Part 17 (1/2)

An age before, in 1942, on Joseph Grew's return from service as U.S. amba.s.sador in j.a.pan, he was dismayed by the American people's abysmal ignorance of their enemy. He delivered lectures around the country, in an attempt to increase understanding of the magnitude of the task which the U.S. faced in overcoming this formidable foe. Grew described his shock on hearing an intelligent American a.s.sert blithely: ”Of course there must be ups and downs in this war...but it's now a question of time before Hitler will go down to defeat-and then we'll mop up the j.a.ps.” The events of August 1945 would display, in the most awesome and terrible fas.h.i.+on, the culmination of the process once so insouciantly described as ”mopping up the j.a.ps.”

NINETEEN.

The Bombs

1. Fantasy in Tokyo

IN THE FINAL PHASE of the Second World War, Allied generals and admirals played a minor role in the decisions which precipitated j.a.pan's surrender. These will remain a focus of controversy until the end of time, first, because of the use of atomic bombs; second, because the mountain of historical evidence, detailing the princ.i.p.al actors' words and deeds, stands so high. Much of it invites inconclusive or even contradictory interpretation. Leading figures changed their minds, some more than once. Several wrote disingenuously afterwards, to justify their own actions. The j.a.panese aspect of the story is rendered opaque by a familiar chasm between what the nation's leaders said, and what each afterwards claimed or is conjectured privately to have thought. of the Second World War, Allied generals and admirals played a minor role in the decisions which precipitated j.a.pan's surrender. These will remain a focus of controversy until the end of time, first, because of the use of atomic bombs; second, because the mountain of historical evidence, detailing the princ.i.p.al actors' words and deeds, stands so high. Much of it invites inconclusive or even contradictory interpretation. Leading figures changed their minds, some more than once. Several wrote disingenuously afterwards, to justify their own actions. The j.a.panese aspect of the story is rendered opaque by a familiar chasm between what the nation's leaders said, and what each afterwards claimed or is conjectured privately to have thought.

From the winter of 1944 onwards, a significant party in Tokyo was seeking a route by which to end the war, and to overcome the army's resolve to fight to the last. Even the most dovish, however, wanted terms that were not remotely negotiable, including the preservation of j.a.panese hegemony in Korea and Manchuria, freedom from Allied military occupation, and the right for j.a.pan to conduct any war crimes trials of its citizens. As late as May 1945, the emperor clung to a belief that a victory was attainable on Okinawa, which would strengthen j.a.pan's negotiating position-in other words, that military resistance was still serviceable. On 9 June, he urged the j.a.panese people to ”smash the inordinate ambitions of the enemy nations.”

The ”peace party” thought and spoke as if j.a.pan could expect to be treated as an honourable member of the international community. There was no acknowledgement of the fact that, in Western eyes, the behaviour of the j.a.panese since Pearl Harbor, indeed since 1931, had placed their nation beyond the pale. j.a.pan's leaders wasted months a.s.serting diplomatic positions founded upon the demands of their own self-esteem, together with supposed political justice. In reality, their only chance of modified terms derived from Allied fears that a host of men would have to die if an invasion of the homeland proved necessary. As blockade and bombardment, together with the prospects of atomic bombs and Russian entry into the Pacific theatre, progressively diminished the perceived American need to risk invasion, j.a.pan held no cards at all.

Nothing more vividly reflected Tokyo's misreading of its own predicament than its attempts to enlist the good offices of the Soviet Union as an intermediary. Russian abstention from belligerency until August 1945 was among the odder aspects of the global conflict. In April 1941 it served the interests of both Russia and j.a.pan to conclude a five-year Neutrality Pact. j.a.pan's ambitions lay south and eastwards. It needed to secure itself from a threat in the rear. Likewise, even before Russia became committed to its death struggle with Germany, Moscow wanted no complications in Asia. When Hitler's Operation Barbarossa was launched in June 1941, Stalin was thankful to be a.s.sured by Richard Sorge, his legendary agent in Tokyo, that j.a.pan would not attack Russia, and thus that the Red Army could safely throw everything into the western war.

