Our Worst Blunders in the War: Japan and the Russians

1

THE great American military mistakes of the war, which may be said to have cost us the peace, were all part and parcel of our political immaturity. We fought to win, period. We gave far too little thought to the victory of the peace.

In the war against Germany, some of our outstanding politico-strategic mistakes — from the point of view of winning the peace — were our failure to invade the Balkans, unconditional surrender, and the errors which led to the loss of Central Europe, which were described in my previous article. But the war against Germany had no monopoly of errors. We erred also in the Pacific; we won the war against Japan, but who will say — against the background of the Orient of today — that we won the peace?

The political mistakes made in the war against Japan were several and major; this discussion is not a catalogue of them all, but merely a notation on a few of them.

MACARTHUR AND THE PHILIPPINES - ORIGINS OF SERVICE JEALOUSIES. The defense of the Philippines was an epic of stouthearted suffering, but it was marred by differences, frictions, and discords - and high-level errors - which influenced the course of the war in the Pacific. MacArthur, who created around himself the legend of a military demigod, was the focus of many of these troubles.

Out of the first Philippine campaign, for instance, stemmed some of the friction and much of the trouble which later divided the Army and Navy in the Pacific. The origin of this friction predates the war; MacArthur and the stiff-necked old sea dog then commanding our Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Thomas C. Hart, did not “get along.” This feeling was transmitted to subordinates and pervaded, before long, the two commands.

The situation was worsened by the successful Japanese attack, nine hours after the assault upon Pearl Harbor, on our grounded bombers at Clark airfield. In the aftermath of recriminations, published since the war, the Air Force inferentially has blamed the Army, the Army the Air Force, for this debacle.

It is clear that there were misconceptions on both sides; as former Secretary of War Stimson points out in his book On Active Service, “it was quickly apparent that the hopes of the previous autumn could not be realized; there would be no successful defense of the Philippines by air power. The preparations had not been completed; the Japanese were too strong; most important of all, there had been no adequate realization of the degree to which air power is dependent on other things than unsupported airplanes. . . . Thus the defense of the Philippines became once more the desperate and losing struggle which had been forecast in the planning of earlier years.”

This misconception, a serious one, was never completely shared by the Navy, which had not believed the “ hopes of the previous autumn ” possible of fulfillment without absolute control of the sea and the supply lines to the Philippines — something we could not ensure even before Pearl Harbor. Our underestimation of the Japanese, which stemmed from the highest quarters, was major.

At a background secret press conference in the War Department seven Washington correspondents were told by a top-ranking Army official on November 15, 1941, that we were on the brink of war with Japan, that our position was highly favorable in that our strength in the Philippines was far larger than the Japanese imagined, and that we were preparing not only to defend the Philippines but to conduct an aerial offensive from those islands against Japan. We had, the War Department authority said, thirty-five Flying Fortresses in the Philippines — the greatest concentration of heavy bomber strength anywhere in the world. More planes were being sent; so were tanks and guns; the Philippines were being reinforced daily. If war did start, the B-17’s would be dispatched immediately to set the “paper” cities of Japan on fire and to attack the enemy’s naval bases. The B-17’s, he admitted, did not have quite enough range to make the round trip from the Philippines to Japan; but they could continue to Vladivostok, said the Army official optimistically, and if we got into war we would expect to have such an arrangement with the Russians. (Even before war we thus incorrectly assessed Russia’s willingness to coöperate.) The new B-24’s would soon be coming off the production lines, the correspondents were told, and the Japanese had no pursuit planes that could reach these high-flying bombers! By about December 15 the War Department would feel rather secure in the Philippines. Flying weather over Japan was propitious; our high-flying bombers could quickly wreak havoc. If a Pacific war started, there would not be much need for our Navy; the U.S. bombers could do the trick virtually singlehanded — or, to paraphrase the spokesman’s words, “without the use of our shipping”! (Exclamation points and italics mine.) Our Pacific Fleet would stay out of range of Japanese air power in Hawaii.

This catalogue of profound error not only shows how bemused our top strategists had become with the enthusiastic but misguided tenets of the apostles of air power, but it demonstrates graphically how little we really knew about Japan and Japanese strength.

It also points to a dangerous dichotomy in our strategy. Admiral King, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, has said that in January, February, and March, 1941, almost a year before we entered the war, “staff conversations between representatives of the Army and Navy of Great Britain and the United States took place in Washington.” “Rainbow Five,” the basic war plan of the United States, was the ultimate result, and it was “completed not long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.”

