Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?

Sunday marks the 70th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, at the fag end of World War II. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. This was the second atomic bomb dropped by the US, the first being on Hiroshima on August 6. The two bombs together killed at least 1,29,000 people, most of whom died on the day of the bombing. Many survivors died later through radioactive injuries which had no cure.

The two bombings are the only times nuclear weapons have ever been used in history. Following the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan quickly surrendered, virtually ending World War II.

It has been often believed that the use of the bomb caused Japan to surrender. However, not all historians, scholars and military men agree that it was justified or necessary to use this weapon of war.

There has always been a debate on the necessity of the bomb, but its implications were so severe that such an attack has never been carried out again. Let us examine some of the arguments for and against the bomb.

The first argument in favour of the US action is that the Allied Powers estimated that Japan would fight out a long and bloody war if a decisive weapon was not used. The Allies, consisting of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in essence, realised that Japan was ready to fight until there was mass destruction of the country or a military coup overthrew the emperor Hirohito. 

By August 1945, Germany had surrendered and the war in the Pacific refocused mainly on Japan. The Allies had planned an invasion of Japan in the autumn of 1945, code named Operation Downfall. This operation was divided into Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet.  Set to begin in October 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyushu. Operation Coronet was supposed to target the Konto Plain near Tokyo, and was planned for spring in 1946. 

However, the Allied military chiefs, especially of the US and Britain, believed that Operation Downfall would result in many military and civilian casualties on both sides. US President Harry Truman had been informed that US military casualties could range from 2,50,000 to 1 million - depending upon the length of Operation Downfall. Some estimates put the figure at 1.6 million. In addition, Japan was expected to lose up to as many as 10 million men. The conservative estimate was 2,00,000 to 3 million Japanese. Some 400,000 additional Japanese deaths might have been suffered in the expected Russian invasion of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's main islands. Russia however did not possess the naval capability to take Hokkaido, which could further prolong the war.

This was the first reason provided for seeking a 'quick end' to the war through the use of atomic weapons.

The second reason was the attitude of the Japanese government to war. Under a National Mobilization Law passed in 1938, Japan engaged in a 'total war', meaning that the war was not restricted to the military of Japan. It involved the diversion of all resources, money and materials to the war effort. But most horrifyingly, it involved the use of noncombatants - civilians - as soldiers to fight the war. Essentially, the entire able population of Japan was expected to fight a lethal war. In fact, the Japanese armed ordinary civilians with a wide range of weapons. Some of these were as crude as bamboo spears, but in other cases, civilians strapped explosives to their bodies and blew themselves in front of advancing armies. Lakhs of Japanese also died by ritual sacrifice, as a traditional code of honour meant surrender was considered intolerable. There was a philosophical argument that Japanese civilians were not innocent non-combatants once they took up weapons in a total war.

It is often questioned whether the bombing of Nagasaki was necessary after Hiroshima had been destroyed. The Western powers however felt that Japan would not be cowed by a one-off bombing. Indeed, the Japanese leaders refused to acknowledge that a nuclear weapon had been used on Hiroshima in the days following August 6. There was an erroneous belief that the US possessed just one bomb and that they would take a long time to create another. Thus, the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki was intended to scare the Japanese into believing that the US possessed many such devices. Indeed, the US had prepared for the use of a third bomb on August 19, and a fourth in September.

Another theory put forth for the use of the atomic weapons was the growing bitterness between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was becoming increasingly clear from the conduct of the Soviet Union that there would be a split within the allies following the war. The United States and Britain felt that the Soviets were not to be trusted, and a demonstration of Western military power was necessary to avoid Soviet Communist expansionism in the east. This view has never been publicly admitted by heads of state in the US and UK, but several scholars suggest that the US wanted to demonstrate military superiority in the Pacific, not far from the borders of the Soviet Union, in order to cow it into submission after the war. Many issues such as repatriation of POWs, division of captured and disputed territory etc would come up in the aftermath of the war, and the US desired to have an upper hand in negotiations. Thus, some scholars feel that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a way to pre-empt Soviet dreams of Communist expansionism.

Additionally, the US and Britain wrongly believed that the Soviet Union had no clue about the development of an extremely powerful, new weapon of war - the atomic bomb. But the Soviets had already discovered the US, British and Canadian nuclear project - the Manhattan Project - through a well-entrenched network of spies working in the West. The Western powers, ignorant to this reality felt that the Soviet Union would be shocked by the use of a nuclear weapon.

