Imperial Imperatives: Truman's "Hammer" and the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Dr. Joseph Gerson

Vancouver World Peace Forum

June, 2006

"I was not willing to let Russia reap the fruits of a long and bitter and gallant effort in which she had had no part."[1]

- President Harry Truman

"Brainwashed in our childhood

Brainwashed by the school

Brainwashed by our teachers

And brainwashed by all their rules

Brainwashed by our leaders

By our Kings and Queens

Brainwashed in the open and brainwashed

Behind the scenes"

- George Harrison

I want to thank the organizers of this forum for this opportunity to share what has become the "consensus among scholars" of the reasons the U.S. annihilated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As I begin, I should acknowledge that I am deeply indebted to the work of Gar Aplerovitz, Barton Bernstein, John Dower, Tsuyoshi Hadegawa, Martin Sherwin, and others.

On August 7, 1945, President Truman announced that the "first atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, which he described as a military base. "We wished" he said, 'in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."[2] The bombing, the world was told, was justified punishment for Japanese aggression and prevented U.S. casualties.[3] In the months and decades that followed, these lies and distortions were reinforced by an orchestrated media campaign and by censorship and secrecy. The campaign was designed to convince public opinion of the necessity and legitimacy of the atomic bombings, to obscure the real reasons, and to build popular support for on going U.S. preparations and threats to initiate future nuclear wars.[4]

As we know, Hiroshima was destroyed within ten seconds, initially killing 70,000 people and leveling or burning all but a few of the city's buildings. By year's end the two bombs claimed more than 210,000 lives. Hundreds of thousands more suffered and died in the years that followed from cancers, radiation disease, and searing physical and emotional wounds. Many were profoundly wounded by what they witnessed and suffered and committed suicide.

Truman and his inner circle knew that they were ordering the atomic bombings when the Japanese government, under orders from the Emperor, was desperately attempting to surrender on terms that Truman eventually accepted after the nuclear holocausts. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Leahy; Army Chief of Staff General Marshall; Commander of U.S. forces in Europe, General Eisenhower; Commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, General "Hap" Arnold; Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz; Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who organized the murderous firebombing of nearly every Japanese city; and other senior military leaders either opposed or pressed alternatives to the atomic bombings.[5] They understood that, as Leahy put it, ""The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance to our war against Japan..."[6]

Four primary calculations drove Truman's and his closest advisers to use the new weapon. First, they were profoundly concerned that President Roosevelt had conceded too much to Stalin at Yalta. By ending the war before the Soviet Union "joined the kill" of Japan, they hope to limit Soviet post-war influence in northern China, Manchuria, Korea, and possibly Japan. They also hoped to change the rules of the game for the Cold War that had already begun

Second, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed to ensure that "the Soviets would be more accommodating to the American point of view" in the Cold War era.[7] Truman expected that by demonstrating the apocalyptic power of nuclear weapons and the U.S. will to use them - even against civilians - he would have "a hammer over" Stalin. The message was clear: We have the ability and the will to do this to human beings. Beware and behave.

There were also secondary political and personal motives. Truman and his political mentor, Secretary of State Byrnes, worried that if the U.S. electorate learned that $2 billion (a staggering sum in those days) had been spent to build a super bomb that had not been used, Truman would be voted out of office in the 1948 presidential election. There was also simple vengeance fused with racism. As Truman wrote to Samuel McCrea Cavert of the Federal Council of Churches two days after the Nagasaki bombing, "When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.”[8]

Like the myth that Christopher Columbus discovered America, the fiction that the A-bombs were employed to save U.S. lives has become the government enforced received truth and common wisdom in the United States and much of the world. A 2005 Gallup poll, taken for the sixtieth anniversary of the A-bombings, revealed that 57% of U.S. people believed the A-bombings were necessary and legitimate.[9] Yet, forty years earlier, William Appleman Williams, then dean of U.S. historians, concluded that "The United States dropped the bomb to end the war against Japan and thereby to stop the Russians in Asia, and to give them sober pause in eastern Europe."[10] In the years that followed, the publication of wartime leaders' diaries and memoirs; the opening of official U.S., Soviet, and Japanese records; and laborious scholarly research have established what J. Samuel Walker, the former official historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, called a "consensus among scholars… that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan....alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it."[11]