Rainbow Five specifically staled that “if Japan does enter the war, the military strategy in the Far East will be defensive,” and added that “the United States does not intend to add to its present military strength" in the area. A later revision (November, 1941) provided for “offensive air operations in furtherance of the strategic defensive. . . .”

Thus, in the fall of 1941, at the very time Rainbow Five was being completed, Army and Air Force leaders were talking — in Washington - in terms of an air offensive against Japan, based on the Philippines. Troops, planes, tanks, and guns were being rushed to the Philippines and the Western Pacific in a belated reversal of prior planning, and a mistaken confidence in the defensibility of the Philippines mounted.

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THESE last-minute drastic revisions in our Philippine strategic concepts were in part due to the influence in Washington of the air power enthusiasts, and in part to MacArthur, whose pre-war estimates of his ability to defend the Philippines were wildly overoptimistic. MacArthur put a ridiculously high value — as records in future volumes of the Army’s official history will show - on the Philippine motor torpedo boat “navy” with which he hoped to repel Japanese landing attempts. There were only about two Philippine MTB’s available when war started, and they played a negative role. MacArthur’s prewar assessment of the combat value of the Philippine Army, composed largely of five-and-a-halfmonth drafted men, was far higher than was warranted, and his mobilization and training schedule apparently was predicated upon a belief that hostilities probably would not start until April 1, 1942. Moreover, he seemed to feel that the “alert” message sent to him about November 27, 1941, by the War Department, which indicated war was coming and that the first overt act should be committed by Japan, compelled him to await attack in the Philippines (despite the prior attack on Pearl Harbor) before he could undertake the offensive action contemplated by the late revision of Rainbow Five.

The Navy, in common with the Army and Air Force, did not anticipate “the rapidity and strength” of the Japanese offensive, yet the Navy never believed the defense of the Philippines possible with the forces then available, or soon to be available, and throughout the war the Navy— personified by that stubborn, crusty seaman Admiral Ernest J. King—pressed continuously, usually against some opposition of the Army (which was focusing its attention primarily upon Europe), for greater strength in the Pacific.

The history of those days clearly reveals that there need not have been, despite these dangerous divisions and basic misconceptions, such rapid destruction of our Philippine bombing squadrons.

The Air Force in the Philippines had planned, if war came, to utilize its bombers initially in reconnoitering and attcking Japanese bases in Formosa. At least twice on the morning of December 8 (December 7 Pearl Harbor time) it requested MacArthur’s permission, through his chief of staff, aggressive, egotistic, but able Major General Richard K. Sutherland, to launch the attack. Had permission been given, no great results could have been anticipated; our strength was too small, our inexperience considerable, and we possessed little accurate information about target objectives. In other words, the Air Force planning lacked comprehensiveness.

But it would have been far better to utilize our bombers in an offensive mission than to allow them to be caught, like sitting ducks, in a “strictly defensive” attitude on the ground. MacArthur has never made a complete explanation about this defeat, but he has stated that no recommendation from Lieutenant General (then Major General) L. H. Brereton, who was at that time our air commander in the Philippines, to bomb Formosa ever was received, and that he knew “nothing of such a recommendation having been made.” General MacArthur added — a strange comment for a commander who knew that the best defense was attack — that “the overall strategic mission of the Philippine command was to defend the Philippines, not to initiate an outside [sic] attack.” He continued: “Our air forces in the Philippines were hardly more than a token force . . . hopelessly outnumbered . . . never had a chance of winning. The date of April 1 . . . was the earliest possible date for the arrival of the necessary reinforcements which would make a successful defense of the Philippines possible.”

(These statements stand in strong contrast to the optimistic pre-war reports of General MacArthur and indicate a change of opinion on his part after hostilities commenced.)

General Sutherland, who took much upon himself, may have taken the responsibility of refusing permission for the Formosa raid (though he blames Brereton); but even so, MacArthur has revealed since the war that such a request, had it reached him, probably would have received short shrift. An attack on Formosa with the small American force available would have had little chance of success, he said.

The post-war statements by General MacArthur reveal either a considerable gulf between the War Department’s concept of Far East strategy, as evidenced in the press conference of November 15, and MacArthur’s defensive concept of that time, or — more likely — a change of mind on MacArthur’s part since the war.

MacArthur’s then dual status as Field Marshal in the Philippine Army and general in the American Army; his belief—a mistaken one as the war showed — that the Philippines could, in large measure, provide their own defense; and the American commitment to Philippine independence seem to have influenced his judgment. Faced with an actual act of war — the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor some hours previously — he hesitated, apparently, to undertake offensive action while awaiting either an enemy overt act against the Philippines or formalization of hostilities by actual declaration.

