“Thank God for Atom the Bomb” by Paul Fussell: Arguments for Nuclear Bombing

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Arguments
In the words of Doug Long
Conclusion
Work Cited

Introduction

The bombing of Hiroshima was carried out on 6th August 1945 by US Air Force. The event resulted in not only the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians but also affected millions for decades to come. While it is vehemently argued that this effectively brought Japan to its knees at the end of the Second World War, it is also considered a major atrocity that went unpunished on the behalf of the United States. One of the strong supporters of the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima is Paul Fussell.

In his paper “Thank God for Atom the Bomb”, Paul has put forward several arguments against those who oppose his stance while providing justifications from the literature to support his argument. However, many of his arguments have narrowed focus and can be countered by presenting arguments that consider the situation at that time from a wider perspective.

Arguments

For example, at the beginning of his paper, Paul argues against Arthur Hadley’s Argument that the dropping of the Atomic bomb was worse than letting hundreds of thousands of military men die in hand-to-hand combat. Paul argues that the Japanese, both military and civilian, had a very extremist vision and were ready for vicious bloodshed under any circumstances which could have led to an even worse situation. In his own words

“The Japanese pre-invasion patriotic song, “One Hundred Million Souls for the Emperor,” says Sledge “meant just that”. Universal national kamikaze was the point” (Fusell).

He also mentions the desperation of the Japanese for bloodshed at that time by quoting a Japanese pilot as saying

“I see the war situation becoming more desperate. All Japanese must become soldiers and die for the Emperor” (Fussell).

Though his argument looks very convincing, it does not tell the reader why the Japanese were so willing to die for their Emperor. The reason for this was the Japanese tradition in which the position of the Emperor was considered heavenly. In the words of Doug Long

“…the Japanese believed their Emperor to be a god, the heart of the Japanese people and culture” (Long).

Hence they could not let the core of their beliefs take a fall so easily. Also in the Postdam Proclamation, since the future of the Emperor was not made clear and controversial statements such as

“There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest” (Long)

And

“stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals” (Long)

Were included in the Proclamation, this made Japanese people afraid and angry that if they surrender, then their Emperor would either be ridiculed or executed. This was the real cause that made the Japanese take a firm stance against the US and the Allied Army.

Further in the article, Paul argues against John Galbraith by saying that it was not right to think that the Japanese would have surrendered the same year even if the Atomic Bomb was not dropped. He presents his case by stating the destruction done by the Japanese army in the days surrounding the drop. Paul says

But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week… Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you’re one of those thousands or related to one of them (Fussell).

And

During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost (Fussell).

However, it is a well-known fact that the casualties were not just one-sided, but were occurring for the Japanese as well. In fact, the Japanese were suffering more as the Second World War came to an end the US and Europeans shifted their efforts to the East Asian Theatre. Japan became a target of economic blockade which made it suffer tremendously. In the words of Barton Bernstein

While Japan was being bombarded from the sky, a naval blockade was strangling Japan’s ability to import oil and other vital materials and its ability to produce war materials (Bernstein).

The economic blockade and the ability of Allied powers to bomb any part of Japan at will is what made Japanese defeat increasingly apparent according to Doug Long.

In the words of Doug Long

As the war with Germany drew closer to the end, the Allies waged an increasingly effective war against Japan. After the fall of the Mariana Islands, including Saipan, to the U.S. in July of 1944, the impending defeat of Japan became increasingly apparent to many Allied and Japanese leaders. The Marianas had been a key area within Japan’s defense perimeter; now Japan would be within range of bombing runs from Pacific Ocean locations that were superior to the China bases that had been used for the bombing (Fussell).

And

And so from November 1944 onward, Japan was the subject of numerous large-scale B-29 non-nuclear bombing raids… When Air Force chief General Hap Arnold asked in June 1945 when the war was going to end, the commander of the B-29 raids, General Curtis LeMay, told him September or October 1945, because by then they would have run out of industrial targets to bomb (Long).

Paul further argues that the invasion of Japan, if it would have occurred, would have caused a tremendous amount of death to not only the American army but also to British assault troops, whose estimated causality figure for the invasion was around 200,000 men. Paul also mentions in his article that further invasions would have caused even more damage to Allied forces and could have caused the “biggest massacre of the war” (Fussell) In his words

And not just a staggering number of Americans would have been killed in the invasion. Thousands of British assault troops would have been destroyed too, the anticipated casualties from the almost 200,000 men in the six divisions (the same number used to invade Normandy) (Fussell).

And

Assigned to invade the Malay Peninsula on September 9. Aimed at the re-conquest of Singapore, this operation was expected to last until about March 1946 – that is, seven more months of Infantry fighting. “But for the atomic bombs,” a British observer intimate with the Japanese Defenses notes, “I don’t think we would have stood a cat in hell’s chance. We would have been murdered in the biggest massacre of the war. They would have annihilated a lot of us (Fussell).

While Paul justifies the savings of hundreds of thousands of armed soldiers who were trained and equipped to kill their enemies, he mentions nothing at all about hundreds of thousands of civilian lives that Hiroshima bombing and its fallout took over several years. Hence Paul fails to justify the preference of killing civilians over soldiers.

