Rerum Novarum: 08/02/2020

"One From the Vault" Dept.
(Revisiting Material From Years Past)

This thread is a Vault Flashback in general content if not in precise composition. I am seeing the Doug Long sources trotted out by the garden variety virtue signalling sorts as is not uncommon this time of year. As I have responded to these sources in other more polemical contexts, I decided to abridge the prior material, reformulate it in a more irenic fashion, and present it anew. New phrasings to the material below will be in brackets. New footnote material not in the prior version will be in purple font. I will not indicate where prior material was removed. Nor will I link to the prior material here as I have no interest in engaging anew prior timewasters uninterested in genuine dialogue. My sources will again be in darkblue font. Without further ado...

The best and most obvious place from which to start this examination in my humble opinion is with the Supreme Commander of the Pacific himself one General Douglas MacArthur. Doug Long starts his quote-fest by quoting from American Caesar which was William Manchester’s well written biography on the man. As I happen to own the very same William Manchester biography of General MacArthur being cited, I will deal with that source first. Starting on page 510, the following is outlined after discussing the inter-service rivalry between MacArthur, Le May, and Nimitz, the following words from pages 510-511 of American Caesar set the stage for putting Doug Long’s quote into proper context:

Hirohito’s generals, grimly preparing for the invasion, had not abandoned hope of saving their homeland. Although a few strategic islands had been lost, they told each other, most of their conquests, including the Chinese heartland, were firmly in their hands, and the bulk of their army was undefeated. Even now they could scarcely believe that any foe would have the audacity to attempt landings in Japan itself. Allied troops, they boasted, would face the fiercest resistance in history. Over ten thousand kamikaze planes were readied for “Ketsu-Go,” Operation Decision. Behind the beaches, enormous connecting underground caves had been stocked with caches of food and thousands of tons of ammunition. Manning the nation’s ground defenses were 2,350,000 regular soldiers, 250,000 garrison troops, and 32,000,000 civilian militiamen –a total of 34,600,000, more than the combined armies of the United States, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany. All males aged fifteen to sixty, and all females ages seventeen to forty-five, had been conscripted. Their weapons included ancient bronze cannon, muzzle loaded muskets, bamboo spears, and bows and arrows. Even little children had been trained to strap explosives around their waists, roll under tank treads, and blow themselves up. They were called “Sherman’s carpets.”

This was the enemy the Pentagon had learned to fear and hate –a country of fanatics dedicated to hara-kiri, determined to slay as many invaders as possible as they went down fighting. [William Manchester: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 510-511)]

From there the book discusses a dovish contingent that was also present. According to the book (pg. 511) everyone MacArthur talked to in the War Department believed that Japan could hold out for at least two more years. From there, the book quotes some Japanese persons with retrospect statements about how “Japan was finished” all of that is towards the end of page 511 leading into page 512 where the citation from Long is made. I will interact with these quotes shortly but first, here is the passage from pg. 512 as Long quotes it:

"...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary." [William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.]

Before supplying the text after the quotation for proper context, I cannot avoid mentioning here that the quote given represents equal parts MacArthur’s outlook and the opinion of the biographer. The latter gives the assertion that "...[h]ad the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary” which clearly is a normative argument and thus useless in a discussion of objective facts. Sure it is possible that the bombings may not have been necessary if MacArthur’s advice had been followed but was it probable -that is the question. And in response to the latter I must state for the record that I highly doubt it.

Interestingly enough, Long does not quote the paragraphs immediately following what he does cite which state the following:

In an implacable mood, then, successive versions of “Downfall”, the code name for the invasion of Dai Nippon, were drafted in Washington, and revised in Manila. All of them assumed the worst: that Russian support would be unavailable, that B-29 raids and a naval blockade of Dai Nippon would not be decisive, and that the Manhattan project (of whose existence MacArthur and Nimitz were unaware until late July) would fail to produce practical nuclear fission devices. Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945, however, guaranteed masses of veteran Allied infantrymen. Thirty divisions were on their way to the Philippines from the ETO. In June, there were 1,400,000 GI’s ready to stage from the archipelago; another 1,000,000 were expected by December. Courtney Hodges, commander of the U.S. First Army already had arrived in Manila but MacArthur still preferred his own field commanders. “Downfall” would begin with “Operation Olympic”, a frontal assault on Kyushu on November 1, 1945, whose purpose would be to secure, in the General’s words “airfields to cover the main assault on Honshu.” The second phase, “Operation Coronet,” the landing on Honshu, would follow on March 1, 1946. He himself probably with Eichelbarger as his chief of staff would lead that.