Yet if peace on the Russo-Manchurian border suited the two neighbours for three years, by 1944 it no longer suited the United States. A million j.a.panese soldiers in China might sooner or later be committed against the Americans. An invasion of Manchuria by the Red Army offered the most obvious means of deflecting such a redeployment. Stalin's ma.s.ses could reprise what they were so spectacularly doing in Europe-saving the lives of Western Allied soldiers by expending those of Russians. As late as 6 August 1945, MacArthur told an off-the-record press briefing in Manila of his eagerness for the Soviets to invade Manchuria: ”Every Russian killed830 is one less American who has to be.” is one less American who has to be.”

Churchill and Roosevelt were thrilled by Stalin's September 1944 promise to launch sixty Soviet divisions against j.a.pan within three months of Germany's collapse. ”When we are vexed831 with other matters,” the prime minister wrote to FDR, ”we must remember the supreme value of this [commitment] in shortening the whole struggle.” MacArthur was firmly of the view that ”we must not invade j.a.pan proper with other matters,” the prime minister wrote to FDR, ”we must remember the supreme value of this [commitment] in shortening the whole struggle.” MacArthur was firmly of the view that ”we must not invade j.a.pan proper832 unless the Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria.” Marshall concurred. American field commanders wanted all the help they could get to diminish the numbers of enemy they might have to confront in the j.a.panese home islands. From Luzon, Maj.-Gen. Joseph Swing of 11th Airborne Division wrote home in May, dismissing reported British fears about the perils of admitting the Soviets to the Asian war: ”Everybody wants the Roosh unless the Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria.” Marshall concurred. American field commanders wanted all the help they could get to diminish the numbers of enemy they might have to confront in the j.a.panese home islands. From Luzon, Maj.-Gen. Joseph Swing of 11th Airborne Division wrote home in May, dismissing reported British fears about the perils of admitting the Soviets to the Asian war: ”Everybody wants the Roosh833 as soon as he will come and the more the merrier. As to what Uncle Joe Stalin will get in the East...he'll demand and probably get anything he wants.” as soon as he will come and the more the merrier. As to what Uncle Joe Stalin will get in the East...he'll demand and probably get anything he wants.”

Was.h.i.+ngton recognised that the Russians would not fight unless they received tangible rewards for doing so. To destroy the n.a.z.is, the Soviet Union had already contributed twenty-five times the human sacrifice made by all the Western Allies together. After months of equivocation, at Yalta Stalin presented his invoice for an eastern commitment. Moscow wanted from j.a.pan the Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin; from China, the lease of Port Arthur, access to Dalian as a free port, control of the southern Manchurian railway, and recognition of Russian suzerainty over Outer Mongolia. On the fifth day of the conference, 8 February 1945, Roosevelt agreed to accept Moscow's terms. The U.S. president acted with colonialist insouciance, making important Chinese territorial concessions without consulting the Chinese government. But these arrangements were nominally subject to Chiang Kai-shek's endors.e.m.e.nt, and in return Moscow pledged to recognise the Nationalists as China's sole legitimate rulers. Both the Soviet and American delegations went home from Yalta well pleased with their bargain, indifferent to the fact that it would violate the Russo-j.a.panese Neutrality Pact.

Yet in offering incentives, Roosevelt ignored the fact that Stalin never did-or forbore from doing-anything unless it fitted his own agenda. In 1945, far from the Russians requiring encouragement to invade Manchuria, it would have been almost impossible to dissuade them from doing so. As soon as Germany was beaten, Stalin was bent upon employing his armies to collect Asian booty. Ironies were thus densely woven into the events of the five months following Yalta. On 22 February, the j.a.panese amba.s.sador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, a former foreign minister, called on Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister, on his return from the Crimean conference. Sato was a.s.sured that bilateral Russoj.a.panese relations, the future of the two countries' neutrality pact, had nothing to do with the Americans and the British. This bland deceit was gratefully received in Tokyo. j.a.pan sought Russian goodwill to salvage its tottering empire at exactly the moment Stalin secretly committed himself to loot it.