This compounded friction; to the Army-Navy difficulties was now added friction with the Air Force.

These difficulties grew — as indeed they were bound to in any losing action — during the Bataan fighting and the siege of Corregidor.

MacArthur’s communiqués bore so little resemblance to actual events that when the gist of them, cast in a cheerful mood of utter unreality, was broadcast, via U.S. radio, to our suffering troops on Bataan, they a roused actual resentment. This error was worsened on January 15 when, in a personal message from MacArthur, his troops were told that “help is on the way from the United States. Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched. The exact time of arrival of reinforcements is unknown. . . .” Hopes of some were raised briefly by this utterly fantastic order, but it was an ultimate depressant, for its promises could never be kept.

MacArthur’s own example did little to inspire his men. He rarely visited Bataan; it was on Corregidor that he got the name “Dugout Doug.” This appellation — an utterly unfair one in which the Navy delighted — cast unwarranted reflections on MacArthur’s personal courage, which is outstanding. Time and again in two World Wars, MacArthur has demonstrated a calm and outstanding bravery. The fact remains that on the Philippines he was aloof from his troops and rarely left “the Rock”; not until months later in New Guinea - when his staff began to note the need for such visits — did he commence to “circulate” among his troops.

Contrary to the instructions previously issued to his subordinates, MacArthur had kept his family in Manila when all other service families had been ordered home; Mrs. MacArthur, his son, and his son’s nurse were with the General on Corregidor and took the place of men who might have escaped when the General, on orders from Washington, left, “the Rock” on March 11. During his stay on Corregidor, MacArthur left many details to General Sutherland, and there was, among the Marines who served on Corregidor and Bataan, a well-confirmed suspicion that the high command did not like Marines. For weeks there was no mention of the Marines in communiqués or press releases; finally, when a radio from Corregidor casually named them, the Navy Department had to assure the people of the United States that the Fourth Regiment of Marines had been in the Philippines all along, and that this belated mention did not mean the Fleet had broken through the Japanese blockade and landed reinforcements.

Two days before MacArthur left for Australia, the general recommended all units on Bataan and Corregidor, with the exception of Marine and naval units, for unit citations. Sutherland let it be known that this was no oversight; the Marines had got their share of glory in World War I, and they weren’t going to get any in this one! Wainwright, who succeeded MacArthur in command, rectified this egregious error as soon as he took over, but the damage had been done; fuel was added to the fire of Army-Navy friction, and the MacArthur mistakes of the first Philippine campaign — mistakes of personality and judgment —overshadowed the relationships between the services throughout the rest of the war.

But the most amazing and the least understandable of MacArthur’s Philippine actions was his tacit approval of a proposal by President Quezon on February 8, 1942, that the Philippines, in the words of Secretary of War Stimson, “receive immediate and unconditional independence from the United States, and that they be forthwith neutralized by agreement between Japan and the United States; all troops were to be withdrawn and the Philippine Army disbanded.” The message from Quezon to President Roosevelt railed against the United States for its failure to reinforce the Philippines, “in terms as unfair as they were wholly understandable.” What was not understandable was the tacit approval of MacArthur, demigod in his own image, hero of Bataan in the eyes of the world. MacArthur radioed the President that “so far as the military angle is concerned, the problem presents itself as to whether the plan of President Quezon might offer the best possible solution of what is about to be a disastrous debacle.” (This just twenty-four days after promising his men that thousands of reinforcements and hundreds of planes were on the way.)

MacArthur saw advantages, regardless of whether or not the Japanese accepted the plan; he failed to understand the terrible damage that would have been done, not alone to his own reputation, but above all to American arms and the American purpose, by the public broaching of such a suggestion. Bataan, in those days and in those times, had become the symbol of that purpose; amidst defeat we sought heroes and found them in the battered “bastards of Bataan.” With one stroke of a pen MacArthur would have wrecked all this forever, and would have left a people confused, bewildered, and resentful about what undoubtedly would have meant a “moral abdication.” Such would have been the psychological consequences of any such act.

The proposal in any case was so utterly unrealistic— depending as it did upon Japanese stupidity or Japanese benevolence, neither a noted enemy characteristic — as to be absurd. Fortunately, wiser heads in Washington rejected emphatically this suggestion and directed that “American forces will continue to keep our flag flying in the Philippines so long as there remains any possibility of resistance.”

The first Philippine campaign was not, therefore, solely an epic of tragic glory; feuds and frictions and mistakes left behind an aftermath of bitterness and recrimination that persisted throughout the Pacific War.