He had no illusions about the savagery that lay ahead –he told Stimson that Downfall would “cost over a million casualties to American forces alone”—but he was confident that with the tanks from Europe he could outmaneuver the defenders on the great Kanto Plain before Tokyo. Whether he would be as adroit with Eisenhower’s generals –not to mention Ike himself- was another matter. Granting an interview to Bert Andrews of the New York Herald Tribune, he said that the ETO commanders had made “every mistake that supposedly intelligent men could make,” that “the North African operation was absolutely useless,” that “the European strategy was to hammer stupidly against the enemy’s strongest points” and that if he had been given “just a portion of the force” sent to North Africa in 1942, he “could have retaken the Philippines in three months because by then the Japanese were not ready.” [William Manchester: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512-513]

Now then, having established the sitz im leben of Long’s quotation, let us examine the statements made on the preceding page about the dove contingent. First of all, it bears noting that MacArthur and Nimitz were not aware of the Manhattan Project until late July. The short gap in time between their awareness of the bomb's existence and its actual usage was therefore at most three weeks time. According to Louis Morton's writing The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, MacArthur and Nimitz were told of the atomic bombing after July 25, 1945:

In orders issued on 25 July and approved by Stimson and Marshall, Spaatz was ordered to drop the "first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki." He was instructed also to deliver a copy of this order personally to MacArthur and Nimitz. [Louis Morton: The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb pg. 514 (c. 1958)]

The reason I make the assertion that MacArthur and Nimitz were told of the atomic bombing after July 25, 1945 is because with the greatest likelihood -because of the degree of secrecy that surrounded the Manhattan project- that this was the first time that either MacArthur or Nimitz heard about the existence of the bomb itself. If that theory is correct, than they heard about the bomb either on the 25th or (perhaps) the 26th of July in 1945. That would mean that they would have heard of it at the most with twelve days to go before the actual drop on Hiroshima. Considering that both General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz were heavily into planning strategery for the November 1, 1945 Operation Olympic invasion at that time --and what would have been the largest land and sea invasion in history: easily dwarfing Normandy-- they were unlikely to have put much thinking into the use of the bomb and the ramifications involved in said usage at that time.

What was also definitely not correct is the assessment of Japan’s lack of capacity for making war. At this point, we will consider this position as mentioned in the Manchester biography of General MacArthur. To start with, their “production was finished” and they could only “produce war materials for a few days more”, had their “factories bombed out of existence” and had “no raw materials” as Japanese industrialist Ryozo Asano is quoted as saying in May of 1945 (American Caesar pg. 511), then how were the Japanese able to continue the building of carriers and other warships in Hiroshima, various planes and other munitions in Nagasaki which we knew that they were doing?

If they were so incapable of production as Ryozo Asano claimed, then those wily Japanese must have been building their ships from May through August of 1945 out of some kind of pixiedust. Further still, how could they be in the process of producing at that time a jet powered fighter craft that (if they had later managed to put it into service in late 1945 for dealing with the impending US invasion) would have had easy pickings from our convoys of military ships due to its ability to run rings around the best planes that the US military had in service at the time?

Obviously this industrialist did not know what they were talking about viz. the whole of Japan and its capabilities since Hiroshima had not even been touched by bombs in the war nor was (to my knowledge) Nagasaki. Indeed, those targets were chosen not only because they constituted complex military industrial nerve centers of the island’s defense and production plants for the armaments to make war but also because of their pristine conditions viz. the effects of the bombings: they were untouched by any of our bombing runs. This was to show just how formidable this new weapon was –though even as I noted earlier, they knew it would be effective but not to the extent that it actually was.

Considering all of these factors, I am making an educated guess here and presuming that the aforementioned industrialist was from Tokyo, which had been decimated of its military production capacities at the time. If I am right about that, then they accurately assessed things as they were in Tokyo viz. military capacities for production but they had little to no knowledge of the capacities of production plants in cities in the south of Japan.

For more on the above Doug Long, the following observations from “Hiroshima_facts” –an internet interlocutor I will occasionally cite for an alternate take on these matters—is of interest: His words will be in blue font where applicable.

MacArthur's biographer seems ignorant of the reality of the surrender, in which Japan accepted our terms unconditionally, and in which there was no condition guaranteeing imperial reign.

The above points with regards to the surrender are a matter of record and are frankly not even disputable.