As the Russians planned and armed for an August descent on Manchuria, however, American enthusiasm for their partic.i.p.ation began to falter. Even if U.S. military leaders were eager to see the Red Army committed, politicians and diplomats were much more equivocal. European experience suggested that whatever Stalin's armies conquered, they kept. It seemed rash to indulge further Russian expansionism in Asia. By April 1945, some important Americans would have been happy to break the bargain made with Stalin in February, if they could justify doing so. The Russians, conscious of this, thenceforward possessed the strongest possible interest in ensuring that the j.a.panese kept fighting. If Tokyo made peace with Was.h.i.+ngton before Stalin had s.h.i.+fted his armies eastwards and was ready to declare war, the Americans might renege on the rewards promised at Yalta.

j.a.panese politicians, with extraordinary naivete, acted in the belief that wooing neutral Russia would serve them better than addressing belligerent America. In reality, there was more willingness among some Western politicians than in Moscow to consider concessions in return for an early end of bloodshed. Winston Churchill was the first and most important Allied leader to propose qualifying the doctrine of unconditional surrender in respect of j.a.pan. Before the combined chiefs of staff in Cairo on 9 February 1945, he argued that ”some mitigation would be worthwhile, if it led to the saving of a year or a year and a half of a war in which so much blood and treasure would be poured out.” Roosevelt dismissed the prime minister out of hand. British influence on this issue, as indeed upon everything to do with the Pacific war, ranged between marginal and non-existent. The decisions about how to address the j.a.panese, whether by force or parley, rested unequivocally in Was.h.i.+ngton.

A strong party in the State Department, headed by former Tokyo amba.s.sador Joseph Grew, now undersecretary of state, favoured a public commitment to allow j.a.pan to retain its national polity, the kokutai kokutai, of which the most notable feature was the status of the emperor. Grew and his a.s.sociates believed that the kokutai kokutai mattered vastly more to the j.a.panese than it should to anyone else: if a.s.surances on this point would avert a bloodbath in the home islands, they should be given. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal agreed, as did some media opinion formers. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on 13 May: ”There are notes mattered vastly more to the j.a.panese than it should to anyone else: if a.s.surances on this point would avert a bloodbath in the home islands, they should be given. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal agreed, as did some media opinion formers. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on 13 May: ”There are notes834...not merely in the ex-isolationist press but eg the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post, of the possibility of some modification of unconditional surrender in [j.a.pan's] case and optimistic speculation of likelihood of her early surrender when she perceives the hopelessness of her case, and woven into popular desire for Russian partic.i.p.ation in the Pacific War there runs a thin but just perceptible thread, the thought that an American settlement of that area would best be made if USSR were kept out of it.”

Yet the White House and its most influential advisers believed that American public opinion would recoil from concessions to the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor, among whom the emperor was symbolically foremost; and that generosity was anyway unnecessary. j.a.pan's predicament was worsening rapidly. The princ.i.p.al uncertainty focused upon whether it would be necessary to invade the home islands. Among U.S. chiefs of staff, Admiral Ernest King, for the navy, and Gen. ”Hap” Arnold of the USAAF opposed a ground invasion. While their desire to avoid another b.l.o.o.d.y campaign was no doubt sincere, both men also had partisan agendas, well understood in Was.h.i.+ngton. King wanted the world to see that j.a.pan had been defeated by the U.S. Navy and its blockade. Arnold sought recognition of strategic bombing's decisive contribution, in pursuit of his crusade to make the Army Air Forces an independent service. King and Arnold could invoke important opinion in support of their case. Early in April, the U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee predicted that ”the increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive c.u.mulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, and the collapse of Germany” would soon oblige the j.a.panese to acknowledge that they could not continue the war.

