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Groves expected to have another atomic bomb ready for use on August 19, with three more in September and a further three in October.[83] On August 10, he sent a memorandum to Marshall in which he wrote that "the next bomb ... should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August." On the same day, Marshall endorsed the memo with the comment, "It is not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President."[83] There was already discussion in the War Department about conserving the bombs then in production for Operation Downfall. "The problem now [August 13] is whether or not, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, to continue dropping them every time one is made and shipped out there or whether to hold them ... and then pour them all on in a reasonably short time. Not all in one day, but over a short period. And that also takes into consideration the target that we are after. In other words, should we not concentrate on targets that will be of the greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, and the like? Nearer the tactical use rather than other use."[83] Two more Fat Man assemblies were readied. The third core was scheduled to leave Kirtland Field for Tinian on August 15,[203] and Tibbets was ordered by LeMay to return to Utah to collect it.[204] Robert Bacher was packaging it for shipment in Los Alamos on August 14 when he received word from Groves that the shipment was suspended.[205] Surrender of Japan and subsequent occupation Main articles: Surrender of Japan and Occupation of Japan Until August 9, Japan's war council still insisted on its four conditions for surrender. On that day Hirohito ordered Kōichi Kido to "quickly control the situation ... because the Soviet Union has declared war against us." He then held an Imperial conference during which he authorized minister Shigenori Tōgō to notify the Allies that Japan would accept their terms on one condition, that the declaration "does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign ruler."[206] On August 12, the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka, then asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai could not be preserved. Hirohito simply replied "Of course."[207] As the Allied terms seemed to leave intact the principle of the preservation of the Throne, Hirohito recorded on August 14 his capitulation announcement which was broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day despite a short rebellion by militarists opposed to the surrender.[208] In his declaration, Hirohito referred to the atomic bombings: Moreover, the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.[209] In his "Rescript to the Soldiers and Sailors" delivered on August 17, he stressed the impact of the Soviet invasion and his decision to surrender, omitting any mention of the bombs.[210] Hirohito met with General MacArthur on September 27, saying to him that "[t]he peace party did not prevail until the bombing of Hiroshima created a situation which could be dramatized." Furthermore, the "Rescript to the Soldiers and Sailors" speech he told MacArthur about was just personal, not political, and never stated that the Soviet intervention in Manchuria was the main reason for surrender. In fact, a day after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Hirohito ordered his advisers, primarily Chief Cabinet Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu, Kawada Mizuho, and Masahiro Yasuoka, to write up a surrender speech. In Hirohito's speech, days before announcing it on radio on August 15, he gave three major reasons for surrender: Tokyo's defenses would not be complete before the American invasion of Japan, Ise Shrine would be lost to the Americans, and atomic weapons deployed by the Americans would lead to the death of the entire Japanese race. Despite the Soviet intervention, Hirohito did not mention the Soviets as the main factor for surrender.[211] Depiction, public response and censorship File:Hiroshima Aftermath 1946 USAF Film.ogg Life among the rubble in Hiroshima in March and April 1946. Film footage taken by Lieutenant Daniel A. McGovern (director) and Harry Mimura (cameraman) for a United States Strategic Bombing Survey project. During the war "annihilationist and exterminationalist rhetoric" was tolerated at all levels of U.S. society; according to the British embassy in Washington the Americans regarded the Japanese as "a nameless mass of vermin".[212] Caricatures depicting Japanese as less than human, e.g. monkeys, were common.[212] A 1944 opinion poll that asked what should be done with Japan found that 13% of the U.S. public were in favor of "killing off" all Japanese: men, women, and children.[213][214] After the Hiroshima bomb detonated successfully, Robert Oppenheimer addressed an assembly at Los Alamos "clasping his hands together like a prize-winning boxer".[215] The Vatican was less enthusiastic; its newspaper L'Osservatore Romano expressed regret that the bomb's inventors did not destroy the weapon for the benefit of humanity.[216] Nonetheless, news of the atomic bombing was greeted enthusiastically in the U.S.; a poll in Fortune magazine in late 1945 showed a significant minority of Americans (22.7%) wishing that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on Japan.[217][218] The initial positive response was supported by the imagery presented to the public (mainly the powerful images of the mushroom cloud) and the censorship of photographs that showed corpses and maimed survivors.[217] Wilfred Burchett was the first journalist to visit Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped, arriving alone by train from Tokyo on September 2, the day of the formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri. His Morse code dispatch was printed by the Daily Express newspaper in London on September 5, 1945, entitled "The Atomic Plague", the first public report to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout.[219] Burchett's reporting was unpopular with the U.S. military. The U.S. censors suppressed a supporting story submitted by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News, and accused Burchett of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda. Laurence dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale, ignoring his own account of Hiroshima's radiation sickness published one week earlier.[220] File:Physical damage, blast effect, Hiroshima, 1946-03-13 ~ 1946-04-08, 342-USAF-11071.ogv The Hiroshima ruins in March and April 1946, by Daniel A. McGovern and Harry Mimura A member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Lieutenant Daniel McGovern, used a film crew to document the results in early 1946.[221] The film crew's work resulted in a three-hour documentary entitled The Effects of the Atomic Bombs Against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documentary included images from hospitals showing the human effects of the bomb; it showed burned out buildings and cars, and rows of skulls and bones on the ground. It was classified "secret" for the next 22 years.[222] During this time in America, it was a common practice for editors to keep graphic images of death out of films, magazines, and newspapers.[223] The total of 90,000 ft (27,000 m) of film shot by McGovern's cameramen had not been fully aired as of 2009. According to Greg Mitchell, with the 2004 documentary film Original Child Bomb, a small part of that footage managed to reach part of the American public "in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended".[221] Motion picture company Nippon Eigasha started sending cameramen to Nagasaki and Hiroshima in September 1945. On October 24, 1945, a U.S. military policeman stopped a Nippon Eigasha cameraman from continuing to film in Nagasaki. All Nippon Eigasha's reels were then confiscated by the American authorities. These reels were in turn requested by the Japanese government, declassified, and saved from oblivion. Some black-and-white motion pictures were released and shown for the first time to Japanese and American audiences in the years from 1968 to 1970.[221] The public release of film footage of the city post attack, and some research about the human effects of the attack, was restricted during the occupation of Japan, and much of this information was censored until the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, restoring control to the Japanese.[224] Only the most sensitive and detailed weapons effects information was censored during this period. There was no censorship of the factually written accounts. For example, the book Hiroshima written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey, which was originally published in article form in the popular magazine The New Yorker,[225] on August 31, 1946, is reported to have reached Tokyo in English by January 1947, and the translated version was released in Japan in 1949.[226][227][228] The book narrates the stories of the lives of six bomb survivors from immediately prior, to months after, the dropping of the Little Boy bomb.[225] Post-attack casualties File:Medical aspect, Hiroshima, Japan, 1946-03-23, 342-USAF-11034.ogv Film footage taken in Hiroshima in March 1946 showing victims with severe burns In the spring of 1948, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) was established in accordance with a presidential directive from Truman to the National Academy of Sciences – National Research Council to conduct investigations of the late effects of radiation among the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[229] One of the early studies conducted by the ABCC was on the outcome of pregnancies occurring in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in a control city, Kure, located 18 mi (29 km) south of Hiroshima, in order to discern the conditions and outcomes related to radiation exposure.[230] Dr. James V. Neel led the study which found that the number of birth defects was not significantly higher among the children of survivors who were pregnant at the time of the bombings.[231] The National Academy of Sciences questioned Neel's procedure which did not filter the Kure population for possible radiation exposure.[232] Among the observed birth defects there was a higher incidence of brain malformation in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, including microencephaly and anencephaly, about 2.75 times the rate seen in Kure.[233][234] In 1985, Johns Hopkins University human geneticist James F. Crow examined Neel's research and confirmed that the number of birth defects was not significantly higher in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[235] Many members of the ABCC and its successor Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) were still looking for possible birth defects or other causes among the survivors decades later, but found no evidence that they were common among the survivors.[236][237] Despite the insignificance of birth defects found in Neel's study, historian Ronald E. Powaski wrote that Hiroshima experienced "an increase in stillbirths, birth defects, and infant mortality" following the atomic bomb.[238] Neel also studied the longevity of the children who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reporting that between 90 and 95 percent were still living 50 years later.[236] Around 1,900 cancer deaths can be attributed to the after-effects of the bombs. An epidemiology study by the RERF states that from 1950 to 2000, 46% of leukemia deaths and 11% of solid cancer deaths among the bomb survivors were due to radiation from the bombs, the statistical excess being estimated at 200 leukemia and 1700 solid cancers.[239] Hibakusha Main article: Hibakusha See also: Hibakujumoku A rectangular column rises above a dark stone base with Japanese writing on it. It sits atop a grass mound with is surrounded by alternating circles of stone path and grass. The is a wall around the whole monument, and bushes beyond. Panoramic view of the monument marking the hypocenter, or ground zero, of the atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki The survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha (被爆者?), a Japanese word that literally translates to "explosion-affected people." As of March 31, 2013, 201,779 hibakusha were recognized by the Japanese government, most living in Japan.