For Truman, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified

The argument

In the summer of 1945, American military strategists were busy planning the invasion of Japan’s four main islands. The battle of Okinawa, the first assault on Japan’s Home Islands, cost the United States and Japan tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. The invasion (Operation Olympic) would be, American military leaders argued, hugely costly not only for American and Japanese troops but also for civilians. The invasion of southern Japan would cost many more lives. Historian Richard Frank argues that given this set of circumstances it is both unsurprising and justified that President Harry Truman gave the order to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States needed to do everything in its power to avoid the costs both military and civilian that a full scale invasion might result in. Japanese military leaders were gearing up for a bloody invasion. Japan’s four main islands were starved of war material, yet the army was preparing the island of Kyushu to repel American attack. The Chiefs of the General Staff of both the Imperial Army and Navy believed that, while the war was lost, fighting the United States to a stalemate would assure beneficial terms of surrender. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed this calculation. As the Emperor Hirohito noted in his address to the nation on the date of Japan’s surrender, "the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilisation." The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led Japan’s leaders to realise that continued resistance was futile and surrender before a costly invasion.

Context

In 1945 United States had, through an Island Hopping campaign, pushed Japan back to its four main Home Islands. President Truman needed either to find a way to force Japan to surrender or authorise an invasion of country.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Framing surrender as the result of unmatchable American scientific advancements was a much easier and more comforting way to understand defeat than as the result of poor military planning.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The invasion projections are contested: historians note that the very large casualty figures later cited in public were not the estimates before the planners at the time, and Operation Olympic was not scheduled until November, leaving months in which other courses — a demonstration, modified surrender terms, or awaiting the Soviet declaration of war — could have been tried. [Rejecting P2] Japanese intentions were not uniform. The government was already seeking Soviet mediation, and those arguing for a fight to a stalemate were one faction; historians on the other side of this debate hold that the Soviet declaration of war on 8 August, which removed the hoped-for mediator and opened a second front, weighed as heavily in the surrender as the bombs. [Rejecting P3] Hirohito's address is a public justification of surrender rather than a neutral account of its cause, and it made no mention of the Soviet entry. The premise also treats the two bombings as a single act, when Nagasaki was struck three days later, before the effect of the first had been assessed, and so requires a justification of its own.