Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the first operational atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, incinerating the heart of the city of a quarter million people. A second atomic bomb was dropped three days later with comparable damage on Nagasaki, and the Japanese offer of surrender came on August 10. The bombing of the two cities, Hiroshima especially, has come to symbolize the end of World War II and the beginning of the atomic age. The American use of the atomic bomb has also provoked continuing inquiry and debate among scholars and the public—as the furor about the proposed Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in the mid-1990s revealed.

The atomic bomb was developed by the American Manhattan Project and was successfully tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The light from the test could be seen some 200 miles away, sand was fused into glass pellets, and a mushroom cloud rose eight miles into the sky. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist on the Manhattan Project, quoted from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” In the aftermath of the test, the Potsdam Declaration, issued on July 26 at the end of the Potsdam Coneer-ENce, demanded that Japan surrender unconditionally by August 3 or face “prompt and utter destruction.”

The Japanese did not surrender, and destruction promptly came. Much of Hiroshima was obliterated by the “Little Boy” uranium bomb, with perhaps as many as 50,000 deaths almost instantaneously and estimates of additional deaths by the end of the year from injury, burns, and radiation poison ranging as high as 100,000. President Harry S. Truman announced to the world that the atomic bomb involved the “harnessing of the basic power of the universe.” The Japanese still did not surrender, even after the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on August 8. Another American bomber, the Bockscar, then dropped the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, with another 50,000 deaths and eventually tens of thousands more. At last Japan surrendered.

Jubilant V-J Day celebrations erupted when the news of the Japanese surrender became public. American servicemen in or heading toward the World War II Pacieic theater and their families rejoiced that the war was over and that the atomic bombs had evidently saved the GIs from a bloody invasion of the Japanese home islands. The overwhelming majority of the American public endorsed the use of the bombs. Truman told sailors as he returned home from Potsdam that the bombing of Hiroshima was “the greatest thing in history.”

But while all Americans were glad to see the war end with no more peril to U. S. servicemen, and while most continued to approve using the atomic bomb, reserva-

Tions, regrets, and questions about the bomb soon began to emerge. Truman himself, on hearing the news from Alamogordo, had written in his diary about “the most terrible thing ever discovered.” Some religious leaders and scientists, and even a few military leaders, asked whether it had been necessary or right to use so awful a weapon. So did some critics, conservatives and liberals alike, in politics and the press. The author John Hersey’s compelling and graphic account of several survivors of the Hiroshima bombing written for the New Yorker magazine and then published in his best-selling 1946 book, Hiroshima, had a huge impact on perceptions of the bomb. And for the following half century and more, the decision to use the atomic bomb has been discussed and often debated.

In fact, Truman did not so much make a decision to use the bomb as he did not reverse a longstanding decision to use it if necessary. From the beginning of the Manhattan Project, it had been assumed, implicitly and explicitly, that the bomb would be a legitimate weapon of war to be used if needed against the Axis nations to end the war. Some support for developing and using the bomb ebbed after it became plain that Germany would not develop an atomic bomb, and even more support waned after Germany’s surrender; but the original assumptions remained in place.

As the Manhattan Project neared completion, some scientists and government officials suggested alternatives to using the atomic bomb—for example, an explicit warning to Japan; a demonstration of the bomb; agreeing to conditional surrender. U. S. Navy and U. S. Army Air Forces leaders believed that a continuation of the naval blockade and air campaign against Japan would bring surrender. But there were counterarguments to such views, and Truman did not reverse the prior decision to use the bomb.

Some explanations for Truman’s choice point to the difficulty the new president might have had in not following the unconditional surrender policy identified with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died only a few months earlier. Others suggest that the administration might have feared criticism for not using a weapon that cost $2 billion to develop. Some critics maintain that the bomb was dropped out of racism and revenge for Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, and other Japanese acts of war—although officials from the beginning had contemplated using the weapon on Germany, and anti-Japanese sentiment was at least as high among such Asian peoples as the Chinese and Filipinos who had suffered atrocities under the Japanese. The brutality of the war, and the bombing and killing of civilians by both the Allies and the Axis powers, contributed to a certain hardening of sensitivities among policymakers. In the several months prior to Hiroshima, for example, the American firebombing of Japanese cities, including Tokyo, took an estimated halfmillion Japanese lives.