In this justification for the Hiroshima bombing, Paul also questions the allegiance of those who argue against the bombing by quoting Winston Churchill. In his paper Paul mentions

“And Winston Churchill, with an irony perhaps too broad and easy, noted in Parliament that the people who preferred invasion to A-bombing seemed to have “no intention of proceeding to the Japanese fronts themselves” (Fussell).

However, the most important fact to note is that even some of the top government officials and military brass were against the bombing and felt horrified at the event. Dwight E. Eisenhower, who was one of the leading US politicians at that time wrote in his report to the Congress titled “Mandate for Change” that

I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face (Long).

Herbert Hoover, another famous politician met President Truman after hearing the decision in a bid to stop the bombing and suggested

“I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan – tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists – you’ll get a peace in Japan – you’ll have both wars over.” (Long).

Even Admiral William Leahy, who was the Chief of Staff to President Truman was quoted as saying

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons” (Long).

Paul also makes a strong case for his argument that the stubbornness of Japan could have only be broken by the Atomic Bomb. Paul quotes Alsop as saying

“Japanese surrender could never have been obtained, at any rate without the honor – satisfying bloodbath envisioned by… Anami (Japanese War Minister), if the hideous destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not finally galvanized the peace advocates into tearing up the entire Japanese book of rules “(Fussell).

He further paints the picture of this stubbornness by explaining

The Japanese plan to deploy the undefeated bulk of their ground forces, over two million men, plus 10,000 kamikaze planes, plus the elderly and all the women and children with sharpened spears they could muster in a suicidal defense makes it absurd, says Alsop, to “hold the common view, by now hardly challenged by anyone, that the decision to drop the two bombs on Japan was wicked in itself, and that President Truman and all others who joined in making or who [like Robert Oppenheimer] assented to this decision shared in the wickedness(Fussell).

However, as argued by Dani Veracity this becomes a pretty weak argument when the fact that US Government was not fair in informing its citizens. Dani says:

Based on the information that the government told the American people at the time, many Americans believed that it was fair. The U.S. government wasn’t stupid; government officials knew exactly what to tell (and what not to tell) the public in order to keep popular opinion high. By classifying Hiroshima as an “important Japanese Army base,” President Truman isolated the bombing as a military-to-military feat, as nothing more than an act of war (Veracity).

He further goes on to indicate the fallacy of the US Government by saying

…the president stressed the size of the bomb (which was sure to impress most Americans), rather than the horrific effects of radiation, an aftereffect of an atomic bomb that most Americans were at the time probably ignorant of. Later on, in the days following Hiroshima, the Air Force provided American newspapers with an aerial photograph of the city and stressed that they had targeted an area with major industrial targets (Veracity).

And also

Both the seized Japanese footage and the U.S military footage remained hidden from public view for decades. In the late 1960s, the Japanese government negotiated with the U.S. State Department, asking for the seized black-and-white film to be returned to Japan. The United States shipped a copy of the newsreel to Japan, which evoked the curiosity of filmmaker Erik Barnouw. After seeing the footage for himself at the National Archives in Maryland, Barnouw decided to edit the 160-minute material down to 16 minutes of marginal, yet powerful footage, placing images of the bombs’ human effects near the end of the film for maximum impact. Barnouw’s “Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945” was screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but none of the three main television networks would air the film (Verasity).

Paul also quotes Alsop as saying

“The true, climactic, and successful effort of the Japanese peace advocates… did not begin in deadly earnest until after the ‘second bomb had destroyed Nagasaki. The Nagasaki Bomb was thus the trigger to all the developments that led to peace.” (Fussell).

This argument is quite untrue as well. The efforts were being made long before the bombing and the Japanese army at that time was actively seeking and killing those who were in the favour of peace. Bartow signifies this fact while mentioning the invasion of Japan by the Soviets:

“This was a blow to the Japanese government’s peace-seeking efforts. The Russians had been the only major nation with which Japan still had a neutrality pact, and, as such, had been Japan’s main hope of negotiating a peace with something better than unconditional surrender terms” (Bartow).

Conclusion

Though the arguments in favor of the bombing presented by Paul Fussell are based on facts, however, these facts have been quoted to narrow the focus of the argument, hence fail to justify the bombing at all. The fact remains that the Hiroshima bombing was an atrocity that took place in 1945 and serves as an example of the destruction that humans can cause to themselves by misuse of technology.

Work Cited

Bernstein, B. The Atomic bomb: the critical issues. Little Brown Press, 1976. Print.

Butow, R. Japan’s Decision to Surrender. Stanford Univ Press, 1954. Print.

Fussell, P. “Thank God for Atom the Bomb.” Thank God for Atom the Bomb. N.p., 1988. Web.

Long, D. “HIROSHIMA: WAS IT NECESSARY?.” Doug Long Website. N.p., 2000. Web.

Long, D. “HIROSHIMA WHO DISAGREED WITH THE ATOMIC BOMBING?.” Doug Long Website. N.p., 2005. Web.

Veracity, D. “Hiroshima Official U.S. history of atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is more fiction than fact.” Natural News Website. N.p., 2006. Web.

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