Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: America, Japan and the Atomic Bomb

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

On 6 August 1945, an American B29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki was at the receiving end of a second American A-bomb. Why did America decide to hit Japan with two atomic bombs? Why were these two cities the targets? What were the implications for ending World War II and starting the Cold War? History Hit’s Rob Weinberg puts the big questions about this seminal event to Kevin Ruane, Professor of Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, here is another episode of our new history hit podcast, How and Why History. They're proving very popular, thank you for listening and subscribing over at How and Why. Today is the 75th anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima. In this edition of How and Why History, we're asking why America decided to hit Japan with two atomic bombs and what were the implications for ending the Second World War. And if you really like this one, if you really, really like this one, there are 30 more sweet new episodes of How and Why available only on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. It's the world's best history channel. No aliens, lots of How and Why history, lots of other documentaries, all the back episodes of my podcast too. So check that out. Also, we've launched a new

podcast. I mean, it's just relentless these days. It's the World Wars podcast. It's all of History Hits podcasts on the World Wars, plus new shows every week with James Rogers, an academic at the Centre for War Studies in Denmark. Total legend. So check that out. And now let's head back to events 75 years ago today. Well, as the bomb left the airplane, we took over manual control, made an extremely steep turn to try and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as possible. After we felt the explosion hit the airplane, that is the concussion waves, we knew that the bomb had exploded, everything was a success,

so we turned around to take a look at it. The sight that greeted our eyes was quite beyond what we had expected because we saw this cloud of boiling dust and debris below us with this tremendous mushroom on top. Beneath that was hidden the ruins of the city of Hiroshima. The voice of Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, which, on the 6th of August 1945, dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Three days later, Nagasaki was at the receiving end of a second American A-bomb. More than 200,000 people in the two cities died either immediately or in the following months. So why did America decide to drop atomic bombs on Japan? Why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki the targets? How did Stalin react and what were the implications for ending the war and starting the Cold War? History Hits Rob Weinberg has been putting these questions about this seminal event to Kevin Ruane, Professor of Modern History at Canterbury Christchurch University. This is How and Why History. Kevin Ruane, thanks for joining us.

Kevin Ruane, thanks for joining us. How was the war going for both the US and Japan prior to the use of the atom bomb? Well, the atomic bombs were used in August 1945, so I think a good starting point would be May 1945. 8th of May 1945, victory in Europe Day, and that allows the United States thereafter to give full focus to the war in Asia and the Pacific. What was the state of play in Asia and the Pacific then? Well, the Japanese Navy and the Japanese Air Force had ceased to be particularly effective. From the start of 1945, as the United States liberated islands increasingly close to Japan's home islands, the United States was undertaking a whole series of conventional bombing raids against Japanese cities. In fact, between January, February 1945 and August 1945,

some 60 Japanese cities are bombed in a conventional sense, not an atomic sense. The United States Navy is also imposing a naval blockade around Japan which is preventing Japan getting vital raw materials, not to mention food. So it's been blockaded, Japan is being bombed, Japanese forces are on retreat, they have been on retreat in the Pacific and also on mainland Asia. So you put it in a nutshell, from May onwards, Japan is increasingly close to defeat, although it is not close necessarily to surrender, because Allied policy is unconditional surrender. And we now know that the Japanese armed forces and political elite are very concerned as to what unconditional surrender might mean for the position of the

Emperor. World Finance Minister David Morgan What is an atomic bomb? concerned as to what unconditional surrender might mean for the position of the emperor. What is an atomic bomb? Well, I'm not a physicist myself, so my answer might make a few physicists cringe, but let's just stick with the history of this. Suffice to say that towards the very end of the 1930s, there were a series of really important theoretical breakthroughs in nuclear science, which meant that by 1939, when World War II comes along, a lot of scientists around the world are aware that in theory at least a super bomb could be created. And this would not simply be a greater than hitherto seen aggregation of TNT, a bigger bomb than had ever been made.

