2RHPZ
07-18-2004, 03:04 AM
At the end of WWII American citizens expressed the contradictory emotions of excitement and dread: excitment for the end of the war, and dread for having had to open up the nuclear age to do so. Recent scholarship also shows this mix of emotion in the scientists and politicians who made the decision. My research in the popular press of Time and Newsweek brings to light the fact that these same feelings appear in the American public. Simplistic views of joy and celebration existed, but closer examination of the popular press of the time reveals that authors, often in the same articles, also expressed impending anxiety and fear. The two emotions--joy and fear--coexisted. A one-sided interpretation and understanding of the American response to the dropping of the atomic bomb is therefore both inacurate and unfounded. Yes, Americans were happy for the end of the war, but they were also afraid that next time they would suffer the consequences of the birth of atomic weaponry. It is my contention therefore that the very basis for the American national sense of victory and excitment gave birth to the fear that next time they would mourn devestated cities left reeling from the very nuclear power Americans themselves created.
On 7 December 1941, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan and entered WWII--tying the world together in what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed "a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our public, our religion, and our civilization and to set free a suffering humanity."(1) A noble cause, but a cause which culminated in two distinct controversial actions four years later. WWII changed the way the world viewed war--especially with regard to noncombatants. Historian Barton J. Bernstein portrays the emerging internal struggle among the White House military advisors and cabinet members, pitting the old dying pre-WWII ethic of warfare which targeted only the soldiers against a new ethic where race, nationality, and treaty preference made people in general the enemy--uniformed or not.(2) The moral implications of such a paradigmatic shift troubled American political and military dedcision makers. They struggled, finally acted, and used atomic weapons to speed the end of the war. Ironically, however, the same action that granted the people of the United States what they coveted most--the end of the war and the soldiers coming home--created a paradoxically structured world where peace and potential annihilation tenuously existed hand in hand.
War by 1945 was no longer a Napoleonic chess match where strategy and movement of troops won. Instead it proved a Darwinian battle of technological evolution. In early October of 1939, the process which would culminate in the organization of the famed Manhattan Project began. Through a set of meetings, various interviews, and established committees sanctioned by Roosevelt, physicists found themselves searching for the answers to as of yet unknown atomic questions. The United States already believed itself years behind the Germans in an attempt to create atomic weapons through uranium, and later plutonium, fission. Thus, argues Stanley Goldberg, researchers such as Vannevar Bush, K. T. Compton, and Lyman Briggs deliberately pulled the U.S. government into the atomic age utilizing the fear of the very weaponry they would, in fact, create.(3) Whether this is true or not remains suspect. Nevertheless, it must be understood that this group of researchers played an important role in the evolution of atomic thought. It is in this light that we must look at their contribution --irrespective of the motives behind it. Goldberg, citing notes and letters sent and recieved by those researchers involved, establishes the evolutionary track of the inventive process. Thoughts of a bomb of "unprecedented power [which] might be produced" (emphasis added) surfaced as early as May 1941. Merely six months later, projections implied that "a fission bomb of superlatively destructive power will result" with prototypes possibly ready as early as 1944.(4) It took a little longer, the first test held in the summer of 1945 putting all speculation about plausibility to rest in the ashes of a 200 foot tower.
The ethics and morals of using the atomic bomb, however, remained controversial. Proposals for a display of power for a Japanese audience and/or limited tactical/military use remained the two most viable options next to dropping it on a populated city. Because it is always impossible to know exactly what anyone was thinking, the facts are somewhat sketchy. But, as Bernstein discusses, the scientists in the research group initially pushed for a technical display of power to play on Japanese fear until Oppenheimer and others informed higher-ups that a technical demonstration alone would not necessarily be sufficient to bring an end to the war.(5) Thoughts evolved. Using weapons in the scheduled 1 November 1945 invasion of mainland Japan became the new push, but not necessarily out of the ethical concern for civilian life. Admiral Richard Connoly, who was stationed in the Phillippines (and whose responsibility it was to provide naval support for this scheduled) "wanted to put one [atomic bomb] on either side of each landing, [there were three scheduled] before the troops landed." The researchers assumed the target to be purely tactical: military sites, industrial areas, troop placements--not cities.(6)
George C Marshall and Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of War respectively, likewise pushed for a use limited merely to military "objectives such as a large naval installation." The thought of using such a weapon on civilian areas was contrary to the long established war ethic founded in "Christian doctrine and in international law." In short, it made them uncomfortable. Stimson, therefore, in a conversation with Truman in late May of 1945, assured the President that the weapons would be used so as to spare civilian lives in the name of "fair play and humanitarianism." The true depth of this sentiment was short lived. The daily fire bombing of Japanese cities to the point where the new weapon may not have "a fair background to show its strength" testifies to this. What is more, two days after their discussion Stimson "stipulated that noncombatants would be acceptable targets." Aiming at a "vital war plant. . . closely surrounded by workers' houses" was not merely justifiable but desirable. This idea would proceed unchallenged until implementation less than two months later.(7)
This report did not, however, make the decision easy. The moral ambivalence which marked the transition from an old war ethic where battles remained between opposing armies and navies to total war where noncombatants were targeted trapped everyone from researcher to president. By the time Truman ascended to the presidency on 12 April 1945, he had witnessed the horrors of a world at war which had taken its toll in American lives. Truman, seeing "the unlimited effusions of American blood,"(8) yet not desiring to witness another "Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other,"(9) understood better than anyone George C. Marshall's statement that "there is not an easy, bloodless way to victory in war."(10) People die in war. Often times those people were simply in the wrong nation at the wrong time.