Beginning with the Manhattan Project's co-optation of New York Times journalist William Laurence and the military occupation's censorship, through the battle over the Smithsonian Museum 50th anniversary exhibit and 60th anniversary commemorations, powerful forces in U.S. society have worked to consign the historical record to Orwellian memory holes. Most pernicious are the lies told to children. Written to pass knowledge from one generation to the next, children's books often reflect the dominant beliefs and values of a society. Look then to the American Heritage Junior Library for an unvarnished expression of the prevailing U.S. myth about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

"Even if the Russians invaded Manchuria and the British attacked

Malaya in August as planned, no one expected the invasion of Japan

to be anything but a slaughter. Before the Japanese mainland could be

secured, American casualties would amount to as many as one million

men; and the Japanese were expected to sacrifice twice that number in

defense of their homeland. Then, on July 16, the bright glow of the Trinity

test raised hopes that the war could be ended without an invasion...."[12]

This theme was repeated ad nauseum in Congress and in the press during the ultimately dangerous and certainly surreal debate over the Smithsonian Institution's fiftieth anniversary exhibit.

There was little progress over the next decade. Time Magazine's 60th anniversary tribute to "America's World War II Triumph in the Pacific" repeated Truman-era propaganda that the Japanese government "rejected" the Potsdam Declaration, that Truman's "advisers estimated that casualties would run to the hundreds of thousands and perhaps exceed 1 million," and that "there is little question that in using the bombs he realized his military goal of bringing the war to a swift and far less deadly end."[13] These arguments can be heard today from the Kennedy School at Harvard University to right-wing talk radio.[14]

In fact, during the months leading up to the A-bombings, Japanese diplomats in European capitals and Moscow sought to negotiate an end to the war. And, the military's estimates were that if they invaded Japan up to 47,500 U.S. troops could be killed in the two stage attack. It was Winston Churchill who, soon after the Nagasaki A-bombings, announced that nuclear bombs had saved "well over 1,200,000 Allied lives." Truman initially used the imaginary figure of a quarter of a million U.S. lives, but he doubled the figure for his memoirs.[15]

Unknown to all but a few of his most senior advisors, in the spring and summer of 1945, President Truman was receiving reports from his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Leahy, that "the Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."[16] Truman was informed of, discussed, and dismissed Emperor Hirohito's efforts to surrender before and during the Potsdam summit.

Indeed, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had reported that "the increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic [fire] bombings, and the collapse of Germany" was leading the Japanese to understand that "absolute defeat is inevitable." The invasion of Kyushu, which the Joint Chiefs believed could cost 7,500 U.S. lives, was scheduled for November, and the conquest of Honshu which they anticipated could take the lives of as many as 40,000 troops was set for January 1946. This schedule allowed months to negotiate the details of Japan's surrender. U.S. and British intelligence also projected that when Soviet forces joined the war three months after Hitler's final defeat "the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor."[17]

On the basis of these and other reports, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, later the "Chairman of the Establishment", advised Secretary of War Stimson that "we should have our heads examined if we did not consider the possibility of bringing the war to a conclusion without further loss of life."[18] As the end game approached, former Ambassador Grew, McCloy, Navy Secretary Forrestal, and Stimson, who was not fully at ease about "competing with Hitler" in atrocities, informed Truman that "a carefully timed warning by the United States, Britain, China and the Soviet Union might provide the context for the Japanese to surrender."[19] "[T]he Japanese nation" Stimson reported, "has the mental intelligence and versatile capacity in such a crisis to recognize the folly of a fight to the finish and to accept the proffer of what will amount to an unconditional surrender.[20]

It is important to understand the atomic bombings in terms of continuity, as well as the fundamental change described by Hibakusha, Albert Einstein and so many others. The A-bombings were a manifestation of the imperial competition that ignited the Japanese-U.S. war. In the first decades of the 20th century, Japan was a rising power that pressed at and beyond the limits acceptable to imperial Britain and the United States. As the long-censored historian Saburo Ienaga wrote, “In China, Japan competed with the West for a place at the imperial table and a slice of the Chinese melon."[21] U.S. support for Japanese conquest and expansion began with the 1895 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Although U.S. forces were marginally involved in the Opium War, and it was Admiral Perry's warships that "opened" Japan to the West, U.S. colonialism in Asia became a major force in 1898. It was when U.S. and Japanese imperial ambitions collided in the 1930s that war began to appear unavoidable.

