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ABSTRACT
The decision by the US government to drop the atomic bombs on Japan is one of the most heavily debated questions in history. This article examines one element of that debate, in many ways the most surprising. That was the different views of the top of the military hierarchy in the USA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The JCS was on the whole more sceptical about using atomic weaponry than the USA’s civilian leadership, for ethical and strategic reasons. As such they were willing to consider very different ways of ending the war.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Much of the vast literature which delves into the Truman administration’s decision to use the atom bomb, falls into three large groupings. The traditionalists/orthodox historians argue that the atom bomb was needed to force Japanese surrender, prevent a bloody invasion of Japan, and save many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of US and Japanese lives. Some of the best examples include: Wilson Miscamble, The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs and the Defeat of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press 2011); D. M. Giangreco, Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945–1947 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 2009); Robert James Maddox, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision (Columbia: Univ Missouri Press 2004); Richard B. Frank, Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Penguin 2001). Opposed to this group are the revisionists. They argue that the bomb did not need to be dropped as Japan was already close to surrender and that any US invasion of japan was not necessary or if it had to go ahead that it would have resulted in far fewer casualties than the traditionalists argue, and that the bomb was either mostly or partially aimed at intimidating the USSR. Some of the best examples include: Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (New Haven: Yale Univ Press 2008); Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (eds.), Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek: The Pamphleteers Press 1998); Gar Alperovitz et al., The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred Knopf 1995); Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, The Use of the Atomic Bomb and American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Vintage 1965). There is a middle ground that argues that the bomb was really dropped to try and force the Japanese to surrender, not to intimidate the Soviets, but that the Japanese probably would have surrendered relatively quickly anyway, certainly not long after the Red Army attacked. For some of these analyses, see J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill: UNC Press 1997); Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: US Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press 1996). Walker has also published a very useful historiographical article on the different schools of thoughts: J. Samuel Walker, ‘Recent Literature on Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision’, in Frank Costigliola and Michael J, Hogan (eds.), America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press 2014). Walker does an excellent job summarising the different arguments on the bomb and shows the strength of a middle ground position between the more hard line traditionalists and revisionists. For an overview of some of the ethical views of the dropping of the bomb, see Francis X. Winters, Remembering Hiroshima: Was it Just (Farnham: Ashgate 2009).
2 One of the best books about the Joint Chiefs is: Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and US Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: UNC Press 2000). Stoler spends only a little time discussing the different joint chiefs and the decision to use the atomic bomb (256–7).
3 Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Mitchell, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1953), 411–12.
4 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs: Volume One, Year of Decisions (Garden City: Doubleday 1955), 418.
5 Truman actually invited Stimson to attend the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, but by the time the meetings started he had decided he could do without the Secretary of War’s advice and kept Stimson off the official American negotiating team.
6 Sean L. Malloy, Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan (Ithaca: Cornell Univ Press 2018), 115–16. Malloy described Stimson’s conflicts over the bomb in detail, and argues that ultimately he accepted that it could be used on large Japanese city (as long as it was not Kyoto) partly because the shock value could lead to a Japanese surrender. According to one of Stimson’s biographers, the Secretary of War always assumed the bomb would be dropped, so never really contemplated holding back. Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1960), 629.
7 ‘Notes of the Meeting of the Interim Committee, 31 May 1945’, pp 13–14. Accessed online through the Truman Library: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentid=39&pagenumber=14.
8 ‘Notes of the Meeting of the Interim Committee, 1 June 1945’, pp. 8–9. Accessed online through the Truman Library: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentid=40&pagenumber=8.
9 Roosevelt said very little about the bomb the closer it came to being a reality. After his meetings with Churchill in October 1944, he was reluctant to discuss its use. One of the few things he said about it was that it might be used against Japan, but only in a demonstration over an uninhabited area. See Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb (Boston: Little Brown 1995), 20–1; Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 662.
10 This was in a series of pages of notes that Truman kept during Potsdam. The entry about not attacking women and children was dated 25 July 1945. The document can be accessed at: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/63.pdf#zoom=100.
