Christi ShaferOctober 9, 2010HIS 694Unit 3 – “Library Resources”

The Historiography of the Debate Over the Atomic Bombing of Japan, 1946-2007

For generations, historians have debated the necessity, motives, and implications of the

United States’ decision to use nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the

plethora of literature, debates, and controversies created throughout the discussion reveals the

depth and lasting impact that can be exacted by a single moment in history. Through decades of

scrupulous research, these historians have provided important insights into American diplomacy,

foreign relations, and the origins of the Cold War, while dividing themselves loosely into two

opposing schools of thought.

Dominant throughout the 1940s and 1950s, orthodox historians generally viewed the

nuclear bombing of Japan as a necessary and justifiable act that saved the lives of millions of

American soldiers and brought about the end of World War II by forcing the Japanese to

surrender. While lamenting the death and destruction they caused, these historians argued that

the decision to use the bombs was the lesser of two evils at the time. Rising with the New Left in

the 1960s and maintaining a significant presence well into the 1990s, revisionist historians

believed the bombs were not necessary to bring about the end of the war. Instead, these

historians argued that the use of nuclear weapons was an attempt by American leaders to prevent

Russian intervention and a statement asserting American military superiority over the Soviet

Union. While both express deep regret at the tragedies and atrocities caused by the bombs, each

camp interpreted differently the events leading up to their use and the motives behind the

decision to use them on the Japanese.

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In this essay I delineate the arguments formed by each of these schools of thought, from

the earliest orthodox arguments in the 1940s to the continuing battle with revisionists in the

1990s, using examples from historians engaged in the debate and their published works on the

subject. While the development and prevalence of each group can be traced only loosely by each

decade since 1945, I plan to approach the historiography from a chronological perspective to

illustrate the rough timeline of their writings and show how each argument affected the others

over time.

Almost immediately after the bombs fell on Japan, the first revisionist rumblings were

heard among a select few historians, such as Norman Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter, who

questioned the reasoning behind the use of the bombs and heavily criticized Harry S. Truman

and his advisors for making such a deadly decision.1 These sentiments would not be extensively

published or supported, however, until the beginning of the early 1960s. Prior to that time period,

the orthodox school of thought arose to dominate the debate. In 1946, a government report

officially stated for the first time that a Japanese surrender would have been forthcoming even

without the use of the bombs, which prompted a response from those in the orthodox school who

disagreed with this conclusion. When it was published on July 1, 1946, The United States

Strategic Bombing Survey reported that “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 report directly challenged the argument that the bombs

were necessary to induce unconditional surrender from the Japanese and appeared to lay to rest

any ideas that the atomic bombs forced the Japanese to surrender, as the government had

previously suggested.

1 Michael Kort. “The Historiography of Hiroshima: The Rise and Fall of Revisionism.” The New England Journal of History, 64, no. 1 (Fall, 2007), 31-48.

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Just a few months later, several denunciations of the report’s conclusion appeared in print

from men who had participated directly in the decision-making process, or who participated in

peripheral activities that led to the bombs’ discovery. Dr. Karl T. Compton, who served as

member of the Interim Committee that advised the president on the use of the atomic bombs,

responded to the government report in an article published in The Atlantic Monthly in December

1946. He argued that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was completely justifiable at the

time and achieved its goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. Based on his own

experiences in the decision-making process, he stated his belief “with complete conviction, that

the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands of lives… that without its use the war

would have continued for many months; that no one of good conscience… could have made ay

different decisions.”2

In February 1947, former secretary of war Henry L. Stimson reinforced these views in an

article published by Harper’s Magazine. In the essay, he argued that “the destruction of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the

strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies.”3 Rather than a

weapon that decimated the Japanese military capabilities and production lines, however, Stimson

suggested that the bombs decimated the Japanese spirit and “strengthened the position of those

who wished peace” within the Japanese government.4 Without such a weapon, the Japanese

would continue to refuse surrender despite the fact that they had already admitted military defeat.