Yet as Germany foundered, King and Arnold allowed themselves to be persuaded that planning must continue for Olympic. Marshall, although he had never been enthusiastic, ”went firm.” However unwelcome, the invasion option must be kept open. Given the lead time indispensable to a huge amphibious operation, a commitment was needed forthwith. Experience, especially at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, showed that the enemy exploited every day of grace to strengthen his defences, and thus to raise the cost of delaying invasion. The chiefs of staff were also concerned that the American people's patience with the war was ebbing, and thus that it was essential to hasten a closure in the east. On 25 April the joint chiefs of staff adopted JCS 924/15, endorsing Olympic. Their memorandum, which should be regarded as prudent recognition of a contingency, rather than as an ironclad commitment, was forwarded to the president-the very new president-of the United States.

Harry Truman has come to be regarded as one of America's outstanding national leaders of the twentieth century. In the spring of 1945, however, this decent, simple, impulsive man was all but overwhelmed by the burden of office thrust upon him by Roosevelt's death on 12 April. ”I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen upon me,” he told reporters on the afternoon that he was sworn in. ”Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.” One journalist said: ”Good luck, Mr. President.” Truman said: ”I wish you didn't have to call me that.” By one of Roosevelt's most hubristic omissions, given the desperate state of his own health, he had made no attempt to ensure that his vice-president was briefed to address the vast issues which now fell to his lot. Until 12 April, Truman was not even a recipient of Magic intelligence bulletins. Those who observed him closely during his first months at the White House believed that much he said and did was motivated by insecurity, a desire to appear authoritative and decisive, though within himself he felt equipped to be neither. Such self-awareness deserves the sympathy of posterity.

On 10 May, responding to perceived Russian breaches of faith in Europe, Truman directed that lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union should be terminated. Grew and Averell Harriman, U.S. amba.s.sador in Moscow, wanted him to go further, and repudiate the Asian provisions of Yalta. Stimson dissuaded the president from these courses, observing that ”the concessions...to Russia on Far Eastern matters...are...within the military power of Russia to obtain regardless of U.S. military action short of war.” But Truman's conduct in the months that followed was dominated by a determination to prove his own fitness for office, above all by making no unnecessary concessions to the bullying of the Soviet Union, and by conducting the last phase of the war against j.a.pan with a conviction worthy of his great predecessor, and of his great nation. He now discovered that science promised an extraordinary tool to further these ends.

On 24 April Truman received from Stimson a letter requesting a meeting to discuss ”a highly secret matter.” Next day, the secretary of war and Maj.-Gen. Leslie Groves, senior officer responsible for the Manhattan Project, revealed to the new president its secrets, about which he had previously received only intimations. ”Within four months,” wrote Stimson, ”we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” Groves was bent on dropping two, to prove to the j.a.panese that the first nuclear explosion represented no unique phenomenon.

The Manhattan Project represented the most stupendous scientific effort in history. In three years, at a cost of $2 billion, the U.S.-with some perfunctorily acknowledged British aid-had advanced close to fulfilling a programme which much of the scientific world had thought unattainable, certainly within a time frame relevant to this conflict. At Truman's meeting with Stimson and Groves, he was not warned that he must make a great decision, confront a historic dilemma. He was merely informed of the new weapon's impending maturity. There was no hint of looming controversy. Rather, there was an absolute a.s.sumption that if the j.a.panese continued to fight, atomic bombs would be used against them, as had been every other available destructive tool to advance the conflict's ending.

Technological determinism is an outstanding feature of great wars. At a moment when armadas of Allied bombers had been destroying the cities of Germany and j.a.pan for three years, killing civilians in hundreds of thousands, the notion of withholding a vastly more impressive means of fulfilling the same purpose scarcely occurred to those directing the Allied war effort. They were irritated, indeed exasperated, by intimations of personal scruple from scientists concerned with the weapon's construction. As long as. .h.i.tler survived, the Manhattan team had striven unstintingly to build a bomb, haunted by fear that the n.a.z.is might get there first. Once Germany was defeated, however, some scientists' motivation faltered. Their doubts and apprehensions grew about the purposes to which their efforts might be turned.

