American Military Leaders Urged President Truman not to Drop the Atomic Bomb

American Military Leaders Urged President Truman
not to Drop the Atomic Bomb

Editor’s Note
We recently published an article by Blase Bonpane dedicated to the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US government. At the time, the official argument was that many American lives would be saved by intimidating Japan into surrender through the utilization of a horrific new weapon of mass destruction. Some critics managed to point out that there was no need for such display of force, as it was known that Japan had been quietly seeking a reasonably honorable way of terminating hostilities, and that Pres. Truman was really far more interested in intimidating the Soviet Union into compliance with American designs. Turns out—surprise!—that the critics were right, and the politicians were lying. The materials below prove precisely that point.—PG

The Joint Chiefs of Staff never formally studied the decision and never made an official recommendation to the President. Brief informal discussions may have occurred, but no record even of these exists. There is no record whatsoever of the usual extensive staff work and evaluation of alternative options by the Joint Chiefs, nor did the Chiefs ever claim to be involved. (See p. 322, Chapter 26)

In official internal military interviews, diaries and other private as well as public materials, literally every top U.S. military leader involved subsequently stated that the use of the bomb was not dictated by military necessity.

Navy Leaders(Partial listing:See Chapter 26 for an extended discussion)

Truman and Fleet Admiral William Leahy, leaving the USS Sarsfield.

In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President’s Chief of Staff–and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff–minced few words:

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

[I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (See p. 3, Introduction)

Privately, on June 18, 1945–almost a month before the Emperor’s July intervention to seek an end to the war and seven weeks before the atomic bomb was used–Leahy recorded in his diary:

It is my opinion at the present time that a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provisions for America’s defense against future trans-Pacific aggression. (See p. 324, Chapter 26)

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: “The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . .”]

In a private 1946 letter to Walter Michels of the Association of Philadelphia Scientists, Nimitz observed that “the decision to employ the atomic bomb on Japanese cities was made on a level higher than that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” (See pp. 330-331, Chapter 26)

Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. (See p. 331, Chapter 26)

Time-Life editor Henry R. Luce later recalled that during a May-June 1945 tour of the Pacific theater:

. . . I spent a morning at Cavite in the Philippines with Admiral Frank Wagner in front of huge maps. Admiral Wagner was in charge of air search-and-patrol of all the East Asian seas and coasts. He showed me that in all those millions of square miles there was literally not a single target worth the powder to blow it up; there were only junks and mostly small ones at that.

Similarly, I dined one night with Admiral [Arthur] Radford [later Joint Chiefs Chairman, 1953-57] on the carrier Yorktown leading a task force from Ulithi to bomb Kyushu, the main southern island of Japan. Radford had invited me to be alone with him in a tiny room far up the superstructure of the Yorktown, where not a sound could be heard. Even so, it was in a whisper that he turned to me and said: “Luce, don’t you think the war is over?” My reply, of course, was that he should know better than I. For his part, all he could say was that the few little revetments and rural bridges that he might find to bomb in Kyushu wouldn’t begin to pay for the fuel he was burning on his task force. (See pp. 331-332, Chapter 26)

The Under-Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bard, formally dissented from the Interim Committee’s recommendation to use the bomb against a city without warning. In a June 27, 1945 memorandum Bard declared:

Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use. The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling.

During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender. Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia’s position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

I don’t see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program. The stakes are so tremendous that it is my opinion very real consideration should be given to some plan of this kind. I do not believe under present circumstances existing that there is anyone in the country whose evaluation of the chances of the success of such a program is worth a great deal. The only way to find out is to try it out. (See pp. 225-226, Chapter 18)

Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), replaced Bard on the Interim Committee after he left government on July 1. Subsequently, Strauss repeatedly stated his belief that the use of the atomic bomb “was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . .” (See p. 332, Chapter 26) Strauss recalled:

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal at that time that the weapon should be demonstrated. . . . Primarily, it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate. . . . My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to the Japanese observers, and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a good place–satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomaria [sic] trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomaria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood. . . . I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest . . . would [have] laid the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they had been matchsticks, and of course set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities, their fortifications at will. . . . (See p. 333, Chapter 26)

