Forty five years ago tomorrow, Hiroshima was bombed with a nuclear weapon. Nagasaki was bombed three days later.

To this day the reason they were bombed remains a matter of controversy, especially in the case of Nagasaki. Recently declassified documents provide additional information upon which to base a judgement.

World War II was the first, and, to date, the last nuclear war.

With current discussion of the possibility of limited nuclear war, it is sobering to reflect that WWII was a total nuclear war. The entire arsenal of two bombs was expended.

Why is Hiroshima of special concern? In modern times civilians were targeted in Guernica, in the Spanish Civil War. The destruction of Rotterdam in a blitzkreig was considered to be a crime against humanity. Firestorms from the bombings of Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden (about 200,00 killed), and Tokyo (about 200,000 killed) each killed more civilians than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Viet Nam was subjected to strategic bombing of civilian targets. Strategic bombing is still adhered to by the U.S. government, and to a lesser degree by Great Britain. It is because nuclear bombs cross a threshold which has not been crossed since World War II and because crossing the threshold with modern nuclear bombs threaten destruction many thousandfold greater than that wreaked on Hiroshima.

To place the question in context, it is observed that the bombing would not have occurred without WWII occurring. Why did WWII occur?

World War II occurred in large part as an aftermath of World War I.

Briefly, as an overview, WWI can be considered to have been a classical imperial war which culminated in class warfare with the revolution which formed the Soviet Union.

The capitalist allies of Tsarist Russia immediately invaded. An imperial ally had been converted into a class enemy. The Japanese were particularly ambitious for imperial expansion, if not capitalist class solidarity. They sent 70,000 troops into Siberia. In Europe, the rise of German fascism and Hitler are considered to have been preconditions to WWII. And what lead to the rise of Hitler? Conventional wisdom attributes it to:

1) The harsh reparations of the Versailles Treaty (Michael Howard in Boyce, 1989, 33-54), aggravated by;

2) The global depression in the capitalist world, feeding upon the fertile ground of Prussian militarism and German traditions of hard work, discipline, and respect for authority (Boyce, 1989, 55-96).

The massive funding by German capitalists, like Krupp and Thyssen, supplemented by support by international capital (Eg. Shell Oil), and by the British government are ignored. Papen and Hindenburg thrust power on Hitler, imploring him to become Chancellor (Martel, 1986, 6). Essentially, Hitler was created as an anti-Bolshevik, anti-worker force, both domestically and internationally. Proletarian Internationalism was defeated in Germany by National Socialism. The class collaboration inherent in National Socialism naturally lead to a resurgence of German Imperialism (The Third Reich). In addition, Germany never admitted its military defeat. Goebbel's propaganda machine convinced the German public that defeat was the result of a "stab in the back" by the communist worker-soldier revolutionaries who established governments in Bavaria (Spartacists) and a few other major German cities (actually after defeat), by (communist) Jews and other traitors, much as was argued to explain the U.S. government's defeat in Viet Nam (Jones, 1977, 11-15).

The Japanese imperialists were less threatened by workers' aspirations than was Europe, but still the Japanese signed the Anti-Cominterm Pact on 25 November 1936 (Haines, 1947, p. 443), although Hitler did not decide to ally himself with Japan until 1938. After Manchuria was annexed and when further incursions were planned in South East Asia [where oil (Indonesia), and vital resources were located] which conflicted with British, Dutch, and French imperial interests, the parliament in Japan resisted further militaristic imperialism. Six days after the elections of 20 February 1936, the military overthrew the government, assassinating opponents (Haines, 1947,440). A militarily-dominated imperial entity now lead the imperial conflict. History now seems self-impelled to war. Resistance to Japanese Imperialism manifest itself as economic pressure restricting access to raw materials vital to the economy as well as to the military--Indonesian oil, tin, tungsten, and rubber from South East Asia (Boyce, 1989, 400). At a 2 July 1941 meeting, Foreign Minister Matsuoka argued that sooner or later it would be necessary to fight the Soviet Union in order to combat communism, but Japan decided to prepare both for war against the USSR and for incursion into South East Asia (Iriye, 1987, 143-144). Japan's last stab attempt to avoid war with the U.S. offered military restraint and some withdrawal if military opposition were not escalated and if access to vital raw materials were allowed and trade were restored (Iriye, 1987, 160). The unexpected strength of the USSR after attack by Hitler made anti-communist war against the USSR much less appealing. Ultimately, of course, Malaya was invaded simultaneously with Pearl Harbor, and the Pacific theater of World War II was opened.

Still, why was Hiroshima bombed?

Churchill claimed that it had saved over 1,200,000 allied lives, including about a million American lives, not to mention Japanese lives. Truman declared, "I wanted to save a half million boys on our side." (Bernstein, 1986, p. 38)

Even had a land invasion been necessary, these figures are exorbitant exaggerations, but was a land invasion expected to be necessary?