This would be a weapon that would harness the power of nature, particularly the power contained in the nuclei of uranium. This was the fissile, this was the powerful commodity that had been recognised. So a super weapon is theoretically possible, not just an ordinary bomb. This is a bomb that will draw effectively on the same power source that causes the stars of the night sky to pulse. So where was the atomic bomb designed and who designed it? I think that the UK could claim to be just about first out of the starting blocks in terms of atomic research and development, certainly on the Allied side. In 1940 and going into 1941, a series of very concerned UK and UK-based scientists, physicists,

worried about the super bomb implications of nuclear chain reactions, uranium fission and so on, they put their collective minds together and produce a report for the British government, which of course is the government from May 1940 of Winston Churchill, and Churchill himself is sufficiently impressed by the science, which does prove to be very robust, to in August 1941, with his country still in the coils of a war for survival, Churchill gives the green light to a British bomb project, which was given the code name of Tube Alloys. Now for the British, the great spur is the fear, and this is what the scientists who know these things are saying as well, that the great spur is the fear that Nazi Germany,

which has its own brilliant nuclear physicists, has worked all this out and might even be two years ahead of the UK. And the spur is the dread thought of Nazi scientists putting one of these atomic bombs in Hitler's hands. So on the Allied side the UK is certainly first out of the starting blocks but they are responding to the assumption that the Germans are working on this as well. And to complete this side of the picture, once the United States gets into the war in December 1941 a US project is launched fully and formally. The Americans have been exploring this, but they are really energised from mid-1942

once they're fully in the war. And of course, this is what many people will know as the Manhattan Project. It is a vast industrial and technological effort with the United States able to invest the kind of money and resource that Britain simply can't bring to bear. And so what we find by 1943 is the British project becomes kind of subsumed in the much vaster Manhattan Project. And the British will make a significant contribution, but from 1943 in this US-UK project they are very much the junior partner. The Canadians are also involved to some extent as well as the source of important raw materials but it is

really an American run show. Did the Germans have the ability and the technology to have their own nuclear weapon? Well if we spool forward to the end of the war, and this is relevant, actually, when it comes to our discussion about the endgame against Japan, it is discovered after Germany's defeat that the Nazi nuclear program, although advanced enough, was nowhere near as advanced as the Allied powers had feared. But of course, that made no difference. The spur was the perception that the Nazis were way ahead. Turns out that they were not quite as far ahead as the Allied leaders had feared. So when did America use the atomic bomb on Japan and why did they leave it so late? Well, Japan is obviously the real focus of this question, but just to reiterate, in the first instance, it was the fear of Nazi

Germany getting an atomic bomb that was the spur first for the British and then for the Americans and then jointly for the Anglo-Americans. But May 1945, the war in Europe is over. Hitler is dead. The Third Reich is a smouldering ruin. And there is no atomic bomb ready. ruin and there is no atomic bomb ready. As it happens, President Truman, who took over as president in April 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt died, President Truman is informed around about May 1945 that it is very likely that a combat-ready atomic bomb, this superb weapon of mass destruction, will be ready in this combat sense around about June, July, August, the high summer of 1945. Now the war in Europe is over. The war against Japan is expected to grind on and on for at least another 18 months. And so the issue confronting the United States government, the Truman

administration, is whether, if this thing works, it should be used against Japan, even though Japan did not itself have the kind of nuclear ambitions that Nazi Germany had. And it's hardly a plot spoiler to tell you that the answer to that question was yes, this bomb will be used if and when it's ready. More precisely, how was the decision taken to use the bomb? Ultimately, the decision fell upon President Harry S. Truman, who'd only been in office for a few months. But he took advice from the most top secret and arguably important committee ever established in the United States in wartime, the so-called Interim Committee, which met for the first time in May 1945 and was devoted to exploring all the potentialities if this thing called an atomic bomb genuinely worked.