A group in Chicago formed a ”committee of social and political implications” which became known as the Franck Committee. Its members argued in a report submitted to Was.h.i.+ngton: ”The military advantages and the saving of American lives achieved by the sudden use of atomic bombs against j.a.pan may be outweighed by the ensuing loss of confidence and by a wave of horror and revulsion sweeping over the rest of the world and perhaps even dividing public opinion at home.” In May 1945, some Manhattan team members made determined efforts to caution America's political leaders. Several wrote letters to the president. Leo Szilard, one of the foremost Chicago scientists, paid a personal visit to the White House. Truman's secretary diverted him to Spartanburg, South Carolina, home of James Byrnes, the president's personal representative on the bomb committee.

Byrnes enjoyed one of the more unusual careers in American history. Sixty-six in 1945, a self-made man of the humblest origins, he had served as congressman, senator and Supreme Court justice. Critics dismissed him as a mere Democratic Party hack and White House crony, but he wielded extraordinary power as director of the Office of War Mobilization, and was widely described as FDR's ”a.s.sistant president.” Embittered by Roosevelt's refusal to offer him the vice-presidency, in the spring of 1945 he had opted to retire into private life when abruptly recalled by Truman, who intended him for secretary of state. At Spartanburg on 22 May, Byrnes was irked to be confronted by the unsolicited Hungarian emotionalism of Szilard: ”His general demeanour and his desire to partic.i.p.ate in policy-making made an unfavourable impression on me.” The scientist, in his turn, was dismayed by Byrnes's unreceptiveness: ”When I spoke of my concern that Russia might become an atomic power soon, he said that General Groves...told him there was no uranium in Russia.” Groves hated Szilard, and indeed had claimed to suspect him of being a German agent.

As the scientist made his case against precipitate use of the bomb, Byrnes interrupted impatiently that Congress would have plenty to say if $2 billion proved to have been expended on the Manhattan Project for no practical purpose. ”Byrnes thought the Russians might be more manageable if impressed by military might,” recalled Szilard. Nothing could demonstrate this more effectively than the atomic bomb. The Hungarian was disgusted when Byrnes urged him to consider that the bomb might even get Stalin's legions out of his own country. ”Flabbergasted” by his host's insensitivity, Szilard walked unhappily back to Spartanburg station. It would have been little consolation to him to know that attempts by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr to convey the same fears to Roosevelt and Churchill had met with a response even less temperate than that of Byrnes. The prime minister suggested that Bohr should be confined, to prevent him from venting his dangerous misgivings.

The scientists' scruples counted for little alongside the consensual perception of America's leaders.h.i.+p that here was a weapon which could decisively strengthen their hands in confronting the Soviets as well as defeating the j.a.panese. The builders of the bomb were fatally hampered in their attempts to promote a debate about its use by the fact that security made it impossible, indeed treasonable, even to discuss its existence outside their own circle. Most focused concern not upon the bomb's use, but upon whether a warning should first be given to j.a.pan, and whether the peace of the post-war world might best be secured by sharing America's atomic secrets with the Soviets.

If the scientists had better understood the disastrous strategic predicament of the j.a.panese in 1945, more would have opposed Hiros.h.i.+ma. As it was, however, the men who knew most about the new weapon were quarantined from awareness of the context in which it would be employed. Meanwhile, the politicians responsible for determining the bomb's use had an inadequate sense of its meaning for civilisation. Byrnes told Truman: ”It might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.” Overwhelmingly the most important representative of the Manhattan Project in Was.h.i.+ngton was not a scientist, but General Groves. Triumphalist about the monumental undertaking of which he was chief administrator, he rejected any notion that his country might fail to exploit its fulfilment.

Groves is one of the least-known significant military figures of the Second World War. It is hard to overstate his importance in sustaining momentum towards the detonation of the bombs over Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. A major-general whose rank would have ent.i.tled him only to a divisional command in the field, he had been promoted by fate to extraordinary authority. An army chaplain's son, as deputy chief of construction for the army he had played a major role in building the Pentagon. In September 1942 he was a forty-six-year-old colonel eagerly awaiting overseas posting-”I wanted to command troops”-when he was instead ordered to supervise the Manhattan Project. ”If you do the job right, it will win the war,” he was told.