The aerial photo shows the aftermath of the atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima. (National Archives)

Simple bureaucratic momentum also played a role, and helps to answer the question of why the second bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki. Once authorization was given to use the bomb after August 3, the timing of the bombings and the target of the second bomb were in the hands of military officials in the Pacific. Four cities, chosen for their shock value in demonstrating the destructive power of the bomb, were on the list of approved target cities. Hiroshima was designated for the first bomb because it was an undamaged industrial city lying on a plain surrounded by mountains, so that the bomb would cause maximum damage. Nagasaki (put last on the list) became the second target on August 9 because of weather conditions and the unexpected speed of preparing the “Fat Man” for use.

While most scholars agree that the atomic bomb was used to bring the surrender of Japan as quickly as possible, less consensus exists on whether the bomb was necessary to end the war. Some historians believe that conventional military power, a demonstration of the bomb, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, agreement to a conditional surrender, or some combination of these factors, might have brought the Japanese surrender. On the other hand, a number of scholars, including some in Japan, hold that the shock of the atomic bomb was necessary to produce surrender by Japan’s military leaders.

Some recent scholarship also calls into question the widespread understanding that the only alternative to the use of the bomb was invasion of the Japanese home islands, with a half million or more American deaths. Not only do some historians emphasize evidence suggesting that surrender might have come without an invasion or the atomic bomb, but a few contemporary documents indicate an expectation of no more than several tens of thousands

A dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over the Japanese port city of Nagasaki, the result of the second atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan. (Library of Congress)

Of American deaths were an invasion to be launched. But even that would have been a high cost, especially after more than three bloody years of war in the Pacific theater; and other contemporary documents project much higher figures. Since Truman had become president three months earlier, moreover, the United States had experienced nearly half of its total casualties in the Pacific theater, and the brutal warfare and high casualties on both sides at Iwo JiMA and Okinawa weighed much on American minds. Certainly Truman would have had a hard time justifying extending the war and losing even a small number of additional American lives. In any case, there is no way to know just what would have happened without use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If the primary reason for dropping the bomb was to compel the quick surrender of Japan, most scholars also agree that a secondary and reinforcing reason was that it might work to the advantage of the United States in Soviet-American relations. By the summer of 1945, as the Yalta Coneerence and the Potsdam Conference had revealed, the United States and the Soviet Union were increasingly at odds about significant postwar questions, including Eastern Europe. Some American policymakers concluded that the American possession and use of the bomb might make the Soviet Union more tractable on postwar issues. In fact, the bomb evidently exacerbated Soviet-American tensions and contributed to the development of the cold war—and to the uncertainties of the nuclear age.

Further reading: Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999); John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Knopf, 1946); Michael J. Hogan, Hiroshima in History and Memory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian (New York: Marlowe & Co., 1995); Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986); J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: President Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Holiday, Billie (1915-1959) jazz singer Billie Holiday is widely considered to be the most significant jAZZ-blues singer of the 1930s and 1940s. Her innovative style of singing made her a major figure in the world of MUSIC.

Born Eleanora Fagan, she spent her childhood in Baltimore. She did not begin singing professionally until she and her mother, Sadie Fagan, moved to New York. Unable to find work dancing, as had been her plan, she agreed to sing for $18 a week. She took her working name, Billie Holiday, from her father, Clarence Holiday, and from the actress Billie Dove.

Throughout her career, she worked with many influential jazz musicians. Her friend Lester Young gave her the nickname “Lady Day,” by which she was known in jazz circles for much of her life. She performed with Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw, and counted Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith as her most important inspirations. Her singular style of singing meant that her voice was most suited to a more intimate musical accompaniment than could be achieved with a big band. It was her unusual style—relaxed and smooth, with an extraordinary capability for communicating emotion—that appealed greatly to jazz connoisseurs. Despite her popularity in jazz clubs, however, she never gained a large following in the general listening public. Among her best-known songs is “Strange Fruit,” an account of a lynching that she introduced to her repertoire in 1938.

Holiday had a difficult personal life. She spent her childhood in poverty. She married twice, with both marriages ending unhappily, and she faced the discrimination routinely faced by African Americans in the venues where she worked. In addition, Holiday struggled with heroin addiction. She was arrested in 1947 and voluntarily committed to a rehabilitation program. Her addiction contributed to the gradual decline in her health and the quality of her voice during the 1950s. She died in a hospital at the age of 44 while under arrest for possession of drugs.

Further reading: Leslie Gourse, Billie Holiday: The Tragedy and Triumph of Lady Day (New York: Grolier Publishers, 1995).

—Joanna Smith