We did insist on a condition giving MacArthur the power to depose the Emperor at will though...

The biographer does note that in American Caesar interestingly enough which only underscores how those who make the “retaining-the-Emperor-would-have-resulted-in-an-early-surrender” argument missed the proverbial boat. If they were so concerned about the Emperor –and if they made his retention a matter of non-negotiation previously –then it is strange that they would agree later on to give General MacArthur the power to depose the Emperor at will: a minor matter perhaps but considered in light of everything else I noted above, it does not favour the view of those who have tried to argue against the bombings in the manner outlined above by the biographer.

Moving onto the second quote from MacArthur, we have this one:

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor. Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.]

It is obvious that MacArthur was operating from the faulty presumption that “the institution of the emperor” being retained would have resulted in a surrender. I will discuss this factor later on in this thread but not without noting that the Americans could not accept the Japanese idea of “retention of the emperor” which was vastly different from what was eventually accepted after the bombs were dropped.

More could be noted on this but perhaps the clincher is that MacArthur was not to my knowledge ever informed about MAGIC and what we knew from that source. Indeed, the biography I have cited heavily from is copyrighted 1978, which was around the time the first batch of MAGIC was partially declassified.{1} The reasons for the general's ignorance on the matter was twofold.

First of all, President Roosevelt did not want General MacArthur to be too in the loop about this kind of stuff because he was capable of being disobedient to his superiors much the way General George Patton was in the European arena.{2} Secondly, President Truman (who actually served under then-Colonel MacArthur in WWI) was not unfamiliar with MacArthur’s reputation for flouting the commands of higher authorities and was not about to act any differently than Roosevelt had -particularly since General MacArthur had shown his loose-lips capabilities by being openly critical of the way military operations were handled in Europe in not a few ways. He was thus viewed as too much of a loose cannon to be trusted with this kind of delicate information. Nonetheless, considering everything noted above, it is safe to say that General Douglas MacArthur’s view on this matter was grounded on some faulty presuppositions and furthermore was not enlightened by the additional information that President Truman and the War Department possessed via MAGIC.

Let us now look briefly at the Doug Long quotes one by one starting with General Eisenhower:

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..." - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson: "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

As I have pointed out in not a few threads [in years past], the presumption that the Japanese were ready to surrender was an erroneous notion. Furthermore, as I noted in dealing with the MacArthur quotes, the MAGIC cables do not appear to be anything that General Eisenhower knew anything about. He may have known about Venona at the time due to his status as Supreme Commander in Europe but Venona was Soviet-focused and had nothing to do with what happened in the Pacific arena. Indeed, by the time he would have learned about these things as president, he would not have had time to go back and review stuff from 1945 as he had a country to run by that point after all. And (of course) in 1963 he was out of the loop completely and could not have accessed them even if he was inclined to.

The following observations from the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” are also of interest on these issues:

Funny how Stimson, who always recorded dissent from officials regarding the bombs, failed to record anything about Ike.

Even funnier how Ike's own early depictions of the encounter claimed that he did not voice any vehement objection.

As what is noted in the above paragraphs are adequate to deal with the quotes from General (later President) Eisenhower on the matter, let us move from the two Supreme Commanders to the former president Herbert Hoover. In Doug Long's citations, we see the following:

Herbert Hoover

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over." Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

This is of course is what is called normative argumentation since Hoover was giving his opinion on the matter. We do not see anything to substantiate said opinion and furthermore, we already know that the Japanese insisted on retaining the Emperor but not in the fashion he was eventually retained.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

I have dealt [in the past] with this canard in a posting on double effect so I will not reiterate it here.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Of course they were prepared to negotiate. However, they were also “prepar[ing] to negotiate” prior to Pearl Harbour…something that not a few people seem to conveniently forget. However, I for one have not.

It bears remembering that President Hoover was not in the loop on MAGIC so that needs to be taken into account as well when assessing his posited opinion above –indeed the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” points this out as well:

That's not what the MAGIC summaries were indicating to Truman.

The Japanese government did not get behind the negotiation gambit until August 2nd, 1945.

All of that is true and verifiable by the evidences. The next bit from “Hiroshima_facts” is subjective but I will post it nonetheless since it represents a MAGIC-informed opinion[:]

At any rate, the war wasn't going to end with negotiations. The only way it could end was with Japan accepting all our terms unconditionally.