Similarly, Albert Einstein published an essay in The Atlantic in November 1947 that supported

the arguments expressed by Kompton and Stimson. Though the article focused mainly on the

American responsibility to work toward world peace now that the bombs had been introduced,

2 Karl T. Compton. “If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used.” The Atlantic, 178, no. 6 (Dec., 1946), 54.3 Henry L. Stimson. “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.” Harper’s Magazine, (Feb., 1947)4 Stimson, 9.

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he went one step further than his predecessors and defended the bombings on moral grounds.

Arguing that the German and Japanese introduced a new level of brutality to warfare, Einstein

wrote that “to it the Allies responded in kind – as it turned out, with greater effectiveness – and

they were morally justified in doing so.” In short, Einstein suggested that not only did the bombs

effectively serve their purpose, but the Japanese invited the destruction they wrought through

their own brutality toward the Americans.

In the1950s, the argument in favor of the bomb’s use to end the war began to be

challenged by historians who questioned the real reasoning behind the American bombing of

Japan. In Japan’s Decision to Surrender, Robert Butow argued that the Japanese surrender

would have been “possible, even probable” even without the atomic bombing or Soviet entry

into the war.5 Through a detailed analysis of the Japanese political structure, Butow points to the

bold entry of the emperor into the military decision-making process in Japan as the pivotal

moment that brought about the end of the war. It was through his influence, rather than the use of

atomic weapons on his nation, that finally allowed the Japanese to accept unconditional

surrender.

A scathing article written in 1958 by Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes, a prominent historian from

Columbia University, attacked Roosevelt and Truman for denying early “Japanese peace feelers”

that he suggests were sent to the United States well in advance of the decision to use the bombs.

Citing evidence from an article published by Walter Trohan in the Chicaco Tribune in 1945, he

argued “that the bombing of these Japanese cities was not needed to bring the war to a speedy

end and make it unnecessary to launch an assault against the Japanese mainland, which, if

actually carried out, would certainly have led to enormous bloodshed on both sides.”6 In their

5 Robert Butow. Japan’s Decision to Surrender. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954), 132.6 Harry Elmer Barnes. “Hiroshima: Assault On a Beaten Foe?” National Review, (May, 1958), 1.

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respective publications, Butow and Barnes presented compelling questions that challenged the

orthodox version of events and piqued the interest of historians who would later ask more

questions of the decision to use the bomb.

During this time period, however, revisionists such as these still constituted the minority.

In 1957, Louis Morton wrote a well-thought out and carefully researched essay in the journal

Foreign Affairs in 1957 that reinforced the orthodox argument and illustrated the continued

dominance of this school of thought among academia and the general public. He challenged

those who would question the decision to present more evidence to discredit the orthodox view.

Besides the Bombing Survey, he argued, all official reports and personal accounts clearly

illustrated the necessity of using the bombs against Japan to prevent further warfare from

claiming more American and Japanese lives. Pointing to the U.S. objective of obtaining total

and unconditional surrender, Morton suggested that Japan had accepted defeat by 1945, “but it

was not willing, even at this late date, to surrender unconditionally, and would accept no terms

that did not include the preservation of the imperial system.”7 Faced with a clear rejection of the

terms presented at Potsdam and no evidence that the Japanese were willing to change their minds

any time soon, the American diplomats were left with little choice but to use the bombs to force

the Japanese to unconditionally surrender.

With the publication of Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam in 1967, historian

Gar Alperovitz introduced the first widely recognized and accepted revisionist work denouncing

the government and orthodox claims that the atomic bombs were needed and intended to end the

war. In the book, Alperovitz theorizes that Truman opted to use the nuclear weapons on Japan as

a way to subdue the Russians and limit their influence in Eastern Europe. Even without the

7 Louis Morton. “The Decision to Use the Bomb.” Foreign Affairs, 35, no. 2 (Jan., 1957), 344.

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bombs, he believes the Japanese would have surrendered unconditionally and were willing to do

so well before August 1945.