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APPEASEMENT IN ASIA. Perhaps the saddest chapter in the long history of political futility which the war recorded was the Yalta conference of February, 1945. As former Secretary of War Stimson writes, “much of the policy of the United States toward Russia, from Teheran to Potsdam, was dominated by the eagerness of the Americans to secure a firm Russian commitment to enter the Pacific war.” This “eagerness” was first manifest at Teheran when Russia’s need for warm-water ports was discussed and Roosevelt suggested the establishment of Dairen in Manchuria as an international free port. It reached its crescendo at Yalta, where we attempted to pin down prior elusive Soviot promises to take up arms against Japan. The negotiations about future action against the Japanese were interspersed with discussions of the peace settlement and the German question in Europe, and their political implications were made secondary to the President’s prime objective at Yalta—“the brave new world,” the establishment of the basic framework of the United Nations.

For all these reasons and because of a fundamental military as well as political misconception, Russia held the whip hand and U.S. representatives placed themselves in the amazing position of “giving away” territories which did not belong to us, and of undertaking to secure concessions which impaired the sovereignty of a friendly allied state. The political misconception, so obvious now, should have been apparent then; it was not to our interest, or the interests of China or of the world, to make Russia a Pacific power; it was not to our interest to beg or barter for Russia’s entry into the Pacific War.

Nor should military considerations have affected this political judgment. At the time of Yalta, Japan was already beaten — not by the atomic bomb, which had not yet been perfected, not by conventional bombing, then just starting, but by attrition and blockade. The home islands were severed from the empire by our conquest of the Philippines and the Marianas, and the submarine and surface blockade already had brought the pinch of hunger and the stress of severe raw material shortages to Japan. Even before the first bomb was dropped by our B-29’s on the Japanese home islands, the enemy aircraft industry was disrupted and on the decline; shortages due to the blockade and a chaotic program of decentralization, dispersion, and underground development, badly carried out, already had reduced severely the output of Japanese factories.

The full seriousness of the Japanese plight was not then, of course, completely understood; our military men were preoccupied and concerned with the fierceness of the Japanese defense; the tactical situation obscured the hopeless strategic position of Japan, and some of our commanders took, therefore, far too pessimistic a view. Mistakes in intelligence, or rather in evaluation, also contributed to an erroneous assessment of Japanese intentions and capabilities. We feared that even after the main Japanese islands had been conquered the enemy resistance would continue on the continent of Asia with the much vaunted Kwantung Manchurian Army as its core. Yet our intelligence officers throughout the Pacific for months had been identifying units of the Kwantung Army and of its air support which had been transferred from that quiet area to various battle sectors.

Prior to the conference at Yalta, an intelligence estimate of the Japanese strength had been furnished to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This estimate, which served as the basis of their judgments at Yalta, was extremely pessimistic; it estimated that there were at least 700,000 men in the Kwantung Army and that they were first-rate troops well trained and well armed. Without Russian assistance, it was estimated, the Japanese might be able to prolong the war on the Asiatic mainland (even after the main islands of Japan had been conquered) until the fall of 1946 or even until 1947 or 1948. Other intelligence estimates, notably a far more optimistic one prepared by different authors in the intelligence section of the War Department General Staff, and one naval estimate challenged this viewpoint. So did two intelligence papers which were prepared for the Combined Chiefs of Staff (Anglo-American) in September, 1944, and January, 1945. These papers stated that Japan’s shipping and her naval and air forces had been broken, and their whole tone seemed to show (though they did not explicitly so state) that Japan was on her last legs. But the best available information indicates that the more realistic estimates never reached Joint Chiefs of Staff level, although Admiral William D. Leahy, the Presidential chief of staff, may have seen the naval estimate.

After the Yalta conference had convened, still another intelligence estimate, prepared by the Twentieth Air Force, was sent to Yalta. It took the view that the bombardment and blockade of the Japanese main islands had had serious effect and that Japanese resistance was rapidly weakening. This, too, never reached the highest echelons. Thus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who gave Roosevelt the military advice upon which his political decisions were (in part) based, seem to have framed their own judgments at Yalta on the basis of a faulty intelligence estimate.

General Marshall was then convinced that an invasion of the Japanese main islands was essential and he insisted that help from Russia on the mainland of Asia was necessary. There were divergences of opinion as to the necessity of this operation; Admiral Leahy, who feared the cost in casualties of invasion and who correctly assessed the crippling effect of the blockade upon Japan, opposed the invasion. The compromise eventually reached — a sensible one — was to prepare for invasion, but in the meantime to utilize the blockade and air bombardment to the utmost to bring Japan to her knees.

