Japan's View of the Dropping of Atomic Bombs

I’d only heard the same old reasons as to why the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were tired with the never ending war. Japan showed no signs of surrendering even after the war had ended in Europe. They dreaded the prospect of the death count should a land invasion of Japan be needed. Revenge for Pearl Harbour. Racism – it was OK to “test” on yellow Japan but not white Nazi Germany…

 

Until I read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia, I’d never heard how the Japanese felt about the matter. Remember, before the atomic bombings, the US had deliberately created bombs with material (napalm) that would start off fires in wooden-housing Japan. What that meant is that the scale of deliberate widespread destruction went far beyond what say the carpet bombing of German cities had done – in Japan, they had burnt cities and then dropped the atomic bombs. You’d think the Japanese, even a few decades would be angry, right?

 

And yet, many Japanese actually felt it worked out well! What?!

 

You might think that the Japanese feel that way because, after the surrender, the Americans brought in food preventing mass starvations that was almost inevitable. Plus, didn’t the Americans help rebuild Japan and set in course for its spectacular economic growth?

 

True, but there is another reason as well – a counter-factual one. That’s a what-if analysis of the alternative world, one where the US hadn’t dropped atomic bombs. It goes something like this.

 

With Japan not surrendering, a land invasion would have happened. The death toll on both sides would have very high. The war would have been prolonged, even though the final outcome was known to both sides. Totally unnecessary. But far more problematically, the Japanese realized (with hindsight, not at the time the atomic bombs were dropped) that a prolonged war would have drawn the Soviets into the equation. Which almost certainly meant that Japan would have been divided – like Korea and Germany. And the part of Japan that went communist would have had a terrible fate for decades to come. Followed by the pain and disruption and uncertainty of the unification, if one ever happened.

 

Interesting points there. I hadn’t thought of it that way…

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