President Truman, his senior advisors, and Stalin approached Japan's inevitable defeat with the cynicism of the imperialists that they were. Each worked to prolong the war, thus increasing casualties on all sides in order to maximize their influence in East Asia and the Pacific. For U.S. leaders, the atomic bomb was not so much about saving U.S. lives as it was "the master card" played to contain the Soviets and to signal possession of a trump care for anticipated post-war confrontations. Indeed, Truman postponed the Potsdam summit until he could ensure that he had this "card" to play.

Political decisions are rarely made for a single reason. The forces that shape major decisions are usually many and complex. There was some truth in William Johnston's introduction to the U.S. edition of Dr. Nagai's 1946 The Bells of Nagasaki, that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombings reflected the momentum of the atom bomb project, the desire to bring the war to an early conclusion, and the demand of the collective unconscious for revenge. There were other, more determinative, factors. The historian Martin Sherwin has written that four assumptions underlay the decision: 1) that the atomic bombs were legitimate weapons and would have been used by the Nazis if Germany had won the race to build the bomb; 2) that the A-bombings would have a "profound effect" on Japan's leaders; 3) that the U.S. public would want the bombs used; and most importantly 4) that the bombs would have "a salutary effect on relations with the Soviet Union."[22]

There will still other factors, not the least being racism against Asians in general and the Japanese in particular that was an element of the "collective unconscious of the time.” And, for those who applaud Clinton and Bush II humanitarian interventions, a "humanitarian" rationale was put forward by James Conant, the president of Harvard University who recommended that the bombs be targeted against civilians, and by Manhattan Project scientists who argued that the A- bombings would "awaken the world to the necessity of abolishing war altogether."[23]

It was, however, the bombs' terrorizing "salutatory effects on the Soviet Union", that dominated U.S. strategic thinking.

As Sherwin reports, at his meeting in Quebec with Churchill in 1943 that Roosevelt "began to deal with atomic energy as an integral part of his general diplomacy, linking and encompassing both the current wartime situation and the shape of - affairs" for the post-war era[24] Roosevelt and Churchill signed an aide-memoir stating that, "When a bomb is finally available, it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese, who should be warned that this bombardment will be repeated until they surrender."

As Barton Bernstein wrote "All of F.D.R.'s advisers who knew about the bomb always unquestioningly assumed that it would be used...By about mid-1944, most had comfortably concluded that the target would be Japan."[25]

Anti-communism in Washington and opposition to Russian dominance of Eastern Europe reinforced planning to use the nascent atomic bombs. Early on, he expressed the hope that after the atomic bombs had been used to contain the Soviet Union, that they could be further used to discipline Moscow.[26] Although Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed at the Yalta summit that Poland's post-war government would be "friendly" to the Soviet Union, and despite repeated counsel from Secretary Stimson and Admiral Leahy that Moscow was living up to its commitments, President Truman who was elevated after FDR's death, quickly fell under the influence of Averill Harriman, the ambassador to Moscow, outgoing Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius and Winston Churchill. They all opposed Soviet domination of Poland, which for them symbolized East-West relations in their entirety, and they fed new and uninformed President's fears with reports that Stalin had violated agreements and could not be trusted.[27]

With Germany facing imminent defeat, Churchill and Stalin had been anxious for a summit with Truman to plan the last stages of the war against Japan and to resolve differences over the structure of the post-war "order." Truman, insecure about his diplomatic skills and with no guarantee that he would have a working atomic bomb in his negotiating hand, was not so eager. He thus appreciated and accepted Secretary Stimson's suggestion that the Potsdam summit be postponed until after the Trinity A-bomb test in July. As Stimson noted, the way to deal with the Russians was to "keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words....The Russians will understand them better than anything else.... I call it a royal straight flush and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play it." Truman was less diplomatic: "If it explodes… I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys."[28]

There were other Soviet-related dynamics at play. Central among them was a debate in Washington over whether the Soviets would actually join the war against Japan.

In October 1943, at the Teheran summit, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan soon after Germany's defeat. Moscow would share the sacrifice needed to route the Emperor's imperial forces. The U.S. Joint Chiefs war plan called for Soviet forces to keep the Japanese forces preoccupied in Manchuria and China, preventing their redeployment to their besieged island nation. In return, Stalin was promised that Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores would be returned to China, that Korea would be placed under a forty-year trusteeship, and that the strategic port of Darien, the Manchurian Railway, and southern Sakhalin would be returned to the Soviet Union.[29] Moscow would also be given the Kurile Islands, opening the Pacific's strategic sea lanes to its fleets. In the tradition of colonial powers, the deal was sweetened a year later with the promise that Moscow could lease Port Arthur for a naval base.[30]