These strategic differences — and a failure to appreciate fully the hopeless strategical position of Japan — colored the military thinking at Yalta and helped to lead to indefensible political arrangements. “Certainly,”as the Washington Post commented, “the Chiefs of Staff made a blunder to advise Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta that Japan would last 18 months after VE day. Our military men underrated Japan at the beginning of the war, then overrated it, and refused to see the patent fact, obvious to the Navy, that Japan was through even while the brass hats were meeting at Yalta.”

Yet at Yalta, and even at the Potsdam conference in July, 1945, when Hitler lay dead and dishonored near the ruins of his bunker in Berlin and the Third Reich was broken and shattered—even at Potsdam, one month before the surrender of Japan, there were still many Americans who were interested primarily in getting a firm commitment from Russia to enter the Pacific War.

As Major General John R. Deane points out in his book The Strange Alliance, our planners were obsessed with two ideas: to bring Russia into the Pacific War, and to utilize Russian territory as bases for our war effort against Japan. Repeatedly, General Deane and other U.S. representatives had pressed Soviet leaders, long before Yalta, for permission to utilize Russian territory as air bases for our attacks upon Japan. Yet the cart was put before the horse; we made diplomatic representations for this permission before we had estimated — logistically - the value of such bases to us.

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OUR attempts to get firm Soviet commitments about the war against Japan reached a preliminary crisis in October, 1944 (more than four months before Yalta), when Churchill and a British entourage visited Moscow. General Deane describes the resulting conferences which he attended as the principal American military representative. Stalin reiterated his intention, first announced to Cordell Hull at Moscow in October, 1943, then more or less formalized at Teheran, of entering the Pacific War; said he needed three months after V-E Day to stockpile supplies in Siberia, declared that the U.S. could have air bases and one naval base in the Far East, but added that “if the United States and Great Britain preferred to bring Japan to her knees without Russian participation, he was ready to agree.” Furthermore, there was a little item of additional supplies that Russia would require to help her build up a two months reserve in Siberia. All in all, Stalin said, the Russians would need more than a million tons of cargo and they must be delivered by June 30, 1945, the deliveries to be in addition to those already being made under the Fourth LendLease Protocol. In Moscow, in 1944, Stalin made many glowing promises, but, as Deane noted, “despite these promises, the end result was that the Russians got their supplies and the United States got nothing except a belated and last minute Russian attack against the Japanese.”

As the Soviets stalled on their promises and we delivered supplies, the months drew on into the winter of 19441945, and at Yalta in February, President Roosevelt, pressed by the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, again took up the questions of bomber bases in Siberia and the date of Russian entry into the Pacific War. Stalin again agreed in principle and set the date at three months after victory in Europe had been won. He said the U.S. could establish bases at Komsomolsk, Nikolaevsk, and eventually at Kamchatka. But he got down in black and white his price — the Curzon line for the eastern border of Poland, the Kurile Islands, and controlling economic and strategic concessions in Manchuria. (Stalin’s Manchurian “price” for Russia’s entry into the Pacific War had first been broached — apparently with no grave objections on our part—at Teheran in December, 1943, just a few days after Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek had agreed in the Cairo Declaration that Manchuria and Formosa should be restored to China.)

But it was not until the spring, when Germany was at her last gasp and Japan near the end, that, in the words of General Deane (italics mine), “it was found that the net increase that would result from putting four groups of B-29’s in the Amur River district would be 1.39 per cent of the total bomb tonnage we could place on Japan without using Russian bases.” This was convincing proof, adds Deane, “that the slight increase in our bombing effort and the advantage of an added direction of approach for our bomber formations were not at all commensurate with the logistical effort involved in establishing our forces in Siberia.”

A little late, after more than three years of U.S. participation in the war and numerous major concessions to Russia — concessions which were to affect the peace — to be making this ABC logistical discovery! By then Russia had most of the supplies she had demanded; and she had carefully recorded the secret concessions of Yalta.

Russia drove a hard bargain at Yalta. Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan within an estimated ninety days after the end of the war against Germany, but for it he got the Kurile Islands, all of Kamchatka, a half interest in the railways in Manchuria, Port Arthur, a Russian-controlled “free port” in Dairen, and thus strategic hegemony in important Northeast Asia.

These agreements were made with no representative of China, the country most affected by them, present. We undertook the amazing task of helping to secure Chinese acquiescence in arrangements which in effect gave away Chinese territory and advanced the border of Communist Russia almost to Peiping. Nor did we do this gently. The Chinese ratified the Yalta agreements under pressure from the United States, or as the recently issued China White Paper (“ United States Relations with China”) explains it: “The American view is that the Yalta agreement shall be complied with—no more, no less.”