Truman now faced the ultimate military question: how to wage war, and not lose lives. Do you maximize the death of the casualties of the enemy to increase the survival rate of your own soldiers? Which do you save: Japanese or American lives? It was a dilemma, but one ruled by duty to those who fought for your country. National piety--correctly so--demanded that Americans come home, and damn the Japanese. Kill the enemy fast, and hard, and make them quit so your soldiers can come home; this is modern warfare. On 25 July 1945, the moral debate ended when Truman ordered the dropping of the first atomic weapon "as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945."(11) The decision was finalized eleven days later when the Enola Gay dropped the first "fat boy" on Hiroshima, and nuclear warfare began. Three days later Bock's Car, another B-29, released one over Nagasaki. Both caused great destruction and tens of thousands, but in the American mind this was not emphasized. Peace was.
Americans were looking for a release after four dark years of total war. The pages of magazines and newspapers of the era were filled with stories, memoirs, and descriptions of the battlefields. Pictures of the devastated cities of Japan and Germany were constant reminders to the people that there had been a war, and Americans had been killed. In the months following the dropping of the bombs and the signing of the treaty aboard the Missouri countless stories of countless G.I. Joes' experiences brought to light what many people suspected. On 10 September 1945 Newsweek described liberated U.S. prisoners of war as "frantic prisoners. . . [who]. . . danced stark naked on the shore as American rescue ships approached."(12) Camps where many had been brutally tortured, where many suffered beri-beri and dysentery, where many had died, were described in great detail. Giovanni Lomanitz, who had studied under Oppenheimer before the war, expressed the sentiments of the nation when on August 7 he wrote: "You [Oppenheimer] may not know it but today you're about the best loved man in these parts [for producing the bomb]. The guys. . . are overjoyed."(13) Upon the signing of the treaty, Truman is quoted: "From this day we move forward. . . . We move toward a better world of peace. . . . This is a victory over tyranny."(14) Moments later came the word all Americans had been praying to hear: "I [Truman] report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well. . . . They are homeward bound."(15)
A picture of rubble resting silently at the foot of a dead tree is placed ominously in the 31 December 1945 issue of Time. Its caption reads: "For a nation that wanted to use it [the a-bomb], it was a cheap way to wage war."(16) But more importantly it was safe (as long as we did not experience it). There is little remorse in the language of the major publications of Time and Newsweek and even less in the actions of the American people in the three or four months directly following the atomic bombings, because the war was over. The soldiers came home. And the American public had every right to celebrate the return of the mighty fleet, including the Missouri; to express a relative disinterest in the ethical question concerning the atomic bomb and its use. The major interest was, and rightly so, placed in celebrating the end of the war. After Nagasaki, Truman still "[rode] a wave of unprecedented popularity."(17) Two months later there would be a parade "up Fifth Avenue past the flags and the glittering shop windows" to celebrate "the greatest Navy in the world in the greatest city in the world."(18) The air reverberated with the echo of one twenty-one gun salute after another. Forty-seven ships in all paid tribute to Harry Truman, "a very plain man indeed, who had never planned on being Man of the Atomic Year."(19) Thundering overhead nearly 1,200 Navy planes displayed aerial power so awesome all present basked in the renewal of peace--and in our ability to keep it.