US President Harry Truman should however, had smelt a rat at the Potsdam Conference, when he hinted to Joseph Stalin about the West developing a top-secret, all-powerful weapon. Joseph Stalin showed remarkably little interest in this information, something that struck Truman as strange.

Opponents of the use of the atomic bomb site this as one of their central arguments. They argue that in retrospect, the Soviet knowledge about the nuclear project rendered the bombing useless from a strategic point of view. 

One interesting factor in the strategic equation was the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact. The Japanese, at the beginning of the war sought a pact with the Soviet Union, in the face on rapidly deteriorating relations with the USA and the never-ending war with China. It was felt in Japan that the country could secure its northern frontier against the Soviets, who had entered the war on the Allied side. Stalin signed the treaty because he believed it would ensure that the USSR did not have to fight a land war against Germany as well as a war in or against Japan.

Crucially, the USSR had not been a signatory to the Potsdam declaration which called for unconditional Japanese surrender. Japan had always intended to use the neutrality pact to enable a negotiated settlement with the Western powers in case the country found itself unable to win the war. When such an eventuality did arise in 1945, Japan made overtures to the USSR for negotiations with the Western powers. The USSR however decided not to renew this treaty in April 1945, indicating to the Japanese that the treaty would be void after the mandatory 12-month notice period. Then they resorted to delaying tactics. Concurrently, the US and UK had extracted a promise from Stalin (in exchange for many concessions) that the USSR would attack Japan in the face of an Allied invasion. In fact, the Soviets unilaterally broke the pact in August, just following the bombing of Hiroshima, and invaded Manchuria on August 8. 

How does this undermine the impact of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Some scholars have argued that it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria which ended the war, because it suddenly convinced Japan that no negotiated settlement with the Western powers was possible. It is said that emperor Hirohito was unmoved by the destruction of Hiroshima, but balked when the USSR invaded. 

Second, some military experts argue that the firebombing of Japanese cities from late 1944 had been far more destructive than the use of a nuclear weapon. Firebombing killed lakhs of Japanese armymen and civilians, an effect not nearly achieved by the nuclear bomb. As fires spread through cities, death and destruction multiplied.

There is a conspiracy theory that the Japanese themselves were engaged in exploring the possibility of a nuclear weapon. This theory has been discredited though, not least because the Japanese nuclear programme was in its infancy when the US already possessed plutonium and uranium bombs.

The ethical concerns of using a nuclear device can never be missed. Pacifists have argued that the use of a weapon of mass destruction was bound to kill innocent civilians in huge numbers, and it did. The fact that Hiroshima was an army base was not sufficient excuse for the use of such a powerful weapon. Moreover, the effects of the atomic bombings lasted decades, even generations. Japanese citizens even today continue to suffer from the radioactive effects of the bomb. 

There is a theory that the US used Hiroshima and Nagasaki as testing grounds for the new weapon. It is horrifying to think that millions of non-combatants were used as guinea pigs for a cruel Allied experiment. Interestingly, the Allies kept Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto and some other Japanese cities untouched by conventional bombing in the autumn and winter of 1944-45. It is alleged that some cities including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto and Tokyo had already been designated as test cases for the subsequent use of the nuclear weapon.

Some have argued that the US action constituted state terrorism, and even genocide. The use of the N-bomb would have been completely incompatible with modern standards of war, and international laws governing war. During World War II, laws against massacre of civilians through land and sea attacks existed, but there were very few injunctions against an aerial strike on non combatants.

The use of the nuclear weapon did not surprise the Soviet Union, but it did spur them into action. By 1949, Soviet scientists had developed the country's first nuclear bomb. What followed was a nuclear arms race during the Cold War. Additionally, the nuclear secret was exported to other countries, prominently by rogue scientists such as AQ Khan. Eventually, North Korea, Israel and even South Africa at one point claimed to have nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan became nuclear weapons states by 1998, thus militarising the subcontinent.

The present nuclear warheads are capable of far greater and more lasting destruction than the first two atomic bombs could ever achieve. The prospect of global destruction is very real in the present age. The very fact that nuclear weapons have never been used after 1945 reveals how horrific and total their consequences are. Nevertheless, these weapons continue to exist and the world is now constantly engaged in preventing both proliferation and the passage of nuclear secrets into the hands of global terrorists.