And it was the Interim Committee which by June 1945 is advising, yes, this ought to be used, Mr President. I think from the start of the Manhattan Project, actually, those involved, certainly on the military and political side, worked on a presumption of use. This was a war. In war, weapons get used. This was seen at the time, whatever we see it as now, was seen at the time as a weapon. And so Truman is advised that it should be used. Truman approves its use. And just to clinch the matter, the nuclear age actually begins not in August 1945, but it

begins in July 1945. On the 16th of July 1945, out in the wilds of New Mexico at a place called Alamogordo, the United States tests a plutonium device. It is the first successful test of an atomic bomb. So from that point onwards, having already effectively green-lighted the use of the bomb, having seen the bomb is now a workable concept, not just a bunch of squiggles on a scientist's blackboard, a bunch of equations, the final piece in the jigsaw is for the United States to seek British consent to use the bomb. There's been a number of earlier UK-US wartime agreements on the nuclear side of things. There is a mutual consent principle. Truman asks Churchill if Churchill will approve the use of the bomb, and Churchill does so unhesitatingly.

A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold and the end is not yet. With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form, these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development. It is an atomic bomb.

It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. We have spent more than $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history, and we have won. But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy or its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in making it work. So where was hit in

Japan and why were these particular locations targeted? Since the start of 1945, as soon as the United States Army Air Force was close enough to the Japanese home islands to launch bombing raids, there had been a strategic bombing campaign against Japanese cities. So some 60 Japanese cities, as I said earlier, had been pretty much laid waste. Incendiary bombing of cities that are predominantly wood, you're going to have this kind of very, very destructive effect. There is conventional bombing of Tokyo, for example, in March 1945,

which involved 300 US aircraft, thousands of tons of incendiary devices, and 100,000 people will die in that night's bombing and much of the city will be laid waste. However, in the context of that strategic bombing campaign, a number of cities have been deemed off-limits to conventional bombing because if you do have a workable, combat-ready bomb, you want to test it, just to be rather crude for a moment, on a sort of pristine target. So Hiroshima and Nagasaki were amongst a number of cities that were preserved from the bombing that had been going on very, very witheringly. And I think the people of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki, we do know now from testimony, did regard themselves as uniquely favoured by the gods almost, that they had been preserved, but they had been preserved for an alternative fate. Ultimately, were the atomic bombs really necessary to end the war? Well, there is a huge debate amongst historians that began a long time ago, almost before those mushroom clouds had dispersed, about whether the bombs were needed and about whether they did actually end up producing the result of a Japanese unconditional surrender. On the face of it, the sequence seems compelling. The first atomic bomb is used on the 6th of August 1945, that's

Hiroshima. The second bomb is used on the 9th of August, and on the 14th of August 1945, that's Hiroshima. The second bomb is used on the 9th of August, and on the 14th of August, Japan surrenders unconditionally. So cause and effect does seem present. In addition, at the time, President Truman made clear that the choice was really between the atomic bomb, when he presents this in public, that is, the choice was between an atomic bomb or a costly Allied invasion of Japan. And the planning date for the start of that invasion was November 1945. Truman also maintained that the bombs were used to end the war quickly. His public statements emphasise this after the event. To end the war quickly, which they appeared to do.

To save lives. And in that sense, there was no need for an invasion that saves, well, historians can't really agree on this, but very, very large numbers of Allied lives. But by also ending the war so quickly, the atomic bomb arguably saves Japanese lives, lives in general, because this war might have gone on and on and on for some time. And Truman also maintains that the bombs were used purely for military reasons, that there was no other ulterior political motive, should we say, behind it. And you put all this together and this forms the traditional explanation for why the bomb was used. And really from 1945 right through to 1965 1965 there is not a great deal of questioning