11 Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War 1945–1953 (Palo Alto: Stanford Univ Press 2002), 92.
12 In: Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1995), there are large sections on all the different military personalities that expressed some opposition to the use of the atomic bomb. It is useful, but at times lacks nuance as it ascribes a rather one dimensional nature to their thinking. See pages 329, 334–5, 348 for some mentions of King and Arnold. From these, one would assume that they were more clearly opposed to the use of atomic weapons than they probably were.
13 Eisenhower, Nimitz and Halsey all spoke negatively about the use of the atom bomb, in an ethical sense. They not only believed that the weapon was unnecessary to end the war, they also believed that it was morally wrong for the USA to have used the weapon in the first place.
14 Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1980), 496.
15 For instance, between 1 March 1945 and the attack on Hiroshima, which would have been the period if any during which the atomic bomb would have been mentioned, there is no minuted discussion of it in any of the JCS minutes. During that period the JCS met on: 1 March, 13 March, 27 March, 24 April, 22 May, 12 June, 18 June, 26 June, 16–21 July (as part of Potsdam Conference), 23 July.
16 Buell, Master of Sea Power, 497.
17 Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgement: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford Univ Press 1985), 166; Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 329.
18 Ernest King Mss, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC, Box 35 has over 100 pages of different notes that King put together after the war. There does not seem to be a mention of the atom bomb anywhere in them.
19 King and Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, A Naval Record (London 1953), 412.
20 The weakest argument made by the revisionists against the atomic bomb was that the casualties that would have been incurred during any such operation would have been on the lighter side: (see Barton Berstein, ‘A Postwar Myth: 500,000 US Lives Saved’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, (June/July 1986), 38–40; John R. Skates, The Invasion of Japan, Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia: Univ South Carolina Press 1994), 76–80). It was also an unnecessary diversion from the most important ethical argument against dropping the bomb, not that it precluded any invasion, but that no invasion was necessary because of US air and sea control around Japan.
21 The minutes of this meeting are discussed in every serious work on the debate over invading Japan or using the atom bomb. For an online copy, see ‘Minutes of Meeting held at the White House, 18 June, 1945’, Accessed online through the Truman Library. https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentid=21&pagenumber=1.
22 Ibid, 4.
23 John W Huston (ed.), American Airpower Comes of Age: General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold’s World War II Diaries, Vol 1 (Maxwell: Air Univ Press 2002), 239–40.
24 Richard G. Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (Washington: Centre for Air Power History 1993). 496.
25 Phillips Payson O’Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press 2015). Chapter 4 has a discussion of the different members of the JCS and their interactions.
26 Henry A. Arnold Mss, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Reel 3, Diary entry, 16 June 1945.
27 Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale Univ Press 1987), 266–83.
28 There is a meditation on Arnold’s reasons for missing the 18 June meeting in the edited version of his diary. See Huston (ed.), American Airpower Comes of Age, Vol 2, 318–19.
29 Henry A. Arnold Mss, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Reel 3, Diary entry 23 July 1945.
30 Henry A. Arnold Mss, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Reel 3, Diary entry 23 July 1945.
31 John Stone to Arnold, 24 July 1945, Accessed online through the Truman Library: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentid=31&pagenumber=1.
32 Henry A. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Bros 1949), 589. See also: Thomas M. Coffey, HAP: The Story of the US Air Force and the Man Who Built It, General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold (New York: The Viking Press 1982), 382.
33 Schaffer, Wings of Judgement, 147.
34 Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall: Soldier and Statesman (New York: Norton 1990), 548.
35 Dik Alan Daso, Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Air Power (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press 2000), 209.
36 Coffey, HAP: The Story of the US Air Force, 371.
37 Arnold, Global Mission, 233. Arnold discusses the atomic bomb on six pages in this memoir. The one mention of any opposition to the explosion of the bomb occurred when one of the scientists came to Arnold trying to have the test explosion stopped for the reason that they could not be sure how powerful the bomb would be (255).
