Since the film “Oppenheimer” released in July, the national conversation has returned to whether or not the development of the atomic bomb was prudent, and, furthermore, if dropping the nuclear weapon twice on Japan was necessary. These are not new conversations. The questions posed now were posed by prior generations dating back to 1945.
An Undeterred Enemy
Tillman believes that the two nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were the deciding factors that officially brought history’s greatest conflict to its end. While the Americans continued their island-hopping campaign to reach mainland Japan, the Japanese were training every able-bodied citizen to fight against the eventual invaders. This included training women and children to become human bombs.“Those stories are true and well documented,” Tillman said. “The Japanese government ended education above the sixth-grade level in early 1945 and conceived what was euphemistically called The Volunteer Fighting Corps. There was nothing volunteer about it. It was males up to age 60 and females into their 40s. Those who were not assigned to frontline units were conscripted into construction and logistics positions, hauling supplies and building defensive lines in anticipation of the Allied invasion.”
The Japanese government required civilians to fight despite their full knowledge that defeat was inevitable. Tillman said it must have been obvious to the civilians as well, as they watched fleets of American aircraft, specifically B-29 bombers, bomb and destroy approximately 60 of their cities and industrial and manufacturing centers.
“Whatever the Japanese government was trying to do to buck up the morale of the population only worsened things, because people could look around and see that their city no longer existed, yet Radio Tokyo was saying they were winning the war,” he added.
A War-Crime Theory
It was the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction military history works, Edwin Hoyt, who instigated the idea in his book “Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, March 9–August 15, 1945” that the fire bombings of Japan were unnecessary and that doing so was criminal, going so far as to call Gen. Curtis LeMay, who orchestrated the strategic bombing campaign, a war criminal. He also opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs, suggesting that Japan would have surrendered without them.“Hoyt was a hack and that is the kindest thing I can say about him,” Tillman said. “He passed as a historian through the 1950s up to the 1960s before his audience outgrew him and started demanding more insightful and more objective treatments.
“As to whether the two A-bombs were necessary, absolutely they were. The only two options were continued blockade, which meant widespread starvation, or invasion, which would have been horrific. We still don’t know how many Allied and Japanese lives were spared by the two A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I have met and corresponded with Japanese historians and those who lived through that time, and they are almost unanimous in saying that the bombs were absolutely necessary because they allowed the one man in the world who could end the war to do so, and that was Emperor Hirohito. He took the unprecedented step in Japanese history, which went back about 2,500 years, of the emperor personally intervening within the government decision-making process.
Other Theories
A still-acknowledged theory about the surrender suggests that the declaration of war against Japan by the Soviet Union hastened their surrender rather than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tillman suggests this theory doesn’t hold much water.“In Hirohito’s rescript to the nation, he refers to ‘a new and most cruel weapon’ and he does not make any mention of Russia,” Tillman said. “The Russians lacked the sea lift and amphibious capability to invade the main islands. They had enough amphibious shipping―courtesy of the United States through Lend-Lease―to occupy some of the northernmost islands. To put large numbers of infantry, armor, and artillery ashore, say, on Honshu, the main island of Japan, was beyond the Russian capability in 1945. Theory is one thing. Capability is another.”
Another well-known theory was made by historian Gar Alperovitz. In his 1965 book, “Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power,” he claims dropping the bombs were used merely as a method of intimidation toward the Soviet Union rather than as a way to ensure Imperial Japan’s capitulation. But this is another theory that doesn’t hold much water.
As Tillman made clear, the population was being prepped for a fight to the death. Furthermore, Emperor Hirohito’s war council, known as the Big Six, were split evenly on whether to surrender or continue fighting. When word spread that the emperor planned to publicly announce the surrender, there was an attempted coup to keep him from doing so. Lastly, Japanese soldiers were so appalled by the news of the surrender that they dealt with the disappointment in the worst possible way.
“A large number of American and Allied prisoners were, the euphemism is ‘executed,’ but that’s not true. Execution requires a judicial process. Large numbers of Allied prisoners were murdered in outrage because the emperor had surrendered,” Tillman said.
The Racist Theory
Tillman believes there would be fewer scruples about using the atomic bomb if the target had been Germany rather than Japan. Nazi Germany has long been considered the height of evil, leaving the cruelty and sadism of Imperial Japan overshadowed, if not somewhat ignored. But why was the atomic bomb used on Japan, but not on Germany? The answer is as straightforward as it is chronological.“First off, the Manhattan Project was begun in response to Germany’s efforts to build a bomb. The fact that Germany never had a way to deliver nuclear weapons is irrelevant to the fact that the very, very capable German physicists and scientists were working toward that goal, and it was known in America and Western Europe,” Tillman explained.
“Secondly, in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, Paul Tibbets (who piloted the B-29 Enola Gay) said his orders from Gen. Hap Arnold, who commanded the Army Air Forces, was to plan for a double-strike of atomic bombs on Berlin and Tokyo simultaneously. So the only reason that didn’t happen is, of course, because the war in Europe ended in May, and the first test of an atomic weapon did not occur until the middle of July.
“Malcolm X was one of them who said that the U.S. would not use nuclear weapons against other whites, but that’s absurd because the plan was a dual strike against Germany and Japan.”
The fact is that the atomic bomb was a horrific weapon, which unfortunately had to be used―not once, but twice. As horrific as it was, and as much as it introduced the world to the nuclear age, it also ended the largest and bloodiest war in human history.