The war was over, the men were home, and now it was time to celebrate. Time described "the biggest, noisiest, New Year's Eve party in a long, long time," where "bars would be open until dawn, U.S. roadhouses would be neon-lighted after dark, . . .[and]. . . females would have the urge to write with lipstick," and with the "first tock of 1946 when U.S. citizens would consume enough alcohol to float a rinkful of ice."(20) This was a time to forget about the war years of stodgy rationing and simple living. The time for social penance and puritanical sacrificing of time, money, and family gave way to a "Democratic Society [in which] there is great room for experiment. . . [and]. . . the free play of economic and social innovation."(21) All eyes were to the future which offered more than reports of death camps and pictures of mushroom clouds. Americans were willing to “guess that the future would be vast and exciting," and merely four months after the end of WWII the populace seemed willing to drown the past in a new year's shot of bourbon and start fresh.(22)
Regret for war related actions are absent. According to Lifton and Mitchell, authors of Hiroshima in American: Fifty Years of Denial, any and all premises regardless of orientation would have been acceptable to the American people in 1945. Due to the cover up and the resultant myth of necessity, people in American saw the atomic bombings as justified because they produced peace.(23) There are deeper reasons, however. Many acts of war defy any other explanation than simply "war is war"; we believe our actions are just and moral while those of our enemies are unjust and immoral. Social psychologists termed this reciprocal concept mirror-image perceptions.(24) While applied to all nations in all cases, these “perceptions” see no race. The Allies viewed the Germans and Hitler as evil incarnate. They viewed the Italians the same way, and during the Cold War era viewed the Russians with the same disdain and condemnation. The fact that we do this cannot be based solely on race, but race can play a strong role. This psychological ability allows a belligerent nation's racially "warped and slanted" views of a co-belligerent's government and leaders to progress to where "perceptions . . . may become so skewed that they entirely misrepresent reality."(25) We are good; the Japanese are "yellow subhumans."(26) Truman, the generals, the soldiers, and many Americans in general believed the Japanese to be ruthless savages, merciless fanatics. Race was an important aspect of the Pacific Theater.(27)
The racist stereotyping of the "Japs" stated most eloquently by Idaho's Governor when he offered that "a good solution to the Jap problem would be to send them all back to Japan, then sink the island" while speaking of Japanese in America no doubt illustrates the anti-Asian animosity so prevelant throughout the 1940's United States. This was of course applied automatically--without a doubt more forcefully--to Japanese nationals who killed American soldiers.(28) Kamikaze fighter pilots suicidally attacked ships, prison camp horror stories of brutality, the ancient Japanese military code of bushido (or way of the warrior) sarcastically presented, and pictures of mystic charms drawn defensively in the sand proved in 1945 that the Americans' stereotypical Japanese was real. All helped create the atmosphere of mocking enmity necessary for Time to heroically dub the dropping of the atomic bombs "the greatest of all 1945's greatest events."(29) For the masses of 1945 this was the pseudo-justification: the all-encompassing, nothing-damning psychological distancing from the action which ended the war. This same action, however, produced a deep fear.
The bomb brought more than merely peace to the homeland. The dawn of the atomic age, wrote one author of a Time article, "represented a brutal challenge to the world to keep the peace."(30) With the power of the atom unleashed, the world faced the new threat that an aggressor nation could annihilate with relative ease any nation's power to resist with relative ease. The researchers had come up with the scientific discovery of their generation. However, the problem facing the world was how to restrict its application. Clement R. Attlee, British Prime Minister, blasted the thought that the world could share "scientific knowledge on atomic energy while its applications to weapons are kept secret."(31) Implied was the threat of world domination by those who held the secrets of the technology.
The Big Three must "share all atomic secrets . . . [and] . . . appoint a body to study means of control and supervision of atomic developments," Attlee believed; and he believed it so strongly that he would discuss nothing else during "an atomic showdown" early in November.(32) Seeing the U.S.’s monopoly of power, other nations began to be leery. Around the globe nations pushed for equality of knowledge, but Truman and the U.S. government refused until all “possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction"33 had been thoroughly explored.
One such solution, put forth by Albert Einstein, was to not maintain secrecy and share the knowledge with the world. A justification for keeping our atomic technology a secret was impossible. Therefore, "[t]he secret of the bomb should be committed to a World Government," an idea previously alluded to by Attlee.(34) Truman did not entirely disagree. The "hope of civilization," Truman said, rested in the organizing of world arrangements "which would renounce the use of the atomic bomb but encourage cooperation on harnessing atomic energy for peaceful humanitarian goals."(35) However, this was only because other countries "would in time catch up with our knowledge of atomic research."(36) The secrets of the bomb would not be turned over to, in the words of House Judiciary Chairman Hatton Summers, a "disorganized and largely psychopathic world," yet proposals for monitoring and controlling the development and expansion of national atomic development were understood.(37) The government as a whole simply disaproved of "American disclosures concerning . . . our exclusive product."(38) And exclusive it was. At the end of the war we were the only nuclear-capable nation on earth. The failure to spread the knowledge could, therefore, be read as an attempt to maintain not just scientific, but also military supremacy. This would place us 180 degrees from the direction we faced at the beginning of the war. We had turned from a strictly isolationist posture to one as world dictator of global military supremacy. This plagued Einstein, causing him to question the justifiation for maintaining the secrecy of so horrific a power. To the rest of the world secrecy tacitly proved our desire to rule the world with shadowed threats, feeling empowered by the world's lack of retaliatory power. Therefore,"[t]he secret of the bomb should be given to a World Government, and the United States should immediately announce its readiness [to do so]" concluded Einstein.(39)
World sharing of information and retaliatory capability, while being the only cure to aggression and possibly the only solution to nuclear envy, ironically also offered Truman and others cause to fear the downfall and more-than- possible internal fracturing of the post-WWII United States. In a full page article in Newsweek, however, Ernest Lindley suggested the idea that politicians (like Truman) and scientists (like Einstein) alike were "groping" for answers. "Most officials, like most civilians, are feeling their way. Very few are sure enough of themselves to speak dogmatically," he states.(40) Factors of time, maintaining a head start on other nations, outlawing atomic weaponry, and international supervision were simply "trends of thought, and . . . tentative conclusions" for providing at best an unstable and apprehensive international peace.(41) Threats of retaliation, ineffective controls fueling armaments races, and disallowing the world body to inspect nuclear production facilities stood as incentives to maintain secrecy. It was now a question of world peace. The desire was to avoid war on American soil. In other issues of Newsweek, proposals to Congress and conferences with Soviet and British leaders all appear under headlines with this explicit concern: "Behind Anglo-U.S. Peace Line-up Lies Horror of Atomic Bomb War," and "With Fingers Crossed" are but two examples.(42) The problem was obvious and recognizable: "The world had finally found the formula for complete destruction."(43) This statement is ironically found in the last paragraph of the story which ran directly preceding the wild New Year's Eve party.