The fault was doubly grievous. We not only hurt our own interests and those of a friendly ally, but at Yalta, inferentially at least, we broke our pledged word to that ally. For at Cairo in 1943 — before the Teheran conference and after Stalin had told Hull in Moscow that Russia would enter the Pacific War — we promised publicly the restoration of Manchuria to China. And to a pragmatic politician Russian control of Port Arthur and a half interest in the Manchurian railways could only mean Soviet strategic hegemony over Manchuria.

Nor was this all. During the discussions it was suggested by President Roosevelt that perhaps the Russians ought to have a commercial outlet to the Persian Gulf, and that maybe the Trans-Iranian railway, built by American engineers with the help of American capital, ought to be partially owned by Russia, or at least Russia should have certain transit rights! Fortunately wiser counsel softpedaled the proposal, and Stalin, apparently suspicious, showed no interest.

No wonder Stimson wrote that the meeting at Yalta dealt “a good deal in altruism and idealism instead of stark realities.”

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THE ATOMIC BOMB - THE PENALTY OF EXPEDIENCY. The utilization of the atomic bomb against a prostrate and defeated Japan in the closing days of the war exemplifies, even more graphically than any of the mistakes previously recounted, the narrow, astigmatic concentration of our planners upon one goal and one alone, victory.

Nowhere in all of Mr. Stimson’s forceful and eloquent apologia for the leveling of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is there any evidence of an ulterior vision; indeed, the entire effort of his famous Harper’s article, reprinted and rearranged in his book On Active Service, is focused upon proving that the bomb hastened the end of the war. But at what cost!

To accept the Stimson thesis that the atomic bomb should have been used as it was used, it is necessary, first, to accept the contention that the atomic bomb achieved or hastened victory; and second, and more important, that it helped to consolidate the peace or to further the political aims for which war was fought.

History can accept neither contention.

Let us examine the first. The atomic bomb was dropped in August. Long before that month started our forces were securely based in Okinawa, the Marianas, and Iwo Jima; Germany had been defeated; our fleet had been cruising off the Japanese coast with impunity, bombarding the shoreline; our submarines were operating in the Sea of Japan; even interisland ferries had been attacked and sunk. Bombing, which started slowly in June, 1944, from China bases and from the Marianas in November, 1944, had been increased materially in 1945, and by August, 1945, more than 16,000 tons of bombs had ravaged Japanese cities. Food was short; mines and submarines and surface vessels and planes clamped an iron blockade around the main islands; raw materials were scarce. Blockade, bombing, and unsuccessful attempts at dispersion had reduced Japanese production capacity 20 to 60 per cent. The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.

Such then was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is probably negative; and even if the need had been proved beyond a doubt, Japan might have been given warning.

The invasion of Japan, which Admiral Leahy had opposed as too wasteful of American blood and as, in any case, unnecessary, was scheduled (for the southern island of Kyushu) for November 1, 1945; to be followed, if necessary, in the spring of 1946, by a major landing on the main island of Honshu. We dropped the two atomic bombs in early August, almost two months before the date set for the invasion of Japan. The decision to drop them, after the Japanese rejection of the Potsdam ultimatum, was a pretty hasty one. It followed the recommendations of Secretary Stimson and an “Interim Committee” of distinguished officials and scientists, who had found “no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

But the weakness of this statement is inherent, for none was tried and “military use" of the bomb was undertaken despite strong opposition to this course by numerous scientists and Japanese experts, including former Ambassador Joseph Grew. Not only was the Potsdam ultimatum merely a restatement of the politically impossible - unconditional surrender—but it could hardly be construed as a direct warning of the atomic bomb and was not taken as such by anyone who did not know the bomb had been created. A technical demonstration of the bomb’s power may well have been unfeasible, but certainly a far more definite warning could have been given, and it is hard to believe that a target objective in Japan with but sparse population could not have been found. The truth is that we did not try.

Our only warning to a Japan already militarily defeated and in a hopeless situation was the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender issued on July 26, when we knew Japanese surrender attempts had started. Yet, when the Japanese surrender was negotiated about two weeks later, after the bomb had been dropped, our unconditional surrender demand was made conditional and we agreed, as Stimson had originally proposed we should do, to continuation of the Emperor upon his throne.

We were therefore twice guilty. We dropped the bomb at a time when Japan already was negotiating for an end of the war but before those negotiations could come to fruition. We demanded unconditional surrender, then dropped the bomb and accepted conditional surrender—a sequence which indicates pretty clearly that the Japanese would have surrendered even if the bomb had not been dropped, had the Potsdam Declaration included our promise to continue the Emperor upon his throne.