[240] The government of Japan recognizes about 1% of these as having illnesses caused by radiation.[241] The memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki contain lists of the names of the hibakusha who are known to have died since the bombings. Updated annually on the anniversaries of the bombings, as of August 2013 the memorials record the names of almost 450,000 deceased hibakusha; 286,818 in Hiroshima[242] and 162,083 in Nagasaki.[243] Hibakusha and their children were (and still are) victims of severe discrimination in Japan due to public ignorance about the consequences of radiation sickness, with much of the public believing it to be hereditary or even contagious.[244] This is despite the fact that no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects or congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[245] A study of the long-term psychological effects of the bombings on the survivors found that even 17–20 years after the bombings had occurred survivors showed a higher prevalence of anxiety and somatization symptoms.[246] Double survivors On March 24, 2009, the Japanese government officially recognized Tsutomu Yamaguchi as a double hibakusha. He was confirmed to be 3 km (1.9 mi) from ground zero in Hiroshima on a business trip when Little Boy was detonated. He was seriously burnt on his left side and spent the night in Hiroshima. He arrived at his home city of Nagasaki on August 8, the day before Fat Man was dropped, and he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. He was the first officially recognized survivor of both bombings.[247] He died on January 4, 2010, at the age of 93, after a battle with stomach cancer.[248] The 2006 documentary Twice Survived: The Doubly Atomic Bombed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki documented 165 nijū hibakusha, and was screened at the United Nations.[249] Korean survivors During the war, Japan brought as many as 670,000 Korean conscripts to Japan to work as forced labor.[250] About 20,000 Koreans were killed in Hiroshima and another 2,000 died in Nagasaki. Perhaps one in seven of the Hiroshima victims were of Korean ancestry. For many years, Koreans had a difficult time fighting for recognition as atomic bomb victims and were denied health benefits. Most issues have been addressed in recent years through lawsuits.[251] Debate over bombings Main article: Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon. — Henry L. Stimson, 1947[252] A shot along a river. There is a bridge in the distance, and a ruined domed building in the middle distance. People walk along the footpath that runs parallel to the river Citizens of Hiroshima walk by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the closest building to have survived the city's atomic bombing The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. J. Samuel Walker wrote in an April 2005 overview of recent historiography on the issue, "the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue." He wrote that "The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States."[253] Supporters of the bombings generally assert that they caused the Japanese surrender, preventing casualties on both sides during Operation Downfall. One figure of speech, "One hundred million [subjects of the Japanese Empire] will die for the Emperor and Nation,"[254] served as a unifying slogan, although that phrase was intended as a figure of speech along the lines of the "ten thousand years" phrase.[255] In Truman's 1955 Memoirs, "he states that the atomic bomb probably saved half a million U.S. lives— anticipated casualties in an Allied invasion of Japan planned for November. Stimson subsequently talked of saving one million U.S. casualties, and Churchill of saving one million American and half that number of British lives."[256] Scholars have pointed out various alternatives that could have ended the war without an invasion, but these alternatives could have resulted in the deaths of many more Japanese.[257] Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944, ordering the execution of Allied prisoners of war when the POW camp was in the combat zone.[258] Those who oppose the bombings cite a number of reasons for their view, among them: a belief that atomic bombing is fundamentally immoral, that the bombings counted as war crimes, that they were militarily unnecessary, that they constituted state terrorism,[259] and that they involved racism against and the dehumanization of the Japanese people. The bombings were part of an already fierce conventional bombing campaign. This, together with the sea blockade and the collapse of Germany (with its implications regarding redeployment), could also have led to a Japanese surrender. As the United States dropped its atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union launched a surprise attack with 1.6 million troops against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. "The Soviet entry into the war", noted Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, "played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation".[260] Legal situation in Japan Main article: Ryuichi Shimoda v. The State In 1963, the Tokyo District Court, while denying a case for damages brought by Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors against the Japanese government, stated: ... (b) that the dropping of atomic bombs as an act of hostilities was illegal under the rules of positive international law (taking both treaty law and customary law into consideration) then in force ... (c) that the dropping of atomic bombs also constituted a wrongful act on the plane of municipal law, ascribable to the United States and its President, Mr. Harry S. Truman; ... The aerial bombardment with atomic bombs of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an illegal act of hostilities according to the rules of international law. It must be regarded as indiscriminate aerial bombardment of undefended cities, even if it were directed at military objectives only, inasmuch as it resulted in damage comparable to that caused by indiscriminate bombardment.[261] |
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