It seems likely that his superiors said this to reconcile the engineer to a thankless domestic posting, rather than because they believed it at the time. Groves's a.s.signment was unique for a soldier, requiring him to oversee thousands of civilian scientists of the highest gifts and often most wayward personalities, led by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. Beyond these guiding brains, Groves was responsible for a workforce that eventually grew to 125,000, embracing engineers, administrators and construction personnel, centred upon the development laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and operating other facilities all over the United States. Most of these people had no notion, of course, about the objective of their labours. The paunchy, bustling general reported only to the secretary of war and the army chief of staff. To Groves's own amazement, as the bomb approached completion he was deputed by Marshall also to a.s.sume responsibility for its operational use.

Groves was bereft of tact, sensitivity, cultural awareness, and human sympathy for either the j.a.panese or the bevy of n.o.bel laureates whom he commanded. He hara.s.sed and goaded the scientists as if they were army engineers building a bridge. Yet his effectiveness demands the respect of history. His deputy, Col. Kenneth Nichols, described him as ”the biggest sonofab.i.t.c.h835 I've ever met in my life, but also one of the most capable. He had an ego second to none...tireless energy, great self-confidence and ruthlessness. I hated his guts and so did everyone else, [but] if I was to have to do my part all over again, I would select Groves as boss.” At the end of April 1945, the general was exultant. The sun shone brilliantly upon his purposes. A bomb should be ready for testing inside three months, its siblings for use rapidly thereafter. Groves's commitment was critical to the eventual decision to destroy Hiros.h.i.+ma. When other men faltered or their attention was distracted, he never flagged. A week after the White House meeting with Stimson and the general, Truman ordered the formation of the so-called Interim Committee, to advise him on the progress and appropriate use of the bomb. Groves had already established a Target Committee, which selected eighteen j.a.panese cities as possible objectives, and endorsed the general's view that when the time came, two atomic weapons should be dropped. I've ever met in my life, but also one of the most capable. He had an ego second to none...tireless energy, great self-confidence and ruthlessness. I hated his guts and so did everyone else, [but] if I was to have to do my part all over again, I would select Groves as boss.” At the end of April 1945, the general was exultant. The sun shone brilliantly upon his purposes. A bomb should be ready for testing inside three months, its siblings for use rapidly thereafter. Groves's commitment was critical to the eventual decision to destroy Hiros.h.i.+ma. When other men faltered or their attention was distracted, he never flagged. A week after the White House meeting with Stimson and the general, Truman ordered the formation of the so-called Interim Committee, to advise him on the progress and appropriate use of the bomb. Groves had already established a Target Committee, which selected eighteen j.a.panese cities as possible objectives, and endorsed the general's view that when the time came, two atomic weapons should be dropped.

When Truman learned of Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May, therefore, he knew of the extraordinary means the United States was soon likely to possess to impose its will on its enemies and drastically to alter the balance of power between itself and the Soviet Union. Stimson told a colleague: ”We really held all the cards836...a straight royal flush, and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play it...Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much...Let our actions speak for themselves.” At a press conference on 8 May following the end of the war in Europe, Truman restated America's determination to receive the unconditional surrender of j.a.pan's armed forces. He said nothing explicit, however, about the future of the emperor, and emphasised that America did not intend ”the extermination or enslavement of the j.a.panese people.”

Next day, j.a.pan defiantly informed the world that the German surrender increased its determination to fight on. The j.a.panese minister in Berne, alarmed by observing the revulsion towards all things German which followed exposure of their concentration camps, urged Tokyo to avoid giving the world any impression that j.a.pan would follow n.a.z.i policies ”at the bitter end.” Yet there were still plenty of fantasists. As late as 29 May, j.a.pan's naval attache in Stockholm expressed his belief that in negotiations the Western Allies would allow j.a.pan to retain Manchuria ”to provide a barrier against Russia.” He thought Britain would be content to settle for restoration of its Asian colonies. He himself favoured fighting on, because he thought Western dismay about Russian excesses left the Anglo-Americans open to compromise. These messages were read in Was.h.i.+ngton, via Magic.