals for Japan, and the nature of the proposed declaration to the Japanese government, including the problem of defining unconditional surrender. Lincoln argued against modifying the concept of unconditional surrender: if it is phrased so as to invite negotiation he saw risks of prolonging the war or a compromise peace. J. Samuel Walker has observed that those risks help explain why senior officials were unwilling to modify the demand for unconditional surrender. 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. To keep his pledge at Yalta to enter the war against Japan and to secure the territorial concessions promised at the conference (e.g., Soviet annexation of the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin and a Soviet naval base at Port Arthur, etc.) See for example, Bernstein (1995), 140-141. [40], L.D. Correspondence,International Security16 (Winter 1991/1992): 214-221. This account, prepared by Director of Information Shimomura, conveys the drama of the occasion (as well as his interest in shifting the blame for the debacle to the Army). After Suzuki gave the war party--Umeda, Toyoda, and Anami--an opportunity to present their arguments against accepting the Byrnes Note, he asked the emperor to speak. Suite 701, Gelman Library According to Frank, the actual total of deaths due to the atomic bombs will never be known, but the huge number ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people. [43], Barton J. Bernstein, Truman at Potsdam: His Secret Diary, Foreign Service Journal, July/August 1980, excerpts, used with authors permission.[44]. A blog of the History and Public Policy Program. On August 9, 1945, another bomber was in route to Japan, only this time they were heading for Nagasaki with Fat Man, another atomic bomb. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. His implicit preference, however, was for non-use; he wrote that it would be better to take U.S. casualties in conquering Japan than to bring upon the world the tragedy of unrestrained competitive production of this material.. Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons-- to intimidate the Soviets--or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end? He believed that casualties would not be more than those produced by the battle for Luzon, some 31,000. The Caribbean and Central America, Greenland, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands, Iraq, Syria, Burma, and the Arctic are a few of the little known places that were involved. According to Bix, Hirohito's language helped to transform him from a war to a peace leader, from a cold, aloof monarch to a human being who cared for his people but what chiefly motivated him was his desire to save a politically empowered throne with himself on it.[70], Hirohito said that he would make a recording of the surrender announcement so that the nation could hear it. 8 devine street north haven, ct what is berth preference in irctc atomic bomb dropped to intimidate russia. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), A "Fat Man" test unit being raised from the pit into the bomb bay of a B-29 for bombing practice during the weeks before the attack on Nagasaki. The second cable on 4 August shows that the schedule advanced to late in the evening of 5 August. 153-154, 164 (n)). The panel argued for early military use but not before informing key allies about the atomic project to open a dialogue on how we can cooperate in making this development contribute to improved international relations., Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal Files, 1942-1945, box 198 334 JCS (2-2-45) Mtg 186th-194th. The destruction was. Togo could not persuade the cabinet, however, and the Army wanted to delay any decisions until it had learned what had happened to Hiroshima. As these cables indicate, reports of unfavorable weather delayed the plan. 2 Pt. [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. According to a 2006 study by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, while John F. Kennedy was campaigning in 1960 on the idea that there was a "missile gap" between the United States and Russia . However, as soon as the Allied occupation of Japan came into force on September 19, the strict press code imposed by the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, as well as the above-mentioned self-censorship imposed by the Japanese press, caused a delay in the way the atomic bombings were reported upon in Japan. The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki features a letter written by Luis Alvarez, a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, on August 6, 1945, after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The discussion of weapons effects centered on blast damage models; radiation and other effects were overlooked. How familiar was President Truman with the concepts that led target planners chose major cities as targets? Willingness to accept even the destruction of the Army and Navy rather than surrender inspired the military coup that unfolded and failed during the night of 14 August. To help readers who are less familiar with the debates, commentary on some of the documents will point out, although far from comprehensively, some of the ways in which they have been interpreted. This document is General Curtis LeMays report on the firebombing of Tokyo--the most destructive air raid in history--which burned down over 16 square miles of the city, killed up to 100,000 civilians (the official figure was 83,793), injured more than 40,000, and made over 1 million homeless. 