In a private letter to Navy historian Robert G. Albion concerning a clearer assurance that the Emperor would not be displaced, Strauss observed:

This was omitted from the Potsdam declaration and as you are undoubtedly aware was the only reason why it was not immediately accepted by the Japanese who were beaten and knew it before the first atomic bomb was dropped. (See p. 393, Chapter 31)

In his “third person” autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:

The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. (See p. 327, Chapter 26)

Private interview notes taken by Walter Whitehill summarize King’s feelings quite simply as: “I didn’t like the atom bomb or any part of it.” (See p. 329, Chapter 26; See also pp. 327-329)

As Japan faltered in July an effort was made by several top Navy officials–almost certainly including Secretary Forrestal himself–to end the war without using the atomic bomb. Forrestal made a special trip to Potsdam to discuss the issue and was involved in the Atlantic Charter broadcast. Many other top Admirals criticized the bombing both privately and publicly. (Forrestal, see pp. 390-392, Chapter 31; p. 398, Chapter 31) (Strauss, see p. 333, Chapter 26; pp. 393-394, Chapter 31) (Bard, see pp. 225-227, Chapter 18; pp. 390-391, Chapter 31)

Air Force Leaders(Partial listing:See Chapter 27 for an extended discussion)

The commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, gave a strong indication of his views in a public statement only eleven days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said:

The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air. (See p. 334, Chapter 27)

In his 1949 memoirs Arnold observed that “it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” (See p. 334, Chapter 27)

Arnold’s deputy, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, summed up his understanding this way in an internal military history interview:

Arnold’s view was that it [the dropping of the atomic bomb] was unnecessary. He said that he knew the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision and Arnold did not feel it was the military’s job to question it. (See p. 335, Chapter 27)

Eaker reported that Arnold told him:

When the question comes up of whether we use the atomic bomb or not, my view is that the Air Force will not oppose the use of the bomb, and they will deliver it effectively if the Commander in Chief decides to use it. But it is not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the necessity of a land invasion. (See p. 335, Chapter 27)

[Eaker also recalled: “That was the representation I made when I accompanied General Marshall up to the White House” for a discussion with Truman on June 18, 1945.]

On September 20, 1945 the famous “hawk” who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay (as reported in The New York Herald Tribune) publicly:

…said flatly at one press conference that the atomic bomb “had nothing to do with the end of the war.” He said the war would have been over in two weeks without the use of the atomic bomb or the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 336, Chapter 27)

The text of the press conference provides these details:

LeMay: The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The Press: You mean that, sir? Without the Russians and the atomic bomb?

. . .

LeMay: The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

(See p. 336, Chapter 27)

On other occasions in internal histories and elsewhere LeMay gave even shorter estimates of how long the war might have lasted (e.g., “a few days”). (See pp. 336-341, Chapter 27)

Personally dictated notes found in the recently opened papers of former Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman describe a private 1965 dinner with General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, who in July 1945 commanded the U.S. Army Strategic Air Force (USASTAF) and was subsequently chief of staff of U.S. Air Forces. Also with them at dinner was Spaatz’s one-time deputy commanding general at USASTAF, Frederick L. Anderson. Harriman privately noted:

Both men . . . felt Japan would surrender without use of the bomb, and neither knew why the second bomb was used. (See p. 337, Chapter 27)

Harriman’s notes also recall his own understanding:

I know this attitude is correctly described, because I had it from the Air Force when I was in Washington in April ’45. (See p. 337, Chapter 27)

In an official 1962 interview Spaatz stated that he had directly challenged the Nagasaki bombing:

I thought that if we were going to drop the atomic bomb, drop it on the outskirts–say in Tokyo Bay–so that the effects would not be as devastating to the city and the people. I made this suggestion over the phone between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and I was told to go ahead with our targets. (See p. 345, Chapter 27)

Spaatz insisted on receiving written orders before going forward with the atomic bombings in 1945. Subsequently, Lieutenant General Thomas Handy, Marshall’s deputy chief of staff, recalled:

Well, Tooey Spaatz came in . . . he said, “They tell me I am supposed to go out there and blow off the whole south end of the Japanese Islands. I’ve heard a lot about this thing, but my God, I haven’t had a piece of paper yet and I think I need a piece of paper.” “Well,” I said, “I agree with you, Tooey. I think you do,” and I said, “I guess I’m the fall guy to give it to you.” (pp. 344-345, Chapter 27)