Of course that is not all that the former president had to say:

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan." Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

Once again we have normative argumentation. The late President apparently forgot that we did not know the full extent of the bomb’s power beforehand…we knew it was superior to anything ever used before but insofar as its precise power we did not know. It is always easy to play “second guess” in retrospect but that game is subjective in nature and does not actually solve anything.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria." Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

I have already dealt with General MacArthur’s statements in this thread so I will not repeat them here. Furthermore, I have effectively disqualified former President Hoover as a credible authority on these matters so no more needs to be said about those assertions. I also [dealt with] Col. Carter Clarke’s quote from an earlier posting.{3} Indeed, so many of the rest of Long's quotes from Einstein (scientist) to Nitze (Air Force) to Szilard (scientist) to General Spaatz (Air Force) were not privy to the MAGIC cables so they are easily dismissed on that score as not credible due to lack of key information on the matter. I will therefore touch on some of them only briefly here, starting with Paul Nitze.

First of all, he was in the Air Force so he knew nothing about MAGIC. That is the first strike against him as a credible source. The following points from the aforementioned internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” are also quite interesting –pertaining as they do to Paul Nitze’s position:

The Strategic Bombing Survey was Air Force propaganda that tried to claim that conventional heavy bombers would have won the war on their own, and so should receive the most funding from Congress in an era of rapidly shrinking post-war defense budgets.

Now as far as I know, that is an accurate assertion to some extent -a bit exaggerated perhaps but the essence of the statement is accurate. Furthermore, I have already dealt with the rivalry element of the different armed service divisions as well as pointed out that the Air Force had no familiarity with the contents of the MAGIC cable intercepts after at least February of 1942 –the decoding of various portions being the job of the Army and Navy branches after that time. The Air Force was actually in favour of approaches such as firebombing (as advocated by General Curtis Le May) so I will not say anything more than that. Nonetheless, that is adequate to dispatch with Paul Nitze.

With regards to Joseph Grew (another supposed "authority" posited by Doug Long), I will defer to the internet interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” on Joseph Grew before addressing this matter myself.

Something most people miss about Grew's suggestion. He was suggesting we allow Hirohito's son to be Emperor under a constitutional monarchy, not suggesting a guarantee for Hirohito himself.

Those who want to review Grew’s comments to check to see if that interpretation is viable are free to do so. It appears correct to me since Grew refers to the "[retention of the] dynasty" which does not necessarily mean Hirohito himself. Here they are from Doug Long's files:

Joseph Grew
(Under Sec. of State)

In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:

"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

Anyone can say something after the fact. Why on earth this should be considered a solid piece of evidence is a mystery to me. Moving on...

"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer." Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.

And if there were real leprechans and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, that would be great too. Honestly, it is quite evident that Grew was ignorant of the MAGIC cables just by the idiotic statements he made above. But let us first review the words of John McCloy which are similarly misguided before we address both of them with some explication on the subject at hand.

John McCloy
(Assistant Sec. of War)

"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs." McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.

And this was also wishful thinking. As the very well-read (and MAGIC-informed) historian Richard Frank correctly noted on the whole question of a Japanese surrender:

The Japanese government retained two minimal war aims: preservation both (1) of the Imperial Institution and (2) of the old order in Japan in which the militarists were dominant. They were not just seeking a guarantee of the imperial institution with a figurehead emperor as is often argued. The U.S. war aim of "unconditional surrender" was not merely a hollow wartime slogan. By 1945, it formed an essential element in an overall vision for an enduring peace. "Unconditional surrender" meant the U.S. would secure the legal authority to conduct a complete renovation of Japan to eradicate the old order and assure that Japan never again launched a war of aggression.

Given these minimal war aims on both sides, diplomacy could not work because there was no common ground for compromise between the continuation and the extinction of the old order in Japan. As the [PBS] program noted, even after the atomic bombs and Soviet entry, the Japanese cabinet deadlocked, with the hard liners still holding out for terms including no occupation -- and no occupation means no occupation reforms. As the program further highlighted, as late as the first Japanese peace offer of August 10, 1945, they were still demanding that the U.S. grant real, substantive power to the emperor so that he could veto occupation reforms and defeat the American aim of eradicating the old order in Japan. While critics speak broadly about backing away from or even dropping "unconditional surrender" they have not, to the best of my knowledge, set forth precisely how this could be accomplished and still allow the U.S. to conduct the occupation and the ensuing reforms that produced the peaceful Japan that has exited since 1945. Thus, insisting on "unconditional surrender" was not merely a matter of pride or some perverted American version of "face"; it was the key to the enduring peace. [Richard Frank: Victory in the Pacific from the thread Was there a real strategic reason for the bombing of Nagasaki? (circa May 3, 2005)]

That is more than adequate to dispatch with the fantasies of John McCloy and Joseph Grew on this matter as any kinds of "authority" to use in supporting one's argumentation. But we are not done yet as there are a couple more to tend to.