of this traditional view. Bombs were used, end the war quickly, save lives, no ulterior motive. Then from the mid 60s this traditional view is increasingly challenged by a revisionist wave of scholarship. Younger historians with access to more primary source material such as become available, they really begin to revise to pick away at the traditional view. And their conclusions are pretty controversial, if not incendiary, if I can use that term in this context. The revisionist view from the mid-60s on was that there were alternatives available to President Truman, which could have ended the war quickly and saved lives, but Truman rejected all of those and preferred the atomic bomb. One alternative was to continue

current policy, the bombing and blockade policy, because Japan did seem very, very close to capitulation. So continue that for a little bit longer and see what happened. Instead, Truman preferred the bomb. Another alternative that revisionists latched onto was, well, it is an alternative, but even revisionists understood it wasn't an attractive one. It simply not use the bomb and invade Japan in November. But even the most hard-bitten revisionist accepted that that wasn't a great choice. Beyond that, another alternative was to maybe alter the terms of surrender, that the United States government knew through having hacked into, we'd say now, Japanese

diplomatic traffic, that the Japanese were looking in the middle months of 1945 for an honourable way out, but were very worried about unconditional surrender, insofar as that implied that the Allies could do whatever they wanted with Japan, and more particularly, whatever they wanted to do with the Emperor Hirohito, who wasn't just a king, he was the embodiment of Japanese religion and culture and society, he was a living god. An alternative therefore would be to signal to the Japanese through various channels which could have been put together that the emperor could be retained after the war. He might have to become a constitutional monarch, he couldn't be a god

anymore, but that signal could have been sent. So tweaking surrender terms could have ended the war quickly and saved lives. Instead of that, Truman uses the atomic bomb. The final alternative, which revisionist historians located, and these alternatives are evidenced by documentary material, they are shown to have been put to Truman in one form or another, the final option was to await the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan. People need to bear in mind that the Soviet Union was neutral in the war against Japan. The Soviet Union from June 1941 had plenty enough to do dealing with the Nazi invasion. But in February 1945, Joseph Stalin pledged to the then US President Franklin

Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan three months after the end of the war in Europe. The war in Europe ends on the 8th of May. Stalin and the Red Army enter the war against Japan on the 8th of August, in between the two atomic bombings. Truman is told in June 1945, before this, that Soviet entry into the war, which they know is coming, might on its own be the single factor on an already hopeless Japanese position that tips the Japanese into surrender. But Truman instead of waiting to see the impact of Soviet entry, uses the atomic bomb. The big question is why? And the revisionist answer,

by and large, is that you need to drag your eyes away from Asia and focus on Europe for a moment. Look at the way World War II ended in Europe, 8th of May 1945. The Soviet Union, Stalin, the Red Army are in physical occupation of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, what we will call for shorthand Eastern Europe. There is no sign of Stalin honouring earlier pledges to allow freedom and democracy to reign supreme. And this outcome for Britain and the United States, the Allies generally, is not a great outcome. If you consider in one sense that Britain, for example, went to war to free Europe or preserve it from the tyranny of the right, Nazism, fascism, to see the tyranny of the left, Soviet communism, dominating half the continent is not a great outcome. The United States shares this sense that the sacrifice, the victory looks like it's being scorned. But what leverage,

revisionists would say, do you have? Stalin physically occupies the's being scorned. But what leverage, revisionists would say, do you have? Stalin physically occupies the area that's contested. What you need is leverage. And that's where the atomic bomb comes in. The crunch conclusion of revisionists is the atomic bomb was not needed to defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were used against Japan to demonstrate America's power to Stalin and the Soviet Union, and then that demonstration effect would be converted into some kind of diplomatic lever, which would then prize Eastern Europe from Stalin's grip, send the Red Army back to barracks. And for revisionists, the final clincher is that Japan only surrenders on the 14th of August 1945,

