War crime—or blessing? A Japanese admiral agreed with me about the atomic bomb

In a comment at VFR on October 10, 2003, I wrote:

After doing some reading on this years ago I came to the conclusion that, as inconceivably horrible as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the bomb was a blessing, a miracle, since the alternatives—for the Japanese even more than for the Americans—would have been infinitely worse.

Not only did it bring the war to a sudden end, but the way in which it did it, considering the Japanese’ aggressive ideology and their hierarchical psychology in which other people are seen either as superiors or inferiors, assured peace. In a single instant the Japanese went from seeing the Americans as subhumans, against whom anything was permitted, to seeing them as their respected superiors. This was made possible by the sheer overwhelming destructiveness of the bomb. There was thus a perfect fit between the nature of the enemy, and the nature of the weapon we used to defeat him.

In his article “Truman on Trial: The Defense, Opening Argument,” August 3, 2001 at the History News Network, Ronald Radosh countered Philip Nobile’s attempt to indict President Truman and all supporters of the use of the A-bomb against Japan as war criminals. Radosh wrote:

Writing in the Pacific Historical Review in November 1998, Sadao Asada offered his own thoroughly researched answer in his seminal article, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender—A Reconsideration.” His article reveals that the bomb and only the bomb galvanized Japan’s peace party to take actions necessary to terminate the Pacific War. What he accomplishes in a virtual tour de force is to correlate the day by day decisions of the Japanese government from August 6th through the 14th in the context of how the use of the A-bomb worked to produce acceptance of the Potsdam terms of surrender….

What Asado shows is that Prime Minister Suzuki, before being informed of Soviet entry into the Pacific War, had decided that because of the A-bomb, war between Japan and the USA could no longer be carried on. And Foreign Minister Togo added that “since the atomic bomb had made its appearance, continuation of the war had become utterly impossible.” With the news of the second atomic bomb dropped at Nagasaki, Suzuki feared that rather than stage an invasion—for which Japan was prepared——the U.S. would keep on dropping atomic bombs. In other words, both bombs had the effect of jolting the peace party to move toward surrender. Asado describes what he calls the “shock effect” of the Nagasaki bomb on Japan’s military and political leaders.

As Asado points out, the dropping of the two atomic bombs was the equivalent of American aid to Japan’s beleaguered peace party. Thus, Kido Koichi, the emperor’s main advisor, agreed that “we of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war.” He agreed, in other words, with the very man Nobile attacks, Henry L. Stimson, who understood the “profound psychological shock” the bomb would have. As Asado writes: “This ‘strategy of shock’ worked, for it encouraged the peace party to redouble its efforts to bring about a decision for surrender.”… Both the Japanese peace group and the U.S. advisors accepted the atomic bomb and its use as the main instrument for ending the war, a linkage that Asado notes “rested on the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” It was, as Rear Admiral Takagi Sokichi said, one of the “gifts from Heaven,” since it averted an impending and probable military revolt by the Japanese generals, and hence guaranteed acceptance of the Potsdam terms.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 22, 2007 08:49 AM | Send