In 1962 Spaatz himself recalled that he gave “notification that I would not drop an atomic bomb on verbal orders–they had to be written–and this was accomplished.” (p. 345, Chapter 27)

Spaatz also stated that

The dropping of the atomic bomb was done by a military man under military orders. We’re supposed to carry out orders and not question them. (See p. 345, Chapter 27)

In a 1965 Air Force oral history interview Spaatz stressed: “That was purely a political decision, wasn’t a military decision. The military man carries out the order of his political bosses.” (See p. 345, Chapter 27)

Air Force General Claire Chennault, the founder of the American Volunteer Group (the famed “Flying Tigers”)–and Army Air Forces commander in China–was even more blunt: A few days after Hiroshima was bombed The New York Times reported Chennault’s view that:

Russia’s entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end and would have been so even if no atomic bombs had been dropped. . . . (See pp. 335-336, Chapter 27)

Army Leaders(Partial listing:See Chapter 28 for an extended discussion)

On the 40th Anniversary of the bombing former President Richard M. Nixon reported that:

[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off. . . . (See p. 352, Chapter 28)

The day after Hiroshima was bombed MacArthur’s pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, noted in his diary:

General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster [the bomb]. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. . . . (See p. 350, Chapter 28)

Former President Herbert Hoover met with MacArthur alone for several hours on a tour of the Pacific in early May 1946. His diary states:

I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria. (See pp. 350-351, Chapter 28)

Saturday Review of Literature editor Norman Cousins also later reported that MacArthur told him he saw no military justification for using the atomic bomb, and that “The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” (See p. 351, Chapter 28)

In an article reprinted in 1947 by Reader’s Digest, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers (in charge of psychological warfare on MacArthur’s wartime staff and subsequently MacArthur’s military secretary in Tokyo) stated:

Obviously . . . the atomic bomb neither induced the Emperor’s decision to surrender nor had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war.” (See p. 352, Chapter 28)

Colonel Charles “Tick” Bonesteel, 1945 chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section, subsequently recalled in a military history interview: “[T]he poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton so to speak, through Russia. . . .” (See p. 359, Chapter 28)

Brigadier Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGIC intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated in a 1959 interview:

we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs. (See p. 359, Chapter 28)

In a 1985 letter recalling the views of Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy elaborated on an incident that was

very vivid in my mind. . . . I can recall as if it were yesterday, [Marshall’s] insistence to me that whether we should drop an atomic bomb on Japan was a matter for the President to decide, not the Chief of Staff since it was not a military question . . . the question of whether we should drop this new bomb on Japan, in his judgment, involved such imponderable considerations as to remove it from the field of a military decision. (See p. 364, Chapter 28)

In a separate memorandum written the same year McCloy recalled: “General Marshall was right when he said you must not ask me to declare that a surprise nuclear attack on Japan is a military necessity. It is not a military problem.” (See p. 364, Chapter 28)

In addition:

– On May 29, 1945 Marshall joined with Secretaries Stimson and Forrestal in approving Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew’s proposal that the unconditional surrender language be clarified (but, with Stimson, proposed a brief delay). (See pp. 53-54, Chapter 4)

– On June 9, 1945, along with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marshall recommended that a statement clarifying the surrender terms be issued on the fall of Okinawa (June 21). (See pp. 55-57, Chapter 4)

– On July 16, 1945 at Potsdam–again along with the other members of the Joint Chiefs –Marshall urged the British Chiefs of Staff to ask Churchill to approach Truman about clarifying the terms. (See pp. 245-246, Chapter 19)

– On July 18, 1945, Marshall led the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in directly urging the president to include language in the Potsdam Proclamation allowing Japan to choose its own form of government. (See pp. 299-300, Chapter 23)

In his memoirs President Dwight D. Eisenhower reports the following reaction when Secretary of War Stimson informed him the atomic bomb would be used:

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. . . . (See p. 4, Introduction)

Eisenhower made similar private and public statements on numerous occasions. For instance, in a 1963 interview he said simply: “. . . it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” (See pp. 352-358, Chapter 28)