In addition work already conducted by early revisionists, Alperovitz’s thesis also

benefited from the influence of the New Left during the 1960s. As the Cold War progressed

during this period, the debate over Soviet-American diplomacy inevitably carried historians back

to the origins of the conflict and the decision to use the atomic bombs in 1945. In an article about

the New Left movement and its effects on historiography, Willard L. Hogeboom attributed the

increased friction between “consensus” and “revisionist” historians to the rise in the New Left.

During this time period, events such as the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam brought new

questions to the forefront about government motives and forced historians to look back at many

subjects, such as the atomic bombings, in a new light. Perhaps it was these developments, along

with twenty years of hindsight, that opened the door for revisionism to become more accepted as

a legitimate academic school of thought on the atomic bombings. Hogeboom exhibited great

foresight when he suggested that “the New Left history is not only likely to endure; it may even

prevail and so become the orthodoxy against which a future generation of historians will rebel.”8

With revisionism on the rise, however, the orthodox argument remained strong as many

historians sought to refute revisionist claims and dismiss the New Left interpretation as shoddy

history. In 1961, Herbert Feis, who was an outspoken critic of Alperovitz in later years,

published Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War, in which he argued that the

bombs did bring a quick end to the war and were decisive in bringing about the Japanese

surrender. Several years later, after the release of Atomic Diplomacy, he published an updated

version of the book that included new evidence about American desires to intimidate Russia

8 Willard L. Hogeboom. “The New Left and the Revision of American History.” The History Teacher, 2, no. 1 (Nov., 1968), 55.

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through use of the bombs. Yet his overall thesis remained the same. Similarly, Walter

Schoenburger reinforced the orthodox interpretation in Decision of Destiny, in which he argued

that the bombs’ use was necessary yet “symbolized… the bankruptcy of the nation-state system

which justifies with national morality the moral abomination of total war.”9 Both Feis and

Schoenberger continued to play a large role in promoting and maintaining the legitimacy of the

orthodox argument through their multiple publications on the subject over the years.

With the debate in full swing, historians during the 1970s continued to analyze the

decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan with a vigor established by their predecessors.

During this time period, however, the revisionist argument gained wider credibility and

acceptance as the continuance of the Cold War raised new questions about the use of the bombs

and their lasting impact on Soviet-American diplomacy. With these thoughts in mind, historians

such as William A. Williams and Barton J. Bernstein raised the idea that the use of atomic

weapons in 1945 was not only unnecessary to end WWII, but also served as the catalyst for a

new conflict – the Cold War. In an essay published in the Pacific Historical Review in 1977,

Bernstein theorized that the American decision to attack Japan with nuclear weapons illustrated

that “for American leaders, the politics of ending the war in the Pacific were tied closely to the

problems of postwar Soviet-American relations.” To illustrate this point, he argued that “Truman

had even savored the advantages of using the A-bomb to ‘impress’ the Soviets and to retaliate

against the Japanese” for the bombing of Pearl Harbor.10 Rather than solely a means to end the

war, Bernstein suggests, the use of the atomic bomb also represented a way for American

statesmen to make a statement and exact revenge on the Japanese at the same time.

9 Walter S. Schoenberger. Decision of Destiny. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1969).10 Barton J. Bernstein. “The Perils and Politics of Surrender: Ending the War with Japan and Avoiding the Third Atomic Bomb.” Pacific Historical Review, 46, no. 1 (Feb., 1977), 9-10.

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In an article published in 1975, Robert Griffith reinforced the ideas put forth by Bernstein

and others as he traced the rise of the revisionists and credited them with raising the important

questions about the atomic bombs and the Cold War. Citing the arguments of Alperovitz and

other revisionists, he argued that “much of the revisionist critique remains valid,” and supported

the theory that Truman’s decision to drop the bombs precipitated the Cold War rather than ended

World War II.11 In effect, by the 1970s the revisionist argument had finally found its place in the

historiography as an academically accepted interpretation.