By April 1945, with Japanese military power collapsing, the U.S. Joint Chiefs were confident they could defeat Japan without Soviet assistance. With Stalin committed to join the war by mid-August - three months after Germany's defeat - pressure built in Washington to limit Moscow's influence in Asia by preventing Soviet entry into the war. As Secretary of State Byrnes put it, “somebody had made an awful mistake in bringing about a situation where Russia was permitted to come out of a war with the power she will have.”[31] Ambassador Harriman advised that once Moscow joined the war against Japan, "Russian influence would move in quickly and toward ultimate domination...There could be no illusion about anything such as 'free China' once the Russians got in...[Russia] will in the end exercise control over whatever government may be established in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia."[32] There was near unanimity among Truman's advisers that Japan's defeat would create a military and political vacuum in Asia that would be filled by the Kremlin. Strategically important assets would fall to the Soviet Union.

In fact, in July 1944, understanding that Japan's defeat was "only a matter of time", Soviet Ambassador to Japan, Iakov Malik, submitted a report recommending priorities for Moscow's relations with Tokyo. If Moscow intervened before Japan's defeat and played Japan against the Anglo-Saxon allies, Stalin could have a major role in determining how the war's spoils were allocated. Malik advised that Stalin's priority should be gaining secure access to the Pacific, and urged the dictator to draw out the war to gain time for Soviet military intervention. He also proposed that the Red Army seize Manchuria, Korea, Tsuchima and the Kurile Islands. Stalin concurred, ordering that "the postwar territorial settlement should be dictated by the requirements of the Soviet state, not by its historical claim."[33]

Geography was also a priority for U.S. war planners who envisioned the post-war Pacific as an "American Lake." In addition to extending its influence across northern Asia, with U.S. forces occupying Japan and creating its post-war government, the island nation would become the "keystone of the Pacific," completing U.S. encirclement of the Soviet Union and blocking its access to the Pacific. Japan had other strategic attractions. Although most of its industrial capacity was destroyed, the intellectual base upon which it had been built and its future industrial potential were strategic assets that U.S. planners did not want to fall into Moscow's sphere.[34]

In May 1945, convinced that a future war with Russia was inevitable, former Ambassador Grew raised four critical questions: 1) How much pressure should be exerted on Moscow to ensure that it honored its commitment to join the war? 2) Was Soviet involvement in the war so important to the U.S., that Washington should avoid risks to limit Moscow's gains in Asia? 3) Should concessions in Asia, made to the Soviet Union at Yalta, be reconsidered? 4) If the Soviets demanded to join the occupation of Japan, should the U.S. acquiesce?[35]

These questions crystallized Stimson's understanding of the strategic potential of the atom bomb. "Once its power was demonstrated,” he concluded, “the Soviets would be more accommodating to the American point of view. Territorial disputes could be settled amicably."[36]

As U.S. leaders knew, another dynamic was also at work. A year earlier a secret peace camp had coalesced within the Japanese government to prevent what Emperor Hirohito later described as the "unbearable", the conquest and occupation of Japan. The peace party was led by the Hirohito's most senior and trusted advisor, Chief Privy Council Kido, by Foreign minister Togo, and Navy Minister Yonai.[37] When Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met at Yalta, Japan's former Prime Minister, Prince Konoe weighed in, informing the Emperor that "Japan's defeat is inevitable." Konoe urged that the only way to ensure the survival of the Emperor and kokutai, the essence of the Meiji emperor system, was to "negotiate with the United States and Britain as soon as possible.[38]

With a sense of urgency, caused in part by the fire bombings of Tokyo, Kido, Togo, Yanai and their allies worked to build unity within the Japanese government to negotiate the war's end. They ordered Japanese diplomats and intelligence officials in Europe to open diplomatic channels with their U.S. counterparts Thus, Japan's minister in Switzerland began a dialog with Allen Dulles, the OSS's (forerunner to the CIA) chief official in Europe, to "arrange for a cessation of hostilities." Similar explorations were launched at the Vatican and through Swedish diplomats. The Japanese ambassador in Portugal made it known "that actual peace terms were unimportant so long as the term 'unconditional surrender' was not employed."[39] Despite its fear of communism, the peace party placed its greatest hopes in Soviet mediation.