after two atomic bombs and the Russians entering the war, when they are given an assurance about the position of the emperor. An assurance they'd sought for some months, an assurance which they could have been given, arguably, in April, May, June, July, up to August 1945. And that might, as it did in August 1945, have brought about an end to the war. So that's the revisionist case. Traditionalists and revisionists are out there still slugging it out. If there is a position of consensus we've arrived at, it is that these days, most historians, I think, would suggest that the bombs were used for the reasons Truman said they were used, to end the war quickly and save lives. But Truman

was not ignorant of the bonus factor of that demonstration, which could then be used as a lever in the negotiations with Stalin over the future of Europe. But that's not the same as saying demonstrating it to Stalin was the reason. It was a bonus. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills

needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. episodes every week. How did the Japanese nation then respond to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I think that the first atomic bomb is a tremendous shock to the Japanese people, the Japanese government, the Japanese emperor. But it's not as if they have time to process this. I think the news from Hiroshima is patchy. We're not in an age of instant communication. So I think there's a kind of time delay as the Japanese are seeking to

process this. And in fact, I suspect the Japanese government haven't fully processed what's happened to them, other than there has been a catastrophe at Hiroshima by the 8th August when the Soviet Union enters the war. The Soviet Union enters the war in Manchuria, where the Japanese have been physically present since the early 1930s, and that's where the Red Army engages the Japanese. There is a little bit more controversy over the second atomic bombing in the circles that historians operate in because there does seem to be a knee-jerk reaction here by the Truman administration. Why isn't Japan surrendering? First atomic bomb, now the Russians running all over Manchuria use the second atomic bomb. I think it is after Nagasaki on the 9th August that you do now get Japanese growing awareness of what's going on. Even then on the 14th August the Imperial Council for the Prosecution of the War splits 3-3 on whether to accept unconditional

surrender but it's Emperor Hirohito who effectively casts the casting vote, the defining vote in favour of surrender and of course Hirohito who effectively casts the casting vote, the defining vote, in favour of surrender. And of course Hirohito will himself have received an assurance by this stage that his position will be safe. He'll have to come down a notch or two, but his position will be, and his prerogatives will be, preserved to some extent. It is clear, I think as well from research done by Japanese historians, that the acknowledgement by the 14th, 15th of August of the Japanese government that something terrible, calamitous, had happened to them has also helped Hirohito and those around him to save a degree of face. It's on the 15th of August that the Japanese people and armed forces hear for the first time the voice of their emperor, who is explaining why Japan has surrendered, which is a terrible shock to the Japanese.

No matter how bad things have been for them, still surrender is a great humiliation. And he is explaining that Japan's enemies have resorted almost to the weapons of darkness, to dark science, to the kind of things that, if it was a fair playing field, Japan could have fought on against. But since this wizardry almost had been brought to bear, well, Japan must endure the unendurable, bear the unbearable, and accept surrender. So I think it's a slow-growing awareness of

the impact of these bombs. I think the United States is frustrated by the slowness of Japanese awareness, and that's where the second atomic bomb comes in. But by the time that Hirohito speaks to the nation, I think the awareness is now getting acute, and it is useful as well as a face-saving device to swallow the humiliation of surrender. What was the physical cost to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of lives? To some extent, casualties continue to be disputed, but if it's not a grotesque term to use

when you're talking about great loss of life, we can talk in ballpark figures. But before we even talk about casualties, I think the thing to remember about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is what causes the casualties. This isn't 300 US bombers. These are two cities, two aircraft, two bombs, two flashes or airbursts, and 100,000 people dead in an instant when you add up

the two cities. And that figure, 100,000, between Nagasaki and Hiroshima will probably nearly double to around 190,000 by the end of 1945, as those who initially survived succumb to their burns and other injuries, or succumb more likely to radiation poisoning, because this is the other new thing about the atomic bombs. Old bombs, conventional bombs, killed you from the outside in. Well, atomic bombs kind of do that as well, but they can also kill you from the inside out. And it's the bomb that, in a grotesque way, kind of keeps on giving. So we're talking about very substantial loss of life, but loss of life affected by just two bombs.

