Ray Mizui

Ms. Whitney
AP Lang. & Comp.
3 March 2018
A Paradoxical Accomplishment and the Omission of the Soviets

The use of atomic weapons by the United States against the Japanese Empire during the Second

World War has, for decades, provoked emotional discourse. Initially, the majority of Americans approved

the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and believed that they were justified acts of warfare, as the

bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby avoiding a bloody mainland invasion of Japan.

Interestingly, over seventy years after President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, public

opinion has slightly shifted. Some now believe that while the bombs drew the Second World War to a

close, Japan’s leaders were willing to surrender to the United States months before and would have done

so before the planned mainland invasion. However, both views assume that the bombings of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki were so powerful that it essentially forced the Japanese Empire into unconditional

surrender, and, more importantly, fail to question the true effectiveness of the bombs. Although the

conventional belief is that the use of atomic bombs closed the Pacific Theatre of World War II, this notion

neglects multiple factors that severely undermine the legitimacy of the traditional interpretation.

The classical rendition of the Second World War in the Pacific states that the Japanese Empire

began the conflict with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States ended it by dropping two

atomic bombs. When teaching the history of these atomic weapons, the 6th of August—the day

Hiroshima was bombed—is viewed as the “climax” of the atomic narrative. Yet, it is impossible to

objectively examine the Japanese Empire’s decision to surrender within this context, as doing so creates

the assumption that the bomb was vital. From the Empire’s standpoint, their turning point was in the early

morning of August 9th, when Japanese officials met to discuss terms of surrender (Wilson). Before this

day, unconditional surrender—what President Franklin Roosevelt and other Allies demanded—was

considered absolutely blasphemous. The Allies had already begun war crime trials against Nazi Germany;

what would happen if the Allies put their emperor, a God-like figure in Imperial Japan, on trial? What

would happen if the Allies decided to get rid of, or possibly even hang, their God? With these questions in

mind, how could the Japanese Empire weigh the possibility of unconditional surrender? What
catastrophic event pushed them over the edge? According to the simple timeline, it was the bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki; however, the meeting took place over three days after the first attack. What type

of disaster warrants a three day waiting period? In addition, the meeting came before the atomic bomb

was dropped on Nagasaki, meaning that some other apocalyptic event occurred that caused this frenzied

panic.

Furthermore, this timeline implies that the atomic bombs were so powerful and unheard of to the

Japanese people that it virtually beat the Empire into submission. The photos of the survivors, scars and

all, instinctively lead many to believe that the devastation was off the charts. However, this type of

carnage matched what the Japanese had experienced a few months earlier during the summer of 1945

when the United States Army Air Force carried out one of the deadliest bombing campaigns in history. In

total, nearly two million people had their homes destroyed, almost a million wounded, and about 300,00

killed (Long). The most destructive attack in this campaign was carried out in March, on Japan’s capital,

Tokyo, with over 100,000 people were killed (Kuznick and Stone 157). In comparison, the bombing of

Hiroshima led to an estimated 140,000 deaths at the end of 1945, while the bombing of Nagasaki led to

around 74,000 deaths (“Hiroshima and Nagasaki”). In addition, there was no full-fledged meeting by

Japanese officials over this devastating incident (Cook). Two days after the Tokyo firebombing, former

Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro argued that the Japanese people would, “Gradually get used to being

bombed daily. In time their unity and resolve would grow stronger” (Wilson). This was the consensus

within the higher ranking Japanese officials, causing one to wonder: if the bombing of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki was no worse than the firebombings, and if Japanese officials blatantly decided that it was not a

pressing issue, how can it be possible that the atomic bombs were the reason World War II ended?

The one aspect the conventional timeline fails to address is the declaration of war by the Soviet

Union against Japan. Until August of 1945, the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire were not enemies,

nor allies. The two had signed a neutrality pact in the spring of 1941, although it would expire in 1946.

Some Japanese officials, including Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori, were optimistic—they believed that

the Soviet Union may mediate a sort of “plea bargain” between the Allies and the Japanese Empire
(Wilson). This diplomatic game of risk was quite reasonable, as the Soviet Union would most likely favor

a deal that did not overcompensate the United States. With the war drawing to a final standoff in the

summer of 1945, Japanese officials knew that there were practically two options: either negotiate a deal

with the Soviets, or launch a full-scale defense of their homeland. However, once Stalin and the Soviet

Union declared war on the Japanese Empire on the 8th of August, 1945, both courses of action were off

the table (Cook). This was the true turning point, or “apocalyptic event”, that pushed the Japanese Empire

into submission. While the atomic bombings took away neither option, the threat of Soviet invasion of

mainland Japan killed both in a matter of hours.

Evidently, the traditional depiction fails to mention key pieces of evidence that would present a

far greater argument for the true reason of the ending of the Second World War. Both the timeline of the

conventional narrative and the devastation created by the atomic weapons are highly misleading, and

when coupled with the omission of the introduction of the Soviet Union into the Pacific Theatre, this

narrative becomes more and more erroneous. However, even more disturbingly, these two events are at

the heart of the theory of nuclear deterrence. Because the end of World War II was due to the entry of the

Soviet Union, and not the atomic bombs, the untouchable aura that surrounds countries armed with

nuclear weapons is based on a misleading narrative. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a

paradoxical accomplishment. We credit them with ending the war, but is that credit valid? After reviewing

certain factors excluded from the orthodox interpretation, the answer is clearly no.

Works Cited

Cook, Gareth. "Why Did Japan Surrender?" Boston.com, Boston Globe Media

Partners, 7 Aug. 2011, archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/

08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=full.

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings." International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear

Weapons, www.icanw.org/the-facts/catastrophic-harm/

hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombings/.
Kuznick, Peter, and Oliver Stone. "The Bomb: The Tragedy of a Small Man." The

Untold History of the United States, New York, Gallery Books, 2012, pp.

131-80.

Long, Tony. "March 9, 1945: Burning the Heart out of the Enemy." Wired, 9 Mar.

2011, www.wired.com/2011/03/0309incendiary-bombs-kill-100000-tokyo/.

Wilson, Ward. "The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did." Foreign Policy, 30 May

2013, foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/.