For seventy-five years, the standard American account of the end of World War II held that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were the only way to force Japan’s surrender without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. The argument maintained that the bombs not only ended the war but did so in the most humane way possible. Yet the historical record drawn from both Japanese and American archives suggests a different conclusion: that Japan would have surrendered that August even without the atomic bombs, and that President Harry Truman and his senior advisers knew it. In the summer of 1945, Japan was already defeated in every practical sense.
The Imperial Navy was nearly destroyed, its merchant fleet was gone, and American submarines and aircraft had severed the shipping lanes that brought food and fuel to the home islands. An economic blockade was strangling the country. Secretary of War Henry Stimson warned Truman in a top-secret memorandum on July 2, 1945, that Japan had no allies and was vulnerable to a blockade that would deny her enough food and supplies for her population. Allied intelligence had been reporting for months that Soviet entry into the war would be the decisive blow.
As early as April 11, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s intelligence unit predicted that if the Soviet Union entered the war, all Japanese would realize that absolute defeat was inevitable. The Japanese leadership understood this. The only obstacle to peace, they believed, was the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wrote to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow on July 12, 1945, asking the Soviets to mediate acceptable terms, and he stated plainly that unconditional surrender was the only obstacle to peace.
The Americans intercepted the cable. Truman referred to it as “the telegram from the Jap Emperor asking for peace,” an indication that he knew the Japanese were looking for a way out. What the Japanese feared most was not the loss of territory or even the firebombing of their cities, which had already killed more than 300,000 civilians across 67 cities. Their paramount concern was the preservation of the emperor, whom many of their people regarded as divine.
They were terrified that under unconditional surrender the emperor would be tried as a war criminal and executed. The Japanese likened such an outcome to the crucifixion of Christ. For this reason, the massive civilian losses inflicted by American B-29 firebombing raids were considered a tolerable sacrifice. The United States failed to grasp that the Japanese leadership was operating on a set of priorities that made little sense to American leaders.
The destruction of their cities was painful but not decisive. When Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb on August 6, there was concern, but the Supreme War Council did not consider the event significant enough to call a formal meeting to discuss its implications. After four months of firebombing that had already leveled most of Japan’s major urban centers, the damage of one more weapon, even a nuclear one, was not enough to break the government’s resolve. What changed everything was the Soviet Union.
At the Potsdam Conference, Stalin assured Truman that Soviet invasion planning was on track. Truman wrote in his diary that Stalin would be in the war against Japan by August 15, noting that “when that comes about we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed. ” On August 8, at midnight, the Soviet Union invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming the weak Kwantung Army. Three days after Hiroshima, the shock of the Soviet offensive achieved what the atomic bomb had not.
Japanese leaders were shaken to the point of calling an urgent meeting of the Supreme War Council and informing the emperor immediately. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki stated that Japan needed to surrender quickly because the Soviet Union would take not only Manchuria and Korea but also Hokkaido. He argued that this would destroy the foundation of Japan and that the war must be ended while there was still a chance to deal with the United States. The Japanese were unable to fight a war on two fronts, and the prospect of communist occupation of their territory was their worst nightmare.
To a regime that had murdered the tsar and his family, the concept of an emperor was repugnant. The Japanese understood that Soviet influence over postwar governance would mean the end of the imperial institution they cherished above all else. The evidence of the bomb’s limited impact was stark. The National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington, DC, displays a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit stating that the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the loss of 135,000 people, made little impact on the Japanese military.
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, however, changed their minds. Of the eight five-star officers in the US Army and Navy in 1945, seven concurred with the Navy’s harsh judgment. Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, was the most passionate in his condemnation, writing in his memoir that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in the war against Japan, which was already defeated and ready to surrender. Others in the military and political establishment had reached the same conclusion before the bombs were dropped.
General Dwight Eisenhower expressed serious reservations at Potsdam, believing that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. He argued that the United States should avoid shocking world opinion by using a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory to save American lives. He believed at that very moment Japan was seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. General Douglas MacArthur held the same view, telling former President Herbert Hoover that the Japanese would have accepted the surrender terms gladly if Truman had only altered the demand for unconditional surrender and told them they could keep their emperor.
Hoover stated that the Japanese were prepared to negotiate from February 1945 all the way up to the time the atomic bombs were dropped, and that if those leads had been followed there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs at all. Truman ultimately did make that concession, but only after the two bombs were dropped. In a meeting held on the evening of August 9, the Japanese War Council decided to surrender provided that the emperor was retained. After Japan’s response was received, the original Allied surrender wording was changed to reflect that view, allowing the emperor to retain his symbolic authority under American occupation.
This simple change made the proposal acceptable to all parties. The terms the United States ultimately agreed to could have been reached much earlier without the use of atomic bombs. The historical evidence supports the belief expressed by Eisenhower, MacArthur, Leahy, and Hoover: the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it was not necessary to strike them with that awful weapon.
The bombs were dropped, the Soviet Union entered the war, and Japan surrendered, but the outcome might well have been the same without the nuclear devastation.