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. One of the visitors mentioned at the beginning of the entry was Iwao Yamazaki who became Minister of the Interior in the next cabinet. For Hirohito' surrender speech--the actual broadcastand a translation--seeJapan Times,August2015. The weekly illustrated magazine Asahi Graph also published a brief article on August 25 titled What is an atomic bomb?. This includes a number of formerly top secret summaries of intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications, which enable interested readers to form their own judgments about the direction of Japanese diplomacy in the weeks before the atomic bombings. Both agreed that the possibility of a nuclear partnership with Moscow would depend on quid pro quos: the settlement of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, and Manchurian problems.. According to Hasegawa, this was an important, even startling, conversation: it showed that Stalin took the atomic bomb seriously; moreover, he disclosed that the Soviets were working on their own atomic program. Former Secretary of War Henry Stimson found the criticisms troubling and published an influential justification for the attacks inHarpers. [30]. We picked a couple of cities where war work was the principle industry, and dropped bombs. The war had shown that the Japanese were fighting for the Emperor who convinced them that it was better to die than surrender. He also points out that Truman and his colleagues had no idea what was behind Japanese peace moves, only that Suzuki had declared that he would ignore the Potsdam Declaration. [27]. Fax: 816-268-8295. They note large scale destruction of the city and damage to buildings (the hospital, gas storage tanks, the Mitsubishi plant, etc.) On the August 6, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, by the United States. Eisenhower and McCloys Views on the Bombings and Atomic Weapons, National Security Archive In fact, after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese militarys Information Division, in charge of media control, intended to announce that the bomb was an atomic one. For some historians, the urban fire-bombing strategy facilitated atomic targeting by creating a new moral context, in which earlier proscriptions against intentional targeting of civilians had eroded. According to Robert S. Norris, this was the fateful decision to turn over the atomic project to military control.[8]. In this memorandum, Norstad reviewed the complex requirements for preparing B-29s and their crew for successful nuclear strikes. I am lost! [4]. See Janet Farrell Brodie, Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,The Journal of Social History48 (2015): 842-864. [44]. [5]. The notion that the atomic bombs caused . To keep the secret, Bush wanted to avoid a ruinous appropriations request to Congress and asked Roosevelt to ask Congress for the necessary discretionary funds. Some may associate this statement with one that Eisenhower later recalled making to Stimson. [23] It is possible that Truman was informed of such discussions and their conclusions, although he clung to a belief that the prospective targets were strictly military. Bernstein, Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender,Diplomatic History19 (1995), 146-147; Alperovitz, 415; Frank, 246. Open Document. Barton J. Bernstein, "'Reconsidering the 'Atomic General': Leslie R. Groves,"The Journal of Military History67 (July 2003): 883-920. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. The message that the bombings sent to the world was that whoever possessed those special weapons would prove to be politically superior, thus turning such weapons into the passport to survive and potentially win the Cold War. According to Herbert Bix, for months Hirohito had believed that the outlook for a negotiated peace could be improved if Japan fought and won one last decisive battle, thus, he delayed surrender, continuing to procrastinate until the bomb was dropped and the Soviets attacked.[52]. Also still debated is the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, compared to the atomic bombings, on the Japanese decision to surrender. The Japanese Search for Soviet Mediation, VII. For detailed background on the Army Air Forces incendiary bombing planning, see Schaffer (1985) 107-127. The "Tsar Bomba," as it became known, was 10 times more powerful than all the munitions used during World War II. In the surprise attack, Japan sunk several ships, destroyed hundreds of planes and ended thousands of lives. The U.S. Marine Band provided music for the dinner and for the variety show that was performed by members of the press. If you experience a barrier that affects your ability to access content on this page, let us know via ourContact form. To this day, this is the largest nuclear weapon detonated. In contrast to Alperovitzs argument that Forrestal tried to modify the terms of unconditional surrender to give the Japanese an out, Frank sees Forrestals account of the Sato-Togo exchange as additional evidence that senior U.S. officials understood that Tokyo was not on the cusp of surrender. [49], Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, box 19, 29 July 1945, Having been asked by Truman to join the delegation to the Potsdam conference, former-Ambassador Davies sat at the table with the Big Three throughout the discussions. By contrast, Richard Frank takes note of the estimates depiction of the Japanese armys terms for peace: for surrender to be acceptable to the Japanese army it would be necessary for the military leaders to believe that it would not entail discrediting the warrior tradition and that it would permit the ultimate resurgence of a military in Japan. That, Frank argues, would have been unacceptable to any Allied policy maker.