Was Hiroshima Necessary?

Did the U.S. have to drop the atom bombs on Japan in 1945?

The raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are justified by ex-President Harry Truman on the ground that "it was my responsibility to force the Japanese warlords to come to terms as quickly as possible with the minimum loss of lives." Most U.S. military men, bent on unconditional surrender, backed him up. Last week the old question got a new airing in the wake of a report by Cowles newspaper Correspondents Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey, who were permitted to read still-secret State Department records of the Potsdam Conference while preparing a book about the Abomb. Their key points:

1) the Japanese wanted to come to terms at least one month before the war's end,

2) Truman was well aware of Japanese peace overtures, and 3) he rebuffed them.

Advice for Stalin. By early July 1945, having broken the Japanese "purple"' code, the U.S. knew of Japanese peace feelers to Switzerland, Sweden and Russia. At mid-month, when the Allied Big Three assembled in Berlin's satellite city of Potsdam, Stalin solicited Truman's advice about how to answer a peace-seeking note from Tokyo. Their conversation was recorded by U.S. Translator Charles Bohlen (now Special Assistant to Secretary of State Christian Herter), who took down sketchy notes, expanded upon them just last spring. "Stalin inquired of the President whether it was worthwhile to answer this communication," wrote Bohlen. "The President replied that he had no respect for the good faith of the Japanese. Stalin pointed out that the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan, and that it might be desirable to lull the Japanese to sleep, and possibly a general and unspecific note might be returned . . . The President said he thought that course of action would be satisfactory."

Ten days later, Stalin told Truman that he had received still another Japanese request that the Soviets serve as peacemakers, intended to reject it. Truman thanked him for the information. In rapid-fire order, the U.S. bombed Hiroshima, Russia declared war and set the stage for its seizure of Manchuria, the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, Japan surrendered. The irony is that the Japanese did not surrender unconditionally. They wangled the only real concession that they had been holding out for: a government nominally headed by the Emperor.

Something for Nothing. Though every new scrap of evidence indicts Stalin as the villain of Potsdam, a share of blame seems to fall on a U.S. that, bent on victory, was too single-minded to set realistic conditions for Japan's surrender. In hindsight, acceptance of such conditions might have ended the war, buttressed Asia against the newly strengthened Communists and relieved the U.S. of the onus of having dropped the first atomic bombs--which the Communists have used as a powerful anti-U.S. propaganda point.

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