Did We Have to Nuke Japan?

Just before dawn on that August morning in 1945 a light called flashed across the New Mexico desert. It was bright in the pre-dawn darkness, assaulting the eyes of the observers even those wearing welding goggles but had it been high noon on a clear day, the flash of light would have eclipsed the sun. With that flash, atomic explosions moved from theory to reality. Within two weeks the light flashed two more times thousands of miles away. This time the bombs were not in a test range but about 800 feet above two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were devastated, much of each city destroyed in an instant. The controversy that surrounds these three events have burned hot at times, even till today there are many questions. I would like to address a few of them including one that I have not seen in print. 

We Did Not Need to Drop the Bomb

Let us look at that question carefully, not with the liberal broad brush of today. Let us base our thinking on what our leaders knew at the time the decision was made. Let us go back and make the decision as they did, with the pressures of the times, with what they knew, without the 20/200 hindsight (blindness) of today’s liberal thinking. Would we have made a better decision or in fact a different one?

In mid-1945 we were planning an invasion of Japan to end the war. It would be a repeat of the campaign in Europe, starting with a D-Day landing like the one at Normandy. Aircraft would bomb and strafe the landing area. Heavy guns of battleships would blast the hardened fortifications. Landing craft would approach the beach. The enemy would return fire to repel the attackers. There was no reason to think Japan would capitulate, the suicidal divine wind of the Kamikaze that was blowing at the American fleet was just additional proof of an impending fight to the death on the beaches and in the cities. With pilots willing to die to crash a bomb laden plane into a ship there was no reason to believe this would not be more difficult than Omaha Beach.  Our forces had faced suicidal Banzi charges on the ground. The islands of the South Pacific would only be the prelude to the final invasion. The Allied planners looked back to landings at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Leyte as well as the ones in Europe. In Europe resistance was often stronger as we approached the end of the war. The carnage of battle was fresh in the minds of the military planners. The Battle of the Bulge and the fights for the Remagen and Ahrnem bridges were recent memories. Iwo was a testimony that Japan would not easily capitulate. Time had not removed the horrors of the hedgerows of Normandy. Based on these landings they expected hundreds of thousands of casualties unless the Japanese did not defend the homeland. Nobody in their right mind thought there was any chance they would capitulate without being defeated on the field of battle. They could be expected to defend the home islands to the death and contest every square inch.