What we now know of the condition of Japan and of the days preceding her final surrender on August 15 verifies these conclusions. It is clear, in retrospect, and was understood by some, notably Admiral Leahy, at the time, that Japan was militarily on her last legs.

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THE military defeat of Japan was certain. The atomic bomb was not needed. But if the bomb did not procure victory, did it hasten it ?

This question cannot be answered with equal precision, particularly since the full story of the Japanese surrender attempts has not been revealed. But a brief chronology of known events indicates that the atomic bomb may have shortened the war by a few days — not more.

The day before Christmas, 1944 (n.b. two months before the Yalta conference), U.S. intelligence authorities in Washington received a report from a confidential agent in Japan that a peace party was emerging and that the Koiso cabinet would soon be succeeded by a cabinet headed by Admiral Baron Suzuki, who would initiate surrender proceedings.

The Koiso cabinet was succeeded in early April by a new government headed by Suzuki, but even prior to this significant change, the Japanese — in February, 1945 had approached the Russians with a request that they act as intermediary in arranging a peace with the Western powers. The Russian Ambassador Malik, in Tokyo, was the channel of the approach. The Russians, however, set their price of mediation so high that the Japanese temporarily dropped the matter. The United States was not officially informed of this approach until after the end of the war.

Prior to, coincident with, and after this February attempt, ill-defined peace approaches were made through the Japanese Ambassadors in Stockholm and Moscow, particularly Moscow. These approaches were so informal - and represented to such a degree the personal initiative of the two Ambassadors concerned — that they never came to a head.

But after a meeting with Stalin in Moscow on May 27, before the trial A-bomb was even tested in New Mexico, Harry Hopkins (according to Robert Sherwood’s Roosevelt and Hopkins) cabled President Truman as follows:-

“1. Japan is doomed and the Japanese know it.

“2. Peace feeders are being put out by certain elements in Japan. . . .”

In April, 1945, as the United States was establishing a foothold on Okinawa, the Russians in effect denounced their neutrality agreement with Japan, and from then until July 12, the new cabinet was moving rapidly toward surrender attempts.

On July 12, fourteen days before we issued the Potsdam Declaration, these attempts reached a clearly defined point. Prince Konoye was received by the Emperor on that day and ordered to Moscow as a peace plenipotentiary to “secure peace at any price.” On July 13, Moscow was notified officially by the Japanese Foreign Office that the “Emperor was desirous of peace.”

It was hoped that Moscow would inform the United States and Britain at the Potsdam conference of Japan’s desire to discuss peace. But instead of receiving an answer from the “Big Three,”Ambassador Sato in Moscow was told by Molotov on August 8 of Russia’s entry into the war against Japan, effective immediately.

However, since early May, well before this disappointing denouement to the most definite peace attempts the Japanese had yet made, the six-man Supreme War Direction Council in Japan had been discussing peace. On June 20 the Emperor told the Council that it “was necessary to have a plan to close the war at once as well as a plan to defend the home islands.”

The Council was deadlocked three to three, and Premier Suzuki, to break the deadlock, had decided to summon a Gozenkaigi (a meeting of “elder statesmen,” called only in hours of crises) at which the Emperor himself could make the decision for peace or for further war. Suzuki knew his Emperor’s mind; Hirohito had been convinced for some weeks that peace was the only answer to Japan’s ordeal.

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6; Russia entered the war on August 8; and the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9. The dropping of the first bomb and the Russian entry into the war gave Suzuki additional arguments for again putting the issue before the Supreme War Direction Council, and on August 9 he won their approval for the Gozenkaigi. But neither the people of Japan nor their leaders were as impressed with the atomic bomb as we were. The public did not know until after the war what had happened to Hiroshima; and even so, they had endured fire raids against Tokyo which had caused more casualties and devastated a greater area than that destroyed at Hiroshima. The Supreme War Direction Council was initially told that a fragment of the Hiroshima bomb indicated that it was made in Germany (!), that it appeared to be a conventional explosive of great power, and that there was only one bomb available.

When the Gozenkaigi actually was held on August 14, five days after the second bomb was dropped, War Minister Anami and the chiefs of the Army and Navy General Staff — three members of the War Council who had been adamant for continuation of the war — were still in favor of continuing it; those who had wanted peace still wanted it. In other words, the bomb changed no opinions; the Emperor himself, who had already favored peace, broke the deadlock.