Do to recently declassified documents, it is known that the Japanese were attempting to arrange a conditional surrender through diplomatic contacts with the Soviet Union. The condition was that Japan be allowed to retain its emperor, a condition which the U.S. government refused, but ultimately allowed. More importantly, Truman had already concluded that Japan was about to capitulate (Messer, 1985, 50). Eisenhower opposed nuking Japan because "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing" (Eisenhower, 1963). At Yalta the USSR had promised to declare war on Japan and to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria three months before the planned invasion, which was not of the Japanese mainland, but only of the outlying island Kyushu. At Potsdam, after VE Day, Stalin committed the USSR to attacking on 17 August 1941, a promise faithfully fulfilled. War was actually declared on 9 August 1945, Nagasaki Day. Announcing the bombing of Hiroshima, Truman described the bomb as a U.S. victory in a life or death "race against the Germans" (Messer, 1985, 50). Less than a year later, the official U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded, "the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic (sic) bombs did not defeat Japan, nor, by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war, did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender", rather, along with other weapons and pressures, acting "jointly and cumulatively" as "lubrication" for peace-making machinery set in motion months previously (Messer, 1985,51-52). In addition, it was concluded that "certainly prior to 31 December 1941, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 Japan would have surrendered, even if the atomic (sic) bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia (sic) had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planed or contemplated." (Emphasis added) (Messer, 1985, 52).

Other factors which have been suggested as leading to the bombing of Hiroshima include:

1) Inertia: All that effort and ingenuity was not going to be expended in developing an anti-Nazi weapon just to see it not used because the intended target had surrendered.

2) "Sweet technology" vs. "moral scruples": Fermi, delighted by the "superb Physics" of the bomb sneeringly dismissed objections based upon "conscientious scruples". Oppenheimer considered the Manhattan project to be a sweet intellectual problem (Bernstein, 1975, 15, 21). Bruno Vitale elaborates on this argument in his Monthly Review article. [For a recent example of similar thinking, Harold Agnew, head of the Los Alamos Weapons Division stated, "The basis of advance technology is innovation, and nothing is more stifling to creativity than seeing one's product not used or ruled out of consideration on flimsy premises involving public world opinion (Chomsky, 1971, 25 cited in Dittmann, 1983, 190). The desire to test a new implosion design using Plutonium 239 has been cited as an incentive to bomb Nagasaki (Barnet, 1972, 17).

3) "Laboratory experiment": Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not previously bombed despite the fact that they contained military targets (although Hiroshima did not constitute a "military base", as Truman claimed). Thus they were available as "virgin" targets upon which the effects of the nuclear bombs could better be evaluated.

4) Racism. Considerable doubt is raised that German cities would have been bombed despite the fact that Germany was portrayed as the intended target to the scientific staff, although the firestorms in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden (as well as Tokyo) each killed more people.

5) Retribution: Truman wrote, "I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack...on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war...When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beat...It does seem as if retribution had overtaken the imperial line of Japan." (Bernstein, 1975, 18).

6) The Race to Reduce USSR Influence in the East: Possession of the nuclear bomb eliminated, or at least greatly reduced Truman's acceptance of USSR entry into the war against Japan, which was decided before his ascendancy to the Presidency. General Marshall indicated that USSR entry in the war was not necessary. Byrnes hoped to restrain USSR gains in China and Manchuria by ending the war before USSR entry (Bernstein, 1975, 16).

The USSR attacked on schedule, as promised (in stark contrast to the two years delay in opening the western front). In heavy fighting, the Red Army defeated the Japanese Manchurian Army a month after the Japanese government had surrendered. The government had surrendered, but not the army, not even after Hiroshima was bombed. No mention was made of the desire to save lives of soldiers of the USSR. Rather, the entire arsenal (of one) was emptied post haste three days later in order to limit USSR influence after the war (The next bomb was to be ready by 17 August to be used on Kokura or Niigata, also "virgin" targets. Truman countermanded the order on 10 August) (Bernstein, 1975, 17).

7) Intimidation of the Soviet Union a la Dresden, immortalized in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: To this day the supposed military targets in Dresden, destroyed, along with the fantastically beautiful Semperoper and the cultural complex called the Zwinger, when the Red Army was 30 miles away from liberating it, are kept secret. Gen. Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, had other notions about the intended target--It was neither Germany nor Japan. SLIDE

The USSR was not informed of the bomb at Potsdam. Truman believed that the bomb would be more "impressive" and render the USSR more tractable if they had no advance warning (Bernstein, 1975, 16). In P.M.S. Blackett's analysis (Blackett, 1949), "the dropping of the atomic (sic) bomb was not so much the last military act of the second World War*, as the first major operation in the cold diplomatic war with Russia (sic) now in progress." (Messer, 1985, 52). Secretary of War Stimpson called the nuclear bombings of Japan "a badly needed equalizer" in the diplomatic struggle with the USSR (Aptheker, 1962, 88). Stimpson's biographer regretfully concluded that Stimpson "did indeed hint that Russia (sic) and not Japan was the real target of the atom (sic) bomb" (Current, 1954, 237). It is interesting to note that the decision to bomb Hiroshima was made with the endorsement of the highest representatives of big business and major banking groups (Lens, 1976, 18; Bernstein, 1975, 15). In later analyses by Martin Sherwin, Barton Berstein, Gregg Herken, Robert Butow (1954), Gar Alperowitz, Herbert Aptheker (1962, 16), James P. Warburg, and others, based upon later declassified documents, it is generally concluded that the bomb's effect on postwar USSR behavior was on of several factors contributing to what seemed an irresistible presumption in favor of dropping the bomb (Messer, 1985, 52).