Within the very act which brought peace lay the fetal beginnings of forms of even far greater destruction, and in this case we likewise were in danger of witnessing firsthand the devastation of nuclear war. The moral ambiguity of 1945 expressed in the choice between sparing Japanese citizens or using atomic weaponry dissipated with the fire and brimstone of the remaining rubble, leaving behind a powerful sense of relief--and an equally unstable, fearful sense of insecurity. In a comically sarcastic look at the mandatory military changes wrought by the emergence of atomic weaponry, Sgt. Ray Duncan described the training in the Anti-Atomic Corps. The hope for atomic peace, he wrote, now lay in the hands of these men of Second Platoon employed "to neutralize and destroy the enemy's atomic weapons."(44) "[Y]ou're doing a very important job, men, keeping them [the enemy] from splitting our atoms," the first sergeant shouts.(45) With the new weapons discussed and the revamped tactics presented, we come to a description of "a ruthless enemy who will stop at nothing, not even poison gas!"(46) The feeling of vulnerability is tacitly implied. To end his story, the Sergeant, when discussing the unchanging nature of the Army, states: "There's only one way to escape the Army life, and that's to keep the world at peace."(47)
Einstein once said that "[a]s long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable."(48) This fear plagued post-war America. Continued references to fanatical Japanese leaders in top hats and tails walking on wooden legs and soldiers spouting age-old creeds solidified the collective American stereotype that Japanese were evil, and that Americans were good. The emotional confusion related to Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs could not be more apparent. While still in love with the tangible reality of peace found in the taverns and night spots on the eve of the dawning of the new year, people realized the precedent which their nation had set. Death count totals climbed, the pictures carried captions relating the destruction while showing the devastation, and the articles reported children burning to death and dying of radiation long after the a-bombs exploded. The dropping of the bomb symbolized a new era of warfare where technological advancement brought victory; where no one was safe from the effects of global war. We once thought we were. No longer would we be able to remain out of the international police body. We once thought we could. No longer would we witness war through the safe medium of mass media. It could be brought to us. In the wake of WWII, peace and happiness conflicted with anxiety and fear under the mushrooming expansion of global military power.
The ancient historian Herodotus once said: "in peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons."(49) To limit these occurrences in as much as possible, Truman brought the "sons" home.
Newt Gingrich, To Renew America, (New York: Harper-Collins. 1995) 37.
2 Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombs Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs Jan. 1995: 135-152.
3Stanley Goldberg, "Inventing a Climate of Opinion," Isis 83 (1982) : 429-452. 4Ibid.
5Barton J. Bernstein, “Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki," International Security Spring 1991: 157.
6Ibid., There appears to have been a discussion related to this. See authors footnote (21). 7Ibid. 155-6
8Robert James Maddox , "The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Bomb," American Heritage, May-June 1995: 77.
9Ibid. 73.
10Ibid.
11The final directive ordering the dropping of the atomic bomb. July 25, 1945.
12Newsweek, September 10, 1945, p. 33.
13Barton J. Bernstein, "Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki," International Security Spring 1991: 162.
14Newsweek, September 10, 1945, p. 30.
15Ibid.
16Time, December 31, 1945, p. 15.
17Time, August 13, 1945 p. 19.
18Time, November 5, 1945, p. 19.
19Time, December 31, 1945, p. 16.
20Ibid., p. 17.
21Ibid.
22Ibid., p. 18.
23Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, (New York: A. Grosset/Putnam Books. 1995).
24Robert S. Feldman, Social Psychology, (New Jersey: Pretence Hall, Inc.. 1995). 299.
25Ibid.
26Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs vol. 74 no. 1, Jan. 1995: 140.
27For an in depth look at this aspect of WWII see: John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, (New York: Pantheon Books. 1986).
28George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992) 1186.
29Time, December 31, 1945, p. 15.
30Ibid.
31Newsweek, November 12, 1945, p. 44.
32Ibid.
33Time, August 13, 1945, p. 17.
34Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
35Newsweek, October 15, 1945, p. 39.
36Ibid.
37Ibid.
38Ibid.
39Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
40Newsweek, November 12, 1945, p. 42.
41Ibid.
42Newsweek, October 15, 1945, p. 44.
43Time, December 31, 1945, p. 17.
44Ibid.
45Ibid., 62.
46Ibid.
47Ibid.
48Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
49Herodotus, The Histories (New York: Penguin. 1972) 77.
On 7 December 1941, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan and entered WWII--tying the world together in what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed "a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our public, our religion, and our civilization and to set free a suffering humanity."(1) A noble cause, but a cause which culminated in two distinct controversial actions four years later. WWII changed the way the world viewed war--especially with regard to noncombatants. Historian Barton J. Bernstein portrays the emerging internal struggle among the White House military advisors and cabinet members, pitting the old dying pre-WWII ethic of warfare which targeted only the soldiers against a new ethic where race, nationality, and treaty preference made people in general the enemy--uniformed or not.(2) The moral implications of such a paradigmatic shift troubled American political and military dedcision makers. They struggled, finally acted, and used atomic weapons to speed the end of the war. Ironically, however, the same action that granted the people of the United States what they coveted most--the end of the war and the soldiers coming home--created a paradoxically structured world where peace and potential annihilation tenuously existed hand in hand.
War by 1945 was no longer a Napoleonic chess match where strategy and movement of troops won. Instead it proved a Darwinian battle of technological evolution. In early October of 1939, the process which would culminate in the organization of the famed Manhattan Project began. Through a set of meetings, various interviews, and established committees sanctioned by Roosevelt, physicists found themselves searching for the answers to as of yet unknown atomic questions. The United States already believed itself years behind the Germans in an attempt to create atomic weapons through uranium, and later plutonium, fission. Thus, argues Stanley Goldberg, researchers such as Vannevar Bush, K. T. Compton, and Lyman Briggs deliberately pulled the U.S. government into the atomic age utilizing the fear of the very weaponry they would, in fact, create.(3) Whether this is true or not remains suspect. Nevertheless, it must be understood that this group of researchers played an important role in the evolution of atomic thought. It is in this light that we must look at their contribution --irrespective of the motives behind it. Goldberg, citing notes and letters sent and recieved by those researchers involved, establishes the evolutionary track of the inventive process. Thoughts of a bomb of "unprecedented power [which] might be produced" (emphasis added) surfaced as early as May 1941. Merely six months later, projections implied that "a fission bomb of superlatively destructive power will result" with prototypes possibly ready as early as 1944.(4) It took a little longer, the first test held in the summer of 1945 putting all speculation about plausibility to rest in the ashes of a 200 foot tower.
The ethics and morals of using the atomic bomb, however, remained controversial. Proposals for a display of power for a Japanese audience and/or limited tactical/military use remained the two most viable options next to dropping it on a populated city. Because it is always impossible to know exactly what anyone was thinking, the facts are somewhat sketchy. But, as Bernstein discusses, the scientists in the research group initially pushed for a technical display of power to play on Japanese fear until Oppenheimer and others informed higher-ups that a technical demonstration alone would not necessarily be sufficient to bring an end to the war.(5) Thoughts evolved. Using weapons in the scheduled 1 November 1945 invasion of mainland Japan became the new push, but not necessarily out of the ethical concern for civilian life. Admiral Richard Connoly, who was stationed in the Phillippines (and whose responsibility it was to provide naval support for this scheduled) "wanted to put one [atomic bomb] on either side of each landing, [there were three scheduled] before the troops landed." The researchers assumed the target to be purely tactical: military sites, industrial areas, troop placements--not cities.(6)
George C Marshall and Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of War respectively, likewise pushed for a use limited merely to military "objectives such as a large naval installation." The thought of using such a weapon on civilian areas was contrary to the long established war ethic founded in "Christian doctrine and in international law." In short, it made them uncomfortable. Stimson, therefore, in a conversation with Truman in late May of 1945, assured the President that the weapons would be used so as to spare civilian lives in the name of "fair play and humanitarianism." The true depth of this sentiment was short lived. The daily fire bombing of Japanese cities to the point where the new weapon may not have "a fair background to show its strength" testifies to this. What is more, two days after their discussion Stimson "stipulated that noncombatants would be acceptable targets." Aiming at a "vital war plant. . . closely surrounded by workers' houses" was not merely justifiable but desirable. This idea would proceed unchallenged until implementation less than two months later.(7)
This report did not, however, make the decision easy. The moral ambivalence which marked the transition from an old war ethic where battles remained between opposing armies and navies to total war where noncombatants were targeted trapped everyone from researcher to president. By the time Truman ascended to the presidency on 12 April 1945, he had witnessed the horrors of a world at war which had taken its toll in American lives. Truman, seeing "the unlimited effusions of American blood,"(8) yet not desiring to witness another "Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other,"(9) understood better than anyone George C. Marshall's statement that "there is not an easy, bloodless way to victory in war."(10) People die in war. Often times those people were simply in the wrong nation at the wrong time.