“If nobody else has any opinion to express,” Hirohito said, according to Masuo Kato in The Lost War, “we would express our own. We demand that you will agree to it. We see only one way left for Japan to save herself. That is the reason we have made this determination to endure the unendurable and suffer the insufferable.”

The Strategic Bombing Survey stated as its opinion that “certainly prior to Dec. 31, 1945 Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” This seems, in the light of history, a reasonable judgment and, in view of our available intelligence estimates, one that we could have then made.

It is quite possible that the atomic bombs shortened the war by a day, a week, or a month — not more. But at what a price! For whether or not the atomic bomb hastened victory, it is quite clear it has not won the peace.

7

SOME may point to the comparative tranquillity of Japan under MacArthur in the post-war period as due in part to the terror of American arms created by the bomb. This is scarcely so; Japan’s seeming tranquillity is a surface one, which has been furthered by a single occupation authority and the nature of the Japanese people. But I venture to say that those who suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never forget it, and that we sowed there a whirlwind of hate which we shall some day reap.

In estimating the effect of the use of the bomb upon the peace, we must remember, first, that we used the bomb for one purpose and one only: not to secure a more equitable peace, but to hasten victory. By using the bomb, we have become identified, rightfully or wrongly, as inheritors of the mantle of Genghis Khan and all those of past history who have justified the use of utter ruthlessness in war.

In reality, we took up where these great conquerors left off, long before we dropped the atomic bomb. Americans, in their own eyes, are a naïvely idealistic people, with none of the crass ruthlessness so often exhibited by other nations. Yet in the eyes of others our record is very far from clean, nor can objective history palliate it. Rarely have we been found on the side of restricting horror; too often we have failed to support the feeble hands of those who would limit war. We did not ratify the Hague Convention of 1899, outlawing the use of dumdum (expanding) bullets in war. We never ratified the Geneva Protocol of 1925, outlawing the use of biological agents and gas in war.

At the time the war in the Pacific ended, pressure for the use of gas against Japanese island positions had reached the open discussion stage, and rationalization was leading surely to justification — an expedient justification since we had air superiority and the means to deluge the enemy with gas, while he had no similar way to reply. We condemned the Japanese for their alleged use of biological agents against the Chinese, yet in July and August, 1945, a shipload of U.S. biological agents for use in destruction of the Japanese rice crop was en route to the Marianas. And even before the war, our fundamental theory of air war — like that of the Trenchard school of Britain—coincided, or stemmed from, the Douhet doctrine of destructiveness: the bombardment of enemy cities and peoples.

Yet surely these methods, particularly the extension of unrestricted warfare to enemy civilians, defeated any peace aims we might have had, and had little appreciable effect in hastening military victory. For in any totalitarian state the leaders, rather than the people, must be convinced of defeat; and the indiscriminate use of mass or area weapons like biological agents and the atomic bomb strikes at the people, not the rulers. We cannot succeed, therefore, by such methods, in drawing that fine line between ruler and ruled that ought to be drawn in every war; we cannot hasten military victory by slaughtering the led. Such methods only serve to bind the led closer to their leaders. Moreover, unrestricted warfare can never lay the groundwork for a more stable peace. Its heritage may be the salt-sown fields of Carthage or the rubble and ruins of a Berlin or Tokyo or Hiroshima, but neither economically nor psychologically can unrestricted warfare — atomic warfare or biological warfare — lead anywhere save to eventual disaster.

During the last conflict we brought new horror to the meaning of war; the ruins of Germany and Japan, the flame-scarred tissues of the war wounded, attest our efficiency. And on August 6, 1945, that blinding flash above Hiroshima wrote a climax to an era of American expediency. On that date, we joined the list of those who had introduced new and horrible weapons for the extermination of man; we joined the Germans who had first utilized gas, the Japanese with their biological agents, the Huns and the Mongols who had made destruction a fine art.

It is my contention that in the eyes of the world the atomic bomb has cost us dearly; we have lost morally; we no longer are the world’s moral leader as in the days of the Wilsonian Fourteen Points. It is my contention that the unlimited destruction caused by our unlimited methods of waging war has cost us heavy economic losses in the forms of American tax subsidies to Germany and Japan.

But it is not only — and perhaps not chiefly — in public opinion or in the public pocketbook that we have suffered, but in our own souls. The American public is tending to accept the nefarious doctrine that the ends justify the means, the doctrine of exigency.

We have embarked upon total war with a vengeance; we have done our best to make it far more total. If we do not soon reverse this trend, if we do not cast about for means to limit and control war, if we do not abandon the doctrine of expediency, of unconditional surrender, of total victory, we shall some day ourselves become the victims of our own theories and practices.