Admiral William Leahy
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

I have gone over in detail [in years past] why this presumption (that Japan was already defeated and ready to surrender) was false. I will now supplement my arguments by referring the reader back to my previous citation from the historian Richard Frank. There is also these points to take into consideration on the matter:

That diplomacy offered no prospect of success was made clear to American leaders by the daily Magic Diplomatic Summary covering the decoded Japanese diplomatic communications. Copies of each day's edition were distributed to a select band of American policy makers, with the president at the top of the list. The intercepts first of all established that the diplomats of foreign (neutral) governments in Japan were reporting to their own governments by a three or four to one ratio that it was clear to them that the Japanese had no intention of surrendering and meant to fight on to the end. The intercepts next demonstrated that a half dozen or so Japanese diplomats, including military and naval attaches in Europe, who attempted to approach American officials to initiate negotiations all lacked actual authority from the Japanese government for their actions.

The Magic Diplomatic Summary demonstrated that the sole Japanese diplomatic effort that carried the actual sanction of any real authority in Japan was an effort to secure Soviet good offices to mediate an end to the war on terms acceptable to Japan. It was not, as it is sometimes represented, just an effort to have the Soviets act as a postman to deliver a "we surrender" note. The man who was supposed to present this proposal to the Soviets and secure their good offices was the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow, Sato Naotake. When you read as American officials did Sato's comments, you see clearly the diplomatic initiative was not serious. [ibid.]

It seems to me that Admiral Leahy's opinion was summarized well in the following part of the text:

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." - William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

Of course retrospect has shown us that the use of those bombs not only brought a quick end to the war and saved lives on both sides –as I noted in [years past] –as that there have been no subsequent atomic or nuclear weapons which have been used in warfare. Indeed, we even test them underground because of the knowledge of the radiation effects now, which was not available to us back then. As far as the claim that we were "making war” by "destroying women and children” I refer the readers to what I outlined in the double effect posting [and also advise greater care in considering the factor of conscription].

To second (to some extent) my position on Admiral Leahy, I again refer to the interlocutor “Hiroshima_facts” who correctly notes the following:

This is a post WWII position, not a WWII position as claimed above.

And whether or not that is true or not is of course debatable. I have already noted the problem with retrospective argumentation so the viability of that last Leahy quote is at least called into question and thus cannot be viewed as a piece of evidence to establish an argument upon. And (of course) what is not debatable is that Admiral Leahy was presenting a normative argument on the matter [which is of course subjective not objective in nature].

More could be noted but I think it is clear how so many of those who are cited as “proofs” do not stack up for reasons I have noted above. Frankly, I do not see much in the other statements [frequently] cited from Doug Long that is not one giant normative argument and those will not do for reasons I already cited. But (of course) I have done more than merely assert it but indeed have interacted with all of the names on the list who were of any position to potentially have access to all the pertinent information. There is but one more remaining and that is Ralph Bard and he will be dealt with next...

Ralph Bard
(Under Sec. of the Navy)

On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:

"Following the three-power [July 1945 Potsdam] conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position [they were about to declare war on Japan] and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the [retention of the] Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

We know of course that even after the bombs were dropped that the Japanese War Cabinet was considering four conditions prior to Hirohito's intervention. One of them was the retention of the Emperor this is true but not in the fashion that the bureaucrats like Bard were naively presuming. Furthermore, there was also the elements of (i) no occupation and (ii) voluntary disarmament in the mix. It is absurd to suggest that the Japanese would have settled for less before the bombings than they were seeking afterwards and (if not for Hirohito's intervention) they would with the greatest of likelihood not have budged from that position -particularly the ones on no occupation and veto power for the emperor over any US reconstruction ideas.

"I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program." He concluded the memorandum by noting, "The only way to find out is to try it out." Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).

See my previous comments.

Later Bard related, "...it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in...". quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 144-145, 324.

The naiveity of the above statement is amazing!!! Furthermore, it ignores the fact that a wounded animal often fights with even greater ferocity and the Japanese were certainly wounded. The Navy had yet to face the full brunt of 10,000 kamikaze planes and I guarantee that the Japanese would have sooner chose that route than surrender: a concept foreign to their 2000 year history and something that those who opined on them surrendering never seemed to take into consideration.

Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb." War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

See my previous citation from Richard Frank on the "surrender attempt to the Russians" red herring pro-offered by Bard above.{4} Moving on we come to this final thread from Lewis Strauss:

Lewis Strauss
Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)

Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:

"I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate... My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood... I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest... would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation..."

I have already outlined in detail why the above opinions (about the Japanese being "nearly ready to capitulate" are the exact opposite of what was reflected in the MAGIC summaries. If [anyone] wants to explain why such ill-informed so-called "experts" are still viable for this discussion [they] can feel free to.{5} I am confident though that the casual readers can put things together and see why they are not[.]

Strauss added, "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...". quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.

We know of course via the MAGIC Russian cryptological branch of MAGIC called Venona that the Russians had already hacked into the Manhattan Project so the idea that somehow the weapon would have not been put into the arsenals of the world's powers if we had not used it in WWII is pathetically naive at best.

In summary, every single so-called "authority" cited from Doug Long fails and fails badly to be a credible source on this subject for reasons I have detailed in this thread.

Addendum:

For further reading on the subject of attempted historical revisionism at the 1995 Smithsonian Exhibit, see this very good article. Readers who recognize in there some of the names I have just been critical of can consider the additional arguments in that thread as supplements to my own in this thread.

Notes:

{1} They would not be fully declassified until 1995 as a result of the tireless efforts of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

{2} I will not go into the problems that General Eisenhower had with General Patton and who I side with on that issue as it is not germane to this discussion.

{3} There is also the issue of context in that we only have one source verifying the position of Brigader General Carter Clarke as being involved with MAGIC. We do not know from this whether or not he was in that position at the time of the bomb droppings or not. This is highly improbable for reasons I will not outline in brief.

To start with, at one point, all the intelligence cabels from MAGIC were under the same umbrella of control if you will but that changed in the early 1940's. The signal date of sorts was February 2, 1943: the date when there was a division made within the MAGIC cooperative of sorts by President Franklin Roosevelt. The divisions were along military service lines. Starting on February 2, 1943, the Navy was placed solely in charge of the Japanese intelligence cabels (their decoding, etc.) while the Army was given a new assignment altogether. Then-Colonel Carter Clark was the founder of Venona or the Russian chryptological branch of MAGIC charged with working on Soviet decoding. The agency under which that decoding was to take place was renamed the Signal Security Agency (SSA). This is not insignificant when you consider that [Doug Long quoted] a second hand source from Brigader General Carter Clarke on Hiroshima fourteen years after the fact. For those who missed the problem with this source being cited, I will reiterate it at this time.

First of all, Carter Clarke was not a Brigader General in 1945 but was instead a colonel. And as he was in the Army and assigned to head up SSA in early 1943, Colonel Clarke would not have overseen the dispatches on the Japanese from at least early 1943 onward. The reason of course should be obvious: he was the founder of the Venona branch of the MAGIC network and the Army had no involvement in the Japanese decoding from that point onward. Colonel Clarke worked on Venona from February 2, 1943 through at least October of 1949...I am uncertain as to if he was involved with Venona past that point. Nonetheless, it is not even deniable that Colonel Carter Clarke was involved in the founding of Venona in early 1943 and that with Venona, Colonel Clarke was involved with Soviet cabels not Japanese ones. For this reason, citing him as MAGIC operative in the position as Doug Long does (in the context of Pacific Theatre codebreaking and information gathering under MAGIC) is very sloppy scholarship (to put it nicely). [Substantially Cited From a Rerum Novarum Posting (circa August 28, 2005)]

{4} Also worth considering is this observation from Austin Hoyt:

People who argue Japan was about to surrender also ignore the military intercepts which indicate an increase in the divisions defending the invasion beaches on the southern island of Kyushu from three in June to nine in July to 13 in early August and a fight to the death attitude on the part of the Imperial Army. [Austin Hoyt: Victory in the Pacific from the thread Are there historians who believe that the atomic bombs were not justified? (circa May 2, 2005)]

Those who recognize those military numbers as being from [past material I wrote] are correct. I did not get them from Austin Hoyt or even from the Truman library but they are common facts for those marginally familiar with these subjects.

{5} Provided of course that they actually demonstrate their assertions rather than merely make assertions –as anyone can do the latter.

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