Truman now faced the ultimate military question: how to wage war, and not lose lives. Do you maximize the death of the casualties of the enemy to increase the survival rate of your own soldiers? Which do you save: Japanese or American lives? It was a dilemma, but one ruled by duty to those who fought for your country. National piety--correctly so--demanded that Americans come home, and damn the Japanese. Kill the enemy fast, and hard, and make them quit so your soldiers can come home; this is modern warfare. On 25 July 1945, the moral debate ended when Truman ordered the dropping of the first atomic weapon "as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945."(11) The decision was finalized eleven days later when the Enola Gay dropped the first "fat boy" on Hiroshima, and nuclear warfare began. Three days later Bock's Car, another B-29, released one over Nagasaki. Both caused great destruction and tens of thousands, but in the American mind this was not emphasized. Peace was.
Americans were looking for a release after four dark years of total war. The pages of magazines and newspapers of the era were filled with stories, memoirs, and descriptions of the battlefields. Pictures of the devastated cities of Japan and Germany were constant reminders to the people that there had been a war, and Americans had been killed. In the months following the dropping of the bombs and the signing of the treaty aboard the Missouri countless stories of countless G.I. Joes' experiences brought to light what many people suspected. On 10 September 1945 Newsweek described liberated U.S. prisoners of war as "frantic prisoners. . . [who]. . . danced stark naked on the shore as American rescue ships approached."(12) Camps where many had been brutally tortured, where many suffered beri-beri and dysentery, where many had died, were described in great detail. Giovanni Lomanitz, who had studied under Oppenheimer before the war, expressed the sentiments of the nation when on August 7 he wrote: "You [Oppenheimer] may not know it but today you're about the best loved man in these parts [for producing the bomb]. The guys. . . are overjoyed."(13) Upon the signing of the treaty, Truman is quoted: "From this day we move forward. . . . We move toward a better world of peace. . . . This is a victory over tyranny."(14) Moments later came the word all Americans had been praying to hear: "I [Truman] report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well. . . . They are homeward bound."(15)
A picture of rubble resting silently at the foot of a dead tree is placed ominously in the 31 December 1945 issue of Time. Its caption reads: "For a nation that wanted to use it [the a-bomb], it was a cheap way to wage war."(16) But more importantly it was safe (as long as we did not experience it). There is little remorse in the language of the major publications of Time and Newsweek and even less in the actions of the American people in the three or four months directly following the atomic bombings, because the war was over. The soldiers came home. And the American public had every right to celebrate the return of the mighty fleet, including the Missouri; to express a relative disinterest in the ethical question concerning the atomic bomb and its use. The major interest was, and rightly so, placed in celebrating the end of the war. After Nagasaki, Truman still "[rode] a wave of unprecedented popularity."(17) Two months later there would be a parade "up Fifth Avenue past the flags and the glittering shop windows" to celebrate "the greatest Navy in the world in the greatest city in the world."(18) The air reverberated with the echo of one twenty-one gun salute after another. Forty-seven ships in all paid tribute to Harry Truman, "a very plain man indeed, who had never planned on being Man of the Atomic Year."(19) Thundering overhead nearly 1,200 Navy planes displayed aerial power so awesome all present basked in the renewal of peace--and in our ability to keep it.
The war was over, the men were home, and now it was time to celebrate. Time described "the biggest, noisiest, New Year's Eve party in a long, long time," where "bars would be open until dawn, U.S. roadhouses would be neon-lighted after dark, . . .[and]. . . females would have the urge to write with lipstick," and with the "first tock of 1946 when U.S. citizens would consume enough alcohol to float a rinkful of ice."(20) This was a time to forget about the war years of stodgy rationing and simple living. The time for social penance and puritanical sacrificing of time, money, and family gave way to a "Democratic Society [in which] there is great room for experiment. . . [and]. . . the free play of economic and social innovation."(21) All eyes were to the future which offered more than reports of death camps and pictures of mushroom clouds. Americans were willing to “guess that the future would be vast and exciting," and merely four months after the end of WWII the populace seemed willing to drown the past in a new year's shot of bourbon and start fresh.(22)
Regret for war related actions are absent. According to Lifton and Mitchell, authors of Hiroshima in American: Fifty Years of Denial, any and all premises regardless of orientation would have been acceptable to the American people in 1945. Due to the cover up and the resultant myth of necessity, people in American saw the atomic bombings as justified because they produced peace.(23) There are deeper reasons, however. Many acts of war defy any other explanation than simply "war is war"; we believe our actions are just and moral while those of our enemies are unjust and immoral. Social psychologists termed this reciprocal concept mirror-image perceptions.(24) While applied to all nations in all cases, these “perceptions” see no race. The Allies viewed the Germans and Hitler as evil incarnate. They viewed the Italians the same way, and during the Cold War era viewed the Russians with the same disdain and condemnation. The fact that we do this cannot be based solely on race, but race can play a strong role. This psychological ability allows a belligerent nation's racially "warped and slanted" views of a co-belligerent's government and leaders to progress to where "perceptions . . . may become so skewed that they entirely misrepresent reality."(25) We are good; the Japanese are "yellow subhumans."(26) Truman, the generals, the soldiers, and many Americans in general believed the Japanese to be ruthless savages, merciless fanatics. Race was an important aspect of the Pacific Theater.(27)