Meanwhile, in Washington, former President Hoover urged Truman to win Japan's surrender "before the Soviets captured Manchuria, North China and Korea." Japan would surrender, he advised, "if Britain and America could persuade the Japanese that they had no intention of eradicating them, eliminating their system of government, or interfering with their way of life." And, as it became increasingly clear to U.S. planners that keeping Hirohito on the throne as a constitutional monarch would facilitate the U.S. conquest and occupation of Japan, Stimson, Grew, McCloy and Forrestal all reported that U.S. strategic interests could be served with less than "unconditional surrender."[40]

On July 12, as Truman sailed to Europe for the Potsdam summit, he was informed that a message from Japanese Foreign Minister Togo to be delivered to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov was intercepted. That message read:

"His Majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war

daily brings greater evil and sacrifice on the people's of all the bellig-

erent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated.

…It is the Emperor's private intention to send Prince Konoe to Moscow

as a Special Envoy with a letter from him containing the statements given

above."[41]

Truman understood the Emperor's intention, confiding in his diary: "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace". He did nothing to follow up on this opening.[42]

Meanwhile preparations for the earliest possible use of the U.S. nuclear weapons continued apace. The Interim Committee had met on May 31 and decided to use "terror weapon(s) to produce as "profound psychological impression on as many Japanese as possible." The committee accepted James Conant's recommendation that the best target would be a "vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' homes." To demonstrate the A-bombs' terrorizing power and to ensure that their apocalyptic power would not be wasted in less densely populated areas, it was decided to target the city centers where civilians were concentrated, not specific military or industrial sites likely to be located on the cities' margins.[43] It was also agreed that two weapons should be prepared for use in early August with more to follow if necessary. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thus resulted from a single decision.

In Potsdam Truman and his advisers were informed that the Soviet Union would join the war on August 15. With the U.S. leaders "anxious" in Byrnes words "to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in with particular reference to Darien and Port Arthur",[44] on July 16 a relieved Secretary of War Stimson passed a note on to President Truman which read, "It's a Boy," code that the a-bomb test at Alamogordo had been successful, that Truman had his "hammer."

In Potsdam, news that the U.S. arsenal now included Stimson's "royal straight flush" stiffened Truman's and Byrnes' determination to play their master card before Stalin could claim his spoils. As Churchill observed it, "Truman was evidently much fortified...he stood up to the Russians in a most decisive manner...He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting."[45]

Two brief exchanges at Potsdam were particularly revealing. The first came when Stalin, unaware that Truman was reading Hirohito's diplomatic correspondence, briefed Truman about the Japanese request for Prince Konoe to travel to Moscow to arrange Soviet mediation. The Soviet dictator indicated that there were three possible responses: "ask the Japanese for more details, leading them to believe their plan had a chance; ignore the overture; or send back a definite refusal." Stalin indicated that his preference was "to lull the Japanese to sleep", and Truman concurred. For competing reasons, each wanted to prolong the war.[46]

The second exchange came when Truman informally told Stalin that the U.S. "had a new weapon of unusual destructive force", implicitly threatening the Soviet Union. Stalin, who had been kept abreast of the Manhattan Project by Soviet spies in Los Alamos was hardly surprised and disconcerted Truman, telling him that he hoped he would make "good use of it against the Japanese." Truman's message had, nonetheless, been sent. Soviet Chief of Staff, Marshall Georgi Zhukov, who met with Stalin shortly after the exchange, understood Truman's words as "political blackmail" and as a "psychological attack against ...Stalin."[47]

Three weeks later, in one of the worst criminal acts of terrorism in human history, nuclear hell was inflicted on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With the victory of the Chinese Communist revolution in 1949, most of the geostrategic gains won by the A-bombings were negated. Not willing to be the object of U.S. nuclear blackmail, the Soviet Union achieved something approaching nuclear parity by the mid-1970s. But U.S. faith in Truman's "hammer" persisted. Over the course of the past six decades, during international crises, confrontations and wars, every U.S. president has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war. Nuclear terrorism thus became what both Presidents Clinton and Bush II have termed "a cornerstone of U.S. policy" and the driving force of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Note: This speech is drawn from my forthcoming book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World. For more information contact Joseph Gerson at: [email protected]; c/o AFSC, 2161 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Ma. 02140; or 617-661-6130.

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[1] Cited in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, Cambridge, Ma.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 164.

[2] Howard Zinn. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology, New York: Harper Collins, 1990, p. 95, emphasis added.

