![]() ![]() Byrnes argued on August 29, 1945, and had reached out to the Soviets to see if they would mediate in possible peace negotiations. Japanese leaders knew they were beaten even before Hiroshima, as Secretary of State James F. Various military and civilian officials have said publicly that the bombings weren’t a military necessity. “I was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties, to American forces alone.” The Other Reason? Get the Soviet Union’s Attentionĭespite the arguments of Stimson and others, historians have long debated whether the United States was justified in using the atomic bomb in Japan at all-let alone twice. “We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this plan to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the latter part of 1946, at the earliest,” Stimson wrote. was planning to ramp up its sea and air blockade of Japan, increase strategic air bombings and launch an invasion of the Japanese home island that November. ![]() In early 1947, when urged to respond to growing criticism over the use of the atomic bomb, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in Harper’s Magazine that by July 1945 there had been no sign of “any weakening in the Japanese determination to fight rather than accept unconditional surrender.” Meanwhile, the U.S. invasion of Japan and saving hundreds of thousands of American lives. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender, bringing World War II to a close.Īccording to Truman and others in his administration, the use of the atomic bomb was intended to cut the war in the Pacific short, avoiding a U.S. “This second demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb apparently threw Tokyo into a panic, for the next morning brought the first indication that the Japanese Empire was ready to surrender,” Truman later wrote in his memoirs. Still, the effect was devastating: close to 40,000 people were killed instantly, and a third of the city was destroyed. “Fat Man,” which detonated at 11:02 local time at an altitude of 1,650 feet, killed about half as many people in Nagasaki as the uranium-based “Little Boy” had in Hiroshima three days earlier-despite a force estimated at 21 kilotons, or 40 percent greater. Finding Kokura obscured by cloud cover, the Bockscar’s crew decided to head to their secondary target, Nagasaki. Early on the morning of August 9, 1945, the B-29 known as Bockscar took off from Tinian Island in the western Pacific Ocean, carrying the nearly 10,000-pound plutonium-based bomb known as “Fat Man” toward Kokura, home to a large Japanese arsenal. ![]()
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