By the following decade, however, the playing field began to level again between the two

schools of thought. During the 1980s, older practitioners published new refutations of

revisionism while younger historians began a second wave of evaluation that took more of a

moderate view on the decision to use the bombs. With the Vietnam and Korean Wars concluded

and the end of the Cold War in sight, many historians softened their views toward Truman and

his decision to use the bombs and dismissed revisionist critics as overzealous and misguided. In

The Winning Weapon, published in1980, Gregg Herken claimed the middle ground in the debate

by arguing that American diplomats made a mistake not when they chose to use the bombs, but

when they mistakenly believed that doing so would give them a monopoly in nuclear weapons

for a significant period of time. While the bombs served their purpose effectively in ending

World War II, they could not be expected to do so in future conflicts as the U.S. leaders believed

they would.

Similarly, Thomas T Hammond produced a collection of accounts in 1982 from those

who experienced the Cold War in different regions and capacities to prove his thesis that the

atomic bomb played no role in Soviet-American relations, but was intended only as a weapon to

11 Robert Griffith. “Truman and the Historians: The Reconstruction of Postwar American History.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 59, no. 1 (Autumn, 1975), 23.

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end the war in the Pacific. In the book, Witnesses to the Origin of the Cold War, Hammond uses

information provided from Soviet, American and Eastern European diplomats to discredit

Alperovitz’s thesis about American ulterior motives in the use of the bombs and support the

orthodox interpretation of events.

Undoubtedly feeling the need to defend their interpretation against two decades of

revisionists attacks, those who experienced the event first-hand continued to publish their

interpretation of events just as Stimson and Kompton had in the late 1940s. Paul Fussel, a

historian, English professor, and veteran of World War II, published “Thank God for the Atom

Bomb” in 1981 to support the orthodox view through statistical evidence as well as his own

experiences during the war. While singling out historians he disagrees with, Fussell argues that

revisionism arose as a result of “remoteness from experience” from men operating from “a

historian’s tidy hindsight.”12 Admitting that the bombs ushered in the dangers and fears of the

nuclear age, he contends that unleashing atomic weapons against Japan was the only way to save

millions of American and Japanese lives by preventing an invasion and forcing Japan to

surrender.

Perhaps the most influential event sparking the debate between orthodox and revisionist

historians, besides the actual use of the bombs themselves, occurred at the National Air and

Space Museum in 1995. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the bombings, the decision

to erect an exhibit around the Enola Gay at the museum led to several years of argument between

historians of each camp, politicians, and war veterans on the subject of how the bomb’s use

should be interpreted, how the plane should be exhibited, and which version of the story should

12 Robert Fussell. “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” in Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: Summit Books, 1988), 4, 5.

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be told. This event gave new life to the debate and led to the publication of a plethora of articles

in support of both interpretations from old and new historians alike.

Prompted by the battle over the exhibit, Edward T. Linenthal wrote an article in 1995 that

described the controversy as a war between censorship and historians – “remember what we did

and what it cost” versus “never again.”13 Without giving his personal stance on the subject, he

portrayed how “all groups involved believed their history had been ‘stolen,’ resulting either in a

‘revisionist’ exhibit or one showing a callous disregard for historical integrity.”14 For historians

in both the orthodox and revisionist camp, the Enola Gay exhibit served as a spark to the debate

over the bombs use, resulting in a resurgence of literature on the subject and reevaluations of the

topic among historians.

Revisionists especially found in the Enola Gay exhibit proof that the traditionalist view

served only to gloss over the reality of events and ignore the dirtier aspects of the decision to

drop the bombs. In 1997, Mark Weber argued in “Was Hiroshima Necessary: Why the Atomic

Bombings Could Have Been Avoided” that the neither the atomic bombs nor the Soviet entry

into the war led to the Japanese surrender. Following closely the argument set forth by

Alperowitz and Barnes in the 1950s and 1960s, he suggested that the decision to use nuclear

weapons against Japan could not be justified “by any rational yardstick” since “Japan had

already been militarily defeated by June 1945.”15

Just two years later, however, Sadao Asada presented compelling evidence to refute

Weber’s thesis from a careful analysis of the bombings and subsequent surrender from the

Japanese perspective. In his article, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to

13 Edward T. Linenthal. “Struggling with History and Memory,” The Journal of American History, 82, no. 3 (Dec., 1995), 1097.14 Ibid, 1099.15 Mark Weber. “Was Hiroshima Necessary: Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided,” The Journal of Historical Review, 16, no. 3 (Summer 1997), 4.