[33], Record Group 59, Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.0011 PW (PE)/7-1645. The outspoken Szilard was not involved in operational work on the bomb and General Groves kept him under surveillance but Met Lab director Arthur Compton found Szilard useful to have around. . Targeting Germany was rejected because the Germans were considered more likely to secure knowledge from a defective weapon than the Japanese. With Japan close to capitulation, Truman asserted presidential control and ordered a halt to atomic bombings. Despite its. If Russia used a nuclear weapon of any type, "I expect (the president) to say we're in a new situation, and the U.S. will directly enter the war against Russia to stop this government that has . As noted, some documents relating to the origins of the Manhattan Project have been included in addition to entries from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries and translations of a few Soviet documents, among other items. Norris also noted that Trumans decision amounted to a decision not to override previous plans to use the bomb.[12], Henry Stimson Diary, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress), Record Group 200, Papers of General Leslie R. Groves, Correspondence 1941-1970, box 3, F, RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. [56]. The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a total death toll of around 140,000. The parts that are highlighted in the report with a line on the left-hand margin are noteworthy. In fact, after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese military's Information Division, in charge of media control, intended to announce that the bomb was an atomic one. Additional bombs will be delivery on the [targets] as soon as made ready by the project staff., RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. Until 1949, when the USSR succeeded in testing its own bomb, the Soviet Unions knowledge of the effects of radiation was indeed very poor. The first Japanese surrender offer was intercepted shortly before Tokyo broadcast it. Public Reaction to the Atomic Bomb and World Affairs, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, April 1947. 76 (copy from microfilm), Physicists Leo Szilard and James Franck, a Nobel Prize winner, were on the staff of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, a cover for the Manhattan Project program to produce fuel for the bomb. The intention was to force Japan to surrender, thus avoiding a long war in the Pacific. What concepts did war planners use to select targets? Something went wrong. Included are documents on the early stages of the U.S. atomic bomb project, Army Air Force GeneralCurtis LeMays reporton the firebombing of Tokyo (March 1945), Secretary of War HenryStimsons requestsfor modification of unconditional surrender terms,Soviet documentsrelating to the events, excerpts from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries mentioned above, and selections from the diaries of Walter J. Documents 67A-B:Early High-level Reactions to the Hiroshima Bombing, Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed. [36]. [57]. editors,Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), xxx-xxv; Sherwin, 210-215. Such details and information may have been useful for the Soviet atomic bomb project, pushing the internal narrative that the USSR needed its own weapon as soon as possible. For more on the debate over Japans surrender, see Hasegawas important edited book,The End of the Pacific War: A Reappraisal(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), with major contributions by Hasegawa, Holloway, Bernstein, and Hatano. The atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Moreover, recent significant contributions to the scholarly literature have been taken into account. Photo restoration by TX Unlimited, San Francisco, A nuclear weapon of the "Little Boy" type, the uranium gun-type detonated over Hiroshima. According to what Byrnes told Brown, Truman, Stimson, and Leahy favored accepting the Japanese note, but Byrnes objected that the United States should go [no] further than we were willing to go at Potsdam. Stimsons account of the meeting noted Byrnes concerns (troubled and anxious) about the Japanese note and implied that he (Stimson) favored accepting it, but did not picture the debate as starkly as Browns's did. Since the end of WWII, the popular view in the U.S. has been that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki precipitated Japan's surrender on August 15. [62]. which was the world's first atomic bomb to be used in welfare. 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). [40]. Presumably the clarified warning would be issued prior to the use of the bomb; if the Japanese persisted in fighting then the full force of our new weapons should be brought to bear and a heavier warning would be issued backed by the actual entrance of the Russians in the war. Possibly, as Malloy has argued, Stimson was motivated by concerns about using the bomb against civilians and cities, but his latest proposal would meet resistance at Potsdam from Byrnes and other. McCloy was part of a drafting committee at work on the text of a proclamation to Japan to be signed by heads of state at the forthcoming Potsdam conference. [65], Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, Transcript/Draft B. 