38 Truman, Memoirs: Volume One, 416.
39 Frank Settle, General George C. Marshall and the Atomic Bomb (Santa Barbara: Praeger 2016), 92. Settle describes Marshall as ‘evasive’ during the meeting. Marshall claimed that the best comparison for Olympic was General MacArthur’s campaign on Leyte, where US–Japanese casualties were running at a rate of 1–5. There were far bloodier comparisons, including Okinawa and Iwo Jima, which were much closer to 1–2 or even 1–1.25. ‘Minutes of Meeting held at the White House, 18 June 1945’, Accessed online through the Truman Library. https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentid=21&pagenumber=1.
40 ‘Notes of the Meeting of the Interim Committee, 31 May 1945’, p. 2.
41 ‘Memorandum of Conversation’, 29 May 1945, McCloy Notes. Accessible through Marshall Foundation Online: http://marshallfoundation.org/library/digital-archive/memorandum-of-conversation/.
42 Yuki Tanaka, ‘Poison Gas: The Story Japan would Like to Forget’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 44/8 (1988), 10–19.
43 George Marshall Mss, George Marshall Foundation Library, Lexington VA, Marshall to King, 15 June 1945.
44 Settle, George C. Marshall, 78–80.
45 ‘Notes of the Meeting of the Interim Committee, 31 May 1945’, p. 11.
46 ‘Notes of the Meeting of the Interim Committee, 1 June 1945’. Marshall is listed as having attended the meeting, but there is no record of him speaking during its proceedings.
47 Schaffer, Wings of Judgement, 166.
48 Truman, Memoirs: Volume One, 417.
49 Miscamble, The Most Controversial Decision, 82, 116.
50 ‘Interview with General Marshall’, Tape 14, 11 February 1957, p. 27; Accessed through Marshall Foundation online. http://marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2014/05/Marshall_Interview_Tape14.pdf.
51 As a five-star member of the navy Leahy was a Fleet Admiral, a rank he was given on 15 December 1944. Marshall was made the army equivalent, General of the Army, the following day.
52 William Rigdon, White House Sailor (Garden City: Doubleday 1962), 6–9; see also: George Elsey, An Unplanned Life (Columbia: Univ Missouri Press 2016), 18–21.
53 ‘Interview with General Marshall’, Tape 14, 11 February 1957, pp. 26–27; Accessed through Marshall Foundation online. http://marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2014/05/Marshall_Interview_Tape14.pdf.
54 William D. Leahy Mss, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Leahy Diary, 17–19 Sept, 1944. See also, William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries of the Time (New York: McGraw-Hill 1950), 264–6.
55 Marshall admitted in an interview after the war that he expected on a number of occasions that he would be invited to Hyde Park or FDR’s winter retreat in Warm Springs Georgia, but that no invitation was ever issued. ‘Interview with General Marshall’, 11 February 1957, p. 18. Accessible through Marshall Foundation online on: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2014/05/Marshall_Interview_Tape14.pdf.
56 This comes from the H. Freeman Matthews oral history interview on the Truman library website, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/matthewh.htm, p. 6. (interview given 6 June 1973).
57 H. Freeman Matthews Mss, Princeton University Archives, Princeton NJ, unpublished memoirs, p. 604.
58 Truman, Memoirs: Volume One, 10–11.
59 William D. Leahy Mss, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Leahy Diary, 20 May 1945, 4 June 1945.
60 Leahy Diary, Vol I, 33–4.
61 Leahy, I Was There, 395–6.
62 Bernard L Austin Oral History, p. 65, Naval History and Heritage Command Library, Washington, DC.
63 Henry A. Adams, Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1985), 299.
64 Leahy, I Was There, 441.
65 Arnold, Global Mission, 265.
66 Leahy, I Was There, 438.
67 William D. Leahy Mss, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC, Leahy Memorandum for JCS, May 1947.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Phillips Payson O’Brien
Phillips Payson O’Brien is the Chair of Strategic Studies in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Before joining St Andrews he worked at the University of Glasgow and Cambridge University, where he received his PhD.