This is quite revolutionary. How did people around the world react to the news? revolutionary. How did people around the world react to the news? I think in the United States and equally in Britain and the Commonwealth. In other words, countries that would have supplied the bulk of the troops for an invasion of Japan and an invasion of Japan which most people who followed anything to do with the war in Asia and the Pacific knew would cost huge numbers of Allied lives. The Japanese had shown through their martial prowess and their determination to defend comparatively rocks in the Pacific that their defence of their own homelands would be bent maybe almost on some kind of national suicide. They were going to take a lot of Allies with them.

So I think the extent that this has been explored by historians, you have got huge relief that the war is over and it's over so quickly, huge relief that it's over without the bloodletting of an invasion, but also great disturbance and unease and a bad feeling about what has been unleashed and where this might go in the future. But for sure, and I've done a number of these interviews with former American and British servicemen who survived the war in Europe, who were to be shipped out to the Far East, and who were fairly convinced having survived the war in Europe they were probably going to die in Japan. To them, the atomic bomb was a pretty great thing. I think around the world, there is versions of this duality, relief that the war is over,

concern about the thing that's brought it to such a swift end. And there will be voices raised amongst church leaders, people who have ethical and moral objections. They are out there about the use of these weapons, but they are a minority compared with those who feel relief but trepidation. And what significance did this episode have on a global political level? Regardless, I think, of where you stand and whether the bomb was used primarily to impress Joseph Stalin, this old revisionist argument, there is no question, we know this now from Soviet Cold War era sources, there is no question that Stalin and those around him felt that the bomb was demonstrated, used, at least partly if not largely, to scare them, to trouble them. Stalin talks about Hiroshima as a super barbarity, that's his own phrase.

Stalin maintained that the bomb did not need to be used and that, Stalin's phrase, atomic blackmail was American policy. So if you're asking about the wider geostrategic or geopolitical ramifications of this, I think what we see is the origins of the Cold War beginning to open up here. Whatever level of trust that the Grand Alliance of World War II needed to maintain so that it went from World War II into something that wouldn't be the Cold War is gone with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Stalin very quickly sets his chief scientific and military and political comrades, what Stalin calls task number one, which is build me a bomb.

And what we get then is a transition from World War II, not into global peace, but into the early phases of what becomes the Cold War. And the Cold War comes upon the world just as atomic energy has been unleashed upon the world, which is why the Cold War and a nuclear arms race end up going hand in hand. So I think one of the big consequences. In your view, what do you feel the lasting impact of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been? I think my sense of the lasting impact is not too far removed from Barack Obama's sense of this. In one of his last overseas visits as president in 2016, he visited Hiroshima, the first American president ever to do so. 2016. He visited Hiroshima, the first American president ever to do so. And his view is that what those atomic bombs showed at a technical and scientific level is the brilliance and ingenuity

of mankind, but also how that brilliance and ingenuity can be turned towards very damaging and destructive outcomes. At a historic level, and it was a historic moment, and a historical level, what Hiroshima and Nagasaki have done is they have become adjectival ratings. After 1945, as more and more nuclear weapons came into the world, how do you assess how big a nuclear weapon is? That's easy. You say, remember Hiroshima you assess how big a nuclear weapon is? That's easy. You say, remember Hiroshima, this one's a hundred times, this one's a thousand times.

And those Hiroshima and Nagasaki ratings, I think, are a constant reminder because even the most casual observer of world history knows what happened to Japan. Talk about something in Hiroshima and Nagasaki terms now is one hopes to say these things can never be used on human beings again. It's a grisly legacy. It's a legacy that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never wanted. But President Obama says, as other historians, I think, would agree, that sacrifice was worth something if it is, as it is, a constant reminder that these things should not be used.

Professor Kevin Ruane, thank you very much for your time. It's a pleasure. you