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. That is, the United States could possibly be in danger if the Nazis acquired more knowledge about how to build a bomb. [5] While the editor has a point of view on the issues, to the greatest extent possible he has tried to not let that influence document selection, e.g., by selectively withholding or including documents that may buttress one point of view or the other. Library of Congress . If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? [41]. With the material that follows, the National Security Archive publishes the most comprehensive on-line collection to date of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. Third update - August 7, 2017, For more information, contact: [19], Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, box 17, 21 May 1945, While officials at the Pentagon continued to look closely at the problem of atomic targets, President Truman, like Stimson, was thinking about the diplomatic implications of the bomb. Schaffer,Wings of Judgment, 143-146. [81], Where he had taken significant responsibility was by making a decision to stop the atomic bombings just before the Japanese surrender, thereby asserting presidential control over nuclear weapons. Tsar Bomba, (Russian: "King of Bombs") , byname of RDS-220, also called Big Ivan, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. Women and children had been taught how to kill with basic weapons. As Russia wages war in Ukraine, experts have described what would happen in a nuclear strike, which is unlikely. [43]. 5, This review of Japanese capabilities and intentions portrays an economy and society under tremendous strain; nevertheless, the ground component of the Japanese armed forces remains Japans greatest military asset. Alperovitz sees statements in this estimate about the impact of Soviet entry into the war and the possibility of a conditional surrender involving survival of the emperor as an institution as more evidence that the policymakers saw alternatives to nuclear weapons use. Robert J. Maddox has cited this document to support his argument that top U.S. officials recognized that Japan was not close to surrender because Japan was trying to stave off defeat. In a close analysis of this document, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who is also skeptical of claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, argues that each of the three possibilities proposed by Weckerling contained an element of truth, but none was entirely correct. Concerned that President Roosevelt had an overly cavalier belief about the possibility of maintaining a post-war Anglo-American atomic monopoly, Bush and Conant recognized the limits of secrecy and wanted to disabuse senior officials of the notion that an atomic monopoly was possible. This account hints at discussion of the atomic bomb (certain other matters), but no documents disclose that part of the meeting. Groves did not mention this but around the time he wrote this the Manhattan Project had working at its far-flung installations over 125,000 people ; taking into account high labor turnover some 485,000 people worked on the project (1 out of every 250 people in the country at that time). A modern-day nuclear bomb . As the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows, nuclear threats are real, present, and dangerous. Historian believed that there are two different possibilities. Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard joined those scientists who sought to avoid military use of the bomb; he proposed a preliminary warning so that the United States would retain its position as a great humanitarian nation. Alperovitz cites evidence that Bard discussed his proposal with Truman who told him that he had already thoroughly examined the problem of advanced warning. After the first minute of dropping Fat Man, 39,000 men, women and children were killed. were the atomic strikes necessary primarily to avert an invasion of Japan in November 1945? Upper image - July 24, 1945, photo by 28th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron The destruction of two cities and their civilians merely to intimidate Russia seems to be an overtly extreme and vicious act that no rational person would deem just. It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities, and I still think that they were and are. Togo asked Sato to try to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov as soon as possible to sound out the Russian attitude on the declaration as well as Japans end-the-war initiative. [42]. With the Japanese surrender announcement not yet in, President Truman believed that another atomic bombing might become necessary. Interested readers will continue to absorb the fascinating historical literature on the subject. 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. To get production going, Bush wanted to establish a carefully chosen engineering group to study plans for possible production. This was the basis of the Top Policy Group, or the S-1 Committee, which Bush and James B. Conant quickly established. Private collections were also important, such as the Henry L. Stimson Papers held at Yale University (although available on microfilm, for example, at the Library of Congress) and the papers of W. Averell Harriman at the Library of Congress. [23]. Historians Herbert Feis and Gar Alperovitz raised searching questions about the first use of nuclear weapons and their broader political and diplomatic implications.
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