August 6, 1945 When the U.S. Ruling Class Began Using Atomic Bombs Against Civilians

and it was NOT to save GI lives.

August 6 1945 was when the United States government dropped the first of the only two atom bombs ever dropped on civilians (so far). Below is an extract (pg. 155-7, 179-80) from my online book about World War II where I discuss the reason why these atom bombs were dropped on Japanese civilians.

It was NOT to save American GI lives.

On March 9, 1945 172 American B-29 bombers dropped 1,165 tons of incendiary bombs on densely populated Tokyo for the purpose of creating a firestorm that would kill tens of thousands of civilians. After the bombing raid, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that more than 87,000 Japanese died, more than 40,000 were injured, and more than one million were made homeless.1 Similar firestorm bombing raids were subsequently carried out against the cities of Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, and Yokohama. American leaders viewed the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as just a more efficient way to do what they were already doing with conventional bombs—kill as many civilians as possible. As President Truman wrote in his “Potsdam diary” after ordering the use of atomic bombs, the Japanese were “savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic" and “when you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast."2 About 140,000 people died quickly in Hiroshima and another 60,000 from radiation poisoning in the next five years.3 In Nagasaki 70,000 people died either immediately or from burns and injuries the first year, and radiation poisoning eventually brought “the death toll to 140,000.”4

Did Dropping The Atom Bomb On Japan Save American Lives?

U.S. leaders told Americans that the massive killing ofJapanese civilians was necessary to force them to surrender and thus avoid tremendous American casualties in a land invasion. This was a lie. Major General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Twenty-First Bomber Command responsible for destroying Japan’s military targets, gave an interview after the war explaining why he knew, in the spring of 1945, that the war would end before the scheduled November 1945 landing could begin:

General Arnold made a visit to our headquarters in the late spring of 1945 and he asked that question: When is the war going to end?...We went back to some of the charts we had been showing him showing the rate of activity, the targets we were hitting, and it was completely evident that we were running out of targets along in September and by October there wouldn’t really be much to work on, except probably railroads or something ofthat sort. So we felt that if there were no targets left inJapan, certainly there probably wouldn’t be much war left.5

General Henry (“Hap”) Arnold, Commander ofthe Army Air Forces, wrote of this event in his diary, in June 1945: LeMay's staff showed how Japan’s industrial facilities would be completely destroyed by October 1". 30 large and small cities, all to go, then Japan will have none ofthe things needed to supply an Army, Navy or Air Force. She cannot continue her fighting after her reserve supplies are gone. October 1“—we will see.6

General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the South West Pacific Area (including Japan) during the war, stated in a press conference in 1963: “We did not need the atomic bomb againstJapan.”7 MacArthur later wrote that by June 1945: My staffwas unanimous in believing Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender. I even directed that plans be drawn ‘for a peaceful occupation ofJapan’ without further military operations.8 This opinion was not merely held by Army/Air Forces commanders.

Admiral William Leahy in 1950 made the following statement: It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons....My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians ofthe Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.9

In 1963, Dwight Eisenhower wrote about the moment when Secretary of War Stimson informed him the atomic bomb would be used: During his recitation of the relevant facts I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief thatJapan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’10

Some have argued that top American leaders ignored military leaders and used the atomic bombs in order to obtain a Japanese surrender before the Soviet Union had time to enter the war againstJapan and win occupation rights after the war. But if a quick surrender were the goal, the U.S. would have dropped the unconditional surrender policy and made it clear to the Japanese rulers that the Emperor would be allowed to remain on the throne, since everyone knew this was the only thing left that prevented the Japanese rulers from surrendering.

In fact, the U.S. insisted on unconditional surrender and thereby delayed the eventual surrender which, in the end, did keep the Emperor on the throne.11 To understand why the civilian leaders of the U.S., President Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes in particular (who would later run for governor of South Carolina on a “segregationist, anti-civil rights platform"12), would use atomic bombs when their military leaders felt it was not militarily necessary, we need to look at things from a working class point of view, and start by asking a question that is seldom asked. Were the civilians targeted by these bombs (both the atom bombs and the earlier incendiary bombs) Fascists or anti-Fascists? And why didn’t American rulers seem to care?

Hardly "One Hundred Million Hearts BeatingAs One"

The Fascist Japanese government and military leaders tried to instill in ordinary Japanese people a willingness to die for the Emperor and sacrifice themselves in battle for the glory ofJapan. They saturated the newspapers and other media with evocations ofthe ideals ofloyalty and self-sacrifice to the “Yamato" race, ideals that came from an ancient but tiny Samurai warrior elite who themselves did not often honor these ideals in practice.13 The propaganda aboutJapan being “One hundred million hearts beating as one” was meant not only to stifle dissent in Japan but also to inspire fear in Allied armies. Japanese soldiers were ordered to sacrifice themselves and die with honor or else be branded a coward and a traitor. Some soldiers, especially those from the small and elite Samurai warrior caste, fought and died with fanatical loyalty to the Emperor. But most soldiers obeyed because of fear and coercion. John Dower, in Embracing Defeat, recounts how in May 1946 a veteran wrote a letter to Asahi, a leading newspaper in Japan, recalling the “ ‘hell of starvation … [to continue reading this section go to the online book pg. 157: PDF file here.]

…

ALLIES BOMBED CIVILIANS TO DESTROY INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY

The question “Why did the Allies deliberately bomb ‘enemy’ civilians?"—people who, as we have seen, were opposed to the Fascists for the same kind of reasons working people everywhere else opposed them—is a central question because it goes to the heart of what the war was really all about. The war, as waged by both the Fascists and the Allied governments, was a colossal attack on working people in every country that was affected. Allied leaders bombed civilians who hated Fascism for reasons that had nothing to do with defeating Fascism. For Allied leaders, as well as for the Fascists, ordinary working people were the enemy. International working class solidarity was the enemy. Workers going on strike and not obeying their masters at home were the enemy. Bombing “enemy” civilians, because it was so extremely cruel and massive, was the most powerful effort that Allied elites could conceive to turn Allied-nation workers utterly and viciously against their brothers and sisters in other nations, and thereby consolidate the loyalty of Allied-nation workers to Allied-nation elites.

Convincing working people at home that they needed to commit mass murder against German and Japanese working people was the chief goal ofAllied bombing. The goal was to destroy, in the minds ofworking people everywhere, the very notion that working people anywhere could be anything other than “patriotic" and loyal to their own ruling elites, no matter how barbaric “their own" elites were to foreign peoples. Only by resorting to years racist propaganda and the big lie that conventional and atomic bombing of German and Japanese civilians saved American and British lives, could Allied leaders have persuaded many (not all!) American and British people to rejoice at the mass murder of “enemy” civilians.

Terrorizing Japanese and German working people was another goal of the bombing, as well as to make of them an example of what would happen to workers anywhere in the world who might challenge American or British power, or even be so unfortunate as to merely live in a country whose government did so. From the point of view of these goals, bombing civilians was perfectly rational. The fact that “enemy" civilians were opposed to Fascism was, from the point of view of Allied leaders, not at all an argument against bombing them. In fact, if the German and Japanese workers had risen up to overthrow the Fascists with democratic revolutions, the Allied governments would have had even greater reason to attack them, just as they did when workers rose up in countries like Greece.