The racist stereotyping of the "Japs" stated most eloquently by Idaho's Governor when he offered that "a good solution to the Jap problem would be to send them all back to Japan, then sink the island" while speaking of Japanese in America no doubt illustrates the anti-Asian animosity so prevelant throughout the 1940's United States. This was of course applied automatically--without a doubt more forcefully--to Japanese nationals who killed American soldiers.(28) Kamikaze fighter pilots suicidally attacked ships, prison camp horror stories of brutality, the ancient Japanese military code of bushido (or way of the warrior) sarcastically presented, and pictures of mystic charms drawn defensively in the sand proved in 1945 that the Americans' stereotypical Japanese was real. All helped create the atmosphere of mocking enmity necessary for Time to heroically dub the dropping of the atomic bombs "the greatest of all 1945's greatest events."(29) For the masses of 1945 this was the pseudo-justification: the all-encompassing, nothing-damning psychological distancing from the action which ended the war. This same action, however, produced a deep fear.
The bomb brought more than merely peace to the homeland. The dawn of the atomic age, wrote one author of a Time article, "represented a brutal challenge to the world to keep the peace."(30) With the power of the atom unleashed, the world faced the new threat that an aggressor nation could annihilate with relative ease any nation's power to resist with relative ease. The researchers had come up with the scientific discovery of their generation. However, the problem facing the world was how to restrict its application. Clement R. Attlee, British Prime Minister, blasted the thought that the world could share "scientific knowledge on atomic energy while its applications to weapons are kept secret."(31) Implied was the threat of world domination by those who held the secrets of the technology.
The Big Three must "share all atomic secrets . . . [and] . . . appoint a body to study means of control and supervision of atomic developments," Attlee believed; and he believed it so strongly that he would discuss nothing else during "an atomic showdown" early in November.(32) Seeing the U.S.’s monopoly of power, other nations began to be leery. Around the globe nations pushed for equality of knowledge, but Truman and the U.S. government refused until all “possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction"33 had been thoroughly explored.
One such solution, put forth by Albert Einstein, was to not maintain secrecy and share the knowledge with the world. A justification for keeping our atomic technology a secret was impossible. Therefore, "[t]he secret of the bomb should be committed to a World Government," an idea previously alluded to by Attlee.(34) Truman did not entirely disagree. The "hope of civilization," Truman said, rested in the organizing of world arrangements "which would renounce the use of the atomic bomb but encourage cooperation on harnessing atomic energy for peaceful humanitarian goals."(35) However, this was only because other countries "would in time catch up with our knowledge of atomic research."(36) The secrets of the bomb would not be turned over to, in the words of House Judiciary Chairman Hatton Summers, a "disorganized and largely psychopathic world," yet proposals for monitoring and controlling the development and expansion of national atomic development were understood.(37) The government as a whole simply disaproved of "American disclosures concerning . . . our exclusive product."(38) And exclusive it was. At the end of the war we were the only nuclear-capable nation on earth. The failure to spread the knowledge could, therefore, be read as an attempt to maintain not just scientific, but also military supremacy. This would place us 180 degrees from the direction we faced at the beginning of the war. We had turned from a strictly isolationist posture to one as world dictator of global military supremacy. This plagued Einstein, causing him to question the justifiation for maintaining the secrecy of so horrific a power. To the rest of the world secrecy tacitly proved our desire to rule the world with shadowed threats, feeling empowered by the world's lack of retaliatory power. Therefore,"[t]he secret of the bomb should be given to a World Government, and the United States should immediately announce its readiness [to do so]" concluded Einstein.(39)
World sharing of information and retaliatory capability, while being the only cure to aggression and possibly the only solution to nuclear envy, ironically also offered Truman and others cause to fear the downfall and more-than- possible internal fracturing of the post-WWII United States. In a full page article in Newsweek, however, Ernest Lindley suggested the idea that politicians (like Truman) and scientists (like Einstein) alike were "groping" for answers. "Most officials, like most civilians, are feeling their way. Very few are sure enough of themselves to speak dogmatically," he states.(40) Factors of time, maintaining a head start on other nations, outlawing atomic weaponry, and international supervision were simply "trends of thought, and . . . tentative conclusions" for providing at best an unstable and apprehensive international peace.(41) Threats of retaliation, ineffective controls fueling armaments races, and disallowing the world body to inspect nuclear production facilities stood as incentives to maintain secrecy. It was now a question of world peace. The desire was to avoid war on American soil. In other issues of Newsweek, proposals to Congress and conferences with Soviet and British leaders all appear under headlines with this explicit concern: "Behind Anglo-U.S. Peace Line-up Lies Horror of Atomic Bomb War," and "With Fingers Crossed" are but two examples.(42) The problem was obvious and recognizable: "The world had finally found the formula for complete destruction."(43) This statement is ironically found in the last paragraph of the story which ran directly preceding the wild New Year's Eve party.