[3] See, among others, New York Times, February 1, 1958, cited in Robert Jay Lifton, Death In Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, New York: Random House, 1967, p. 333; Gar Alperovitz, “The Hiroshima Decision: A Moral Reassessment,” Christianity & Crisis, February 3, 1992; Bernard E. Trainor, “…And Why We Should Remember the Men in the Pacific, Too”, Boston Globe, June 5, 1994.

[4] See, among others, Wilfred Burchett. Shadows of Hiroshima, London, Verso, 1983; Hiroshi Iwadare, “Media report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, International Citizens’ Conference for No More Hiroshimas and No More Nagasakis, Tokyo. July 2005; Peter Kuznick, “The Criminality of Nuclear Weapons: Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now”, International Citizens’ Conference for No More Hiroshimas and No More Nagasakis, Tokyo. July 2005; Hiroka Takashi (former mayor of Hiroshima) speech at International Citizens’ Conference for No More Hiroshimas and No More Nagasakis, Tokyo. July 2005.

[5] Gar Alperovitz. “Enola Gay: Was Using the Bomb Necessary?”, Miami Herald, December 14, 2003

[6] William Appleman Williams. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, New York: Delta Books, 1962, p. 254.

[7] Sherwin. Op Cit., pp. 190-194.

[8] Harry Truman, Letter to Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary, Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, August 11, 1945.Hharry S. Truman Library.

[9] "Americans support Hiroshima bombing" Daily Yomiuri, August 7, 2005.

[10] Williams. Op. Cit., p. 254

[11] Alperovitz. Christianity and Crisis, Op. Cit.

[12] Michael Blow, The History of the Atomic Bomb, New York: American Heritage Publishing Co. 1968.

[13] Editors of TIME. V-J Day: America’s World War II Triumph in the Pacific, New York: TIME Books, 2005, pp. 106-108.

[14] See, for example, the closing remarks of former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson at the Kennedy School Forum “The Crisis in Iraq: Where Do We Go From Here?” February 25, 1998, available on video tape in the Kennedy School archives.

[15] Barton Bernstein. “A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “June, 1946. and is included in Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifshultz, op. cit.

[16] Gar Alperovitz, “Why The United States Dropped the Bomb,” Technology Review, August/September 1990.

[17] Alperovitz. Technology Review, Op Cit.

[18] Ibid. p. 104-05

[19] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Op. Cit., pp 52, 110, 117-118; and DeGroot, Op Cit,, p.78.

[20] Alperovitz. Op. Cit., emphasis added.

[21] Saburo Ienga. The Pacific War, 1931-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1978, p. 58.

[22] Sherwin. Op. Cit., p. 203

[23] Letter from President Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary, Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, August 11, 1945, Truman Library.

[24] Sherwin, Op. Cit. pp. 84 (emphasis added), 88 & 89.

[25] Ibid.. pp. 131, 104-105, 111; Barton Bernstein. “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered”, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 1995.

[26] Ibid. pp. 88-89, 96-97, 118

[27] Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, op. cit., pp 11-12; Sherwin, Op. Cit. pp. 157-158

[28] Gar Alperovitz. Technology Review, Op. Cit.

[29] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Op. Cit., p. 25

[30] Ibid., p. 35

[31] DeGroot. Op. Cit., p.74

[32] Alperovitz. Technology Review, Op. Cit.

[33] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Op. Cit., pp.25-26

[34] Alperovitz. Atomic Diplomacy, op. cit.; Carl Oglesby and Richard Shaull. Containment and Change, New York: The Macmillan Co. 1967.

[35] Gar Alperovitz. Technology Review. Op. Cit.

[36] Sherwin. Op. Cit., p. 189; Alperovitz. Atomic Diplomacy, op. cit. p

[37] Tsuyoshi Hasegaga. Op. Cit. pp. 9 & 28.

[38] Ibid. p.37.

[39] Edward Behr. Op Cit., p. 292; Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Op. Cit. p.123

[40] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Op. Cit,. p. 78; Gar Alperovitz, Technology Review, Op Cit., pp. 98-99

[41] Cited in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Op. Cit., p. 124.

[42] Ibid., p. 134; Alperovitz, Technology Review, op. cit.

[43] Sherwin. Op. Cit. p. 235; Alperovitz, Technology Review, Op. Cit: De Groot. Op Cit. p.77.

[44] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Op. Cit., p. 158.

[45] Ibid., p. 209; Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Op Cit., p. 141.

[46] Ibid., p. 142.

[47] Sherwin. Op. Cit., p. 227.