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Surrender: A Reconsideration,” Asada presented his research into the political and military

organization in Japan to show that “in the end, Japan needed ‘external pressure’ in the form of

the atomic bombs for its government to decide to surrender.”16 In direct contradiction to Weber’s

thesis and a reinterpretation of Barnes’ thesis, Asada argued that although the Japanese were

defeated military before the atomic bombings, “because it’s governmental machinery was, to a

large extent, controlled by the military and hampered by a cumbersome system… Japanese

leaders had failed to translate defeat into surrender.” Though defeated in the military sense, the

Japanese refused to equate defeat with surrender until the shock administered by the atomic

bombs forced them to do so.

In 1996, even Alperovitz, who was largely credited as the father of revisionism by this

time period, continued to espouse his ideas with the publication “The Decision to Use the

Atomic Bomb” in 1996. Thus, by the end of the 20th century, historians of both World War II and

the Cold War had begun to recycle old insights and arguments to create new interpretations or

reinforce old interpretations of the decision to drop the bombs. Though post-revisionists tended

to lean toward the orthodox view, the revisionists remained a prominent and legitimate force into

the 21st century and continued to promote their argument in the academic and public spheres.

The new millennium brought no clear end in sight to the debate, for better or worse, with

historians on both sides picking up where there predecessors had left off. One new aspect,

however, was a separation of the military and moral implications of the bombs’ use. Introduced

by Asada in 1998, some historians in the early 2000s found justification for the decision to use

nuclear warfare against the Japanese by separating their military use from their moral

implications. While the bombs’ destruction could never be deemed acceptable, the destruction

16 Sadao Asada. “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration.” Pacific Historical Review, 67, no. 4 (Nov., 1998), 512.

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they prevented justified their use. In an article in The Weekly Standard in 2005, Richard B.

Frank argued that both traditionalist and revisionist arguments carried flaws that future historians

must work hard to fix. While the bombs may not have been militarily necessary, he argues,

historians must analyze these past events with “a richer appreciation for the realities of 1945” in

order to adequately understand and interpret their meanings.17 Yet revisionists refused to give up

in light of the post-revisionists’ arguments, maintaining their stance that all evidence supports

their argument that the bombs’ use can never be justified. In 2007, Peter Kuznick defended the

revisionist stance in “Defending the Indefensible: A Meditation on the Life of Hiroshima Pilot

Paul Tibbets, Jr.” Through his analysis of a specific figure in the narrative of events, Kuznick

argued that orthodox and post-revisionist claims are simply the result of “the detritus of decades

of mythology about casualty figures, prospects for an invasion, motives for dropping the bombs,

and effectiveness of deterrence.”18

With half a century of historiography behind them, historians in the 21st century benefited

from the foundation set by their predecessors, as well as the plethora of new information that had

been classified or otherwise unavailable in previous decades. Yet the various conclusions and

interpretations continue to differ just as sharply as in the years immediately following the atomic

bombings of Japan. No matter what new evidence surfaces or what arguments dominate the

debate, the value of the argument lies not in who is right, but in the importance of evaluating the

past and attempting to interpret the meanings, motives, and implications behind events such as

the atomic bombing of the Japanese in 1945.

17 Richard B. Frank. “Why Truman Dropped the Bomb: Sixty Years After Hiroshima, We Now Have the Secret Intercepts that Shaped His Decision,” The Weekly Standard, 10, no. 44 (August 2005), 7.18 Peter J. Kuznick. “Defending the Indefensible: A Meditation on the Life of Hiroshima Pilot Paul Tibbets, Jr.,” Japan Focus (July 2007), 24.

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