Within the very act which brought peace lay the fetal beginnings of forms of even far greater destruction, and in this case we likewise were in danger of witnessing firsthand the devastation of nuclear war. The moral ambiguity of 1945 expressed in the choice between sparing Japanese citizens or using atomic weaponry dissipated with the fire and brimstone of the remaining rubble, leaving behind a powerful sense of relief--and an equally unstable, fearful sense of insecurity. In a comically sarcastic look at the mandatory military changes wrought by the emergence of atomic weaponry, Sgt. Ray Duncan described the training in the Anti-Atomic Corps. The hope for atomic peace, he wrote, now lay in the hands of these men of Second Platoon employed "to neutralize and destroy the enemy's atomic weapons."(44) "[Y]ou're doing a very important job, men, keeping them [the enemy] from splitting our atoms," the first sergeant shouts.(45) With the new weapons discussed and the revamped tactics presented, we come to a description of "a ruthless enemy who will stop at nothing, not even poison gas!"(46) The feeling of vulnerability is tacitly implied. To end his story, the Sergeant, when discussing the unchanging nature of the Army, states: "There's only one way to escape the Army life, and that's to keep the world at peace."(47)
Einstein once said that "[a]s long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable."(48) This fear plagued post-war America. Continued references to fanatical Japanese leaders in top hats and tails walking on wooden legs and soldiers spouting age-old creeds solidified the collective American stereotype that Japanese were evil, and that Americans were good. The emotional confusion related to Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs could not be more apparent. While still in love with the tangible reality of peace found in the taverns and night spots on the eve of the dawning of the new year, people realized the precedent which their nation had set. Death count totals climbed, the pictures carried captions relating the destruction while showing the devastation, and the articles reported children burning to death and dying of radiation long after the a-bombs exploded. The dropping of the bomb symbolized a new era of warfare where technological advancement brought victory; where no one was safe from the effects of global war. We once thought we were. No longer would we be able to remain out of the international police body. We once thought we could. No longer would we witness war through the safe medium of mass media. It could be brought to us. In the wake of WWII, peace and happiness conflicted with anxiety and fear under the mushrooming expansion of global military power.
The ancient historian Herodotus once said: "in peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons."(49) To limit these occurrences in as much as possible, Truman brought the "sons" home.
Newt Gingrich, To Renew America, (New York: Harper-Collins. 1995) 37.
2 Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombs Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs Jan. 1995: 135-152.
3Stanley Goldberg, "Inventing a Climate of Opinion," Isis 83 (1982) : 429-452. 4Ibid.
5Barton J. Bernstein, “Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki," International Security Spring 1991: 157.
6Ibid., There appears to have been a discussion related to this. See authors footnote (21). 7Ibid. 155-6
8Robert James Maddox , "The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Bomb," American Heritage, May-June 1995: 77.
9Ibid. 73.
10Ibid.
11The final directive ordering the dropping of the atomic bomb. July 25, 1945.
12Newsweek, September 10, 1945, p. 33.
13Barton J. Bernstein, "Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki," International Security Spring 1991: 162.
14Newsweek, September 10, 1945, p. 30.
15Ibid.
16Time, December 31, 1945, p. 15.
17Time, August 13, 1945 p. 19.
18Time, November 5, 1945, p. 19.
19Time, December 31, 1945, p. 16.
20Ibid., p. 17.
21Ibid.
22Ibid., p. 18.
23Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, (New York: A. Grosset/Putnam Books. 1995).
24Robert S. Feldman, Social Psychology, (New Jersey: Pretence Hall, Inc.. 1995). 299.
25Ibid.
26Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs vol. 74 no. 1, Jan. 1995: 140.
27For an in depth look at this aspect of WWII see: John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, (New York: Pantheon Books. 1986).
28George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992) 1186.
29Time, December 31, 1945, p. 15.
30Ibid.
31Newsweek, November 12, 1945, p. 44.
32Ibid.
33Time, August 13, 1945, p. 17.
34Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
35Newsweek, October 15, 1945, p. 39.
36Ibid.
37Ibid.
38Ibid.
39Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
40Newsweek, November 12, 1945, p. 42.
41Ibid.
42Newsweek, October 15, 1945, p. 44.
43Time, December 31, 1945, p. 17.
44Ibid.
45Ibid., 62.
46Ibid.
47Ibid.
48Time, November 5, 1945, p. 27.
49Herodotus, The Histories (New York: Penguin. 1972) 77.