A-BOMBS ALONE WEREN'T WHAT PERSUADED JAPAN TO SURRENDER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992                   TAG: 9202050397
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FRANK MUNLEY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
A-BOMBS ALONE WEREN'T WHAT PERSUADED JAPAN TO SURRENDER
APOLOGIES for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor are in order, as many Japanese officials have admitted. The sticking point has been President Bush's refusal to even consider apologizing for our nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Many have justified Bush's self-righteousness by parroting the conventional wisdom that the A-bombs were necessary to avoid a costly land invasion of Japan. President Truman, who bore responsibility for the decision, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill estimated the cost at 250,000 U.S. lives and up to a million Japanese casualties.
J. Ronald Willoughby put it in a commentary in this paper (Jan. 3): "We chose the course that promised - and delivered - a quick, decisive end to the war, a course that minimized casualties on both sides." Let's take a closer look at the historical events surrounding the bombings to see if such a benign view is justified.
Less than a year after the A-bombs were used, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey issued its official report on the Pacific war. The study portrayed Japan as a weakened nation on the verge of collapse, and concluded that "the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan, nor, by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war, did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender."
Rather, the atomic bombs, together with conventional fire-bombing, naval blockade and Soviet intervention, served as "lubrication" for a war-termination plan in operation months before the bombings. The survey concluded that "certainly prior to Dec. 31, 1945, and in all probability prior to Nov. 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered, even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Conclusion: the A-bombs were not absolutely necessary to end the war.
There is also good reason to doubt Truman and Churchill's casualty estimates. The official estimates made by Gen. Douglas MacArthur put the number at 31,000 to 51,000 during the first 30 days of an invasion (with about 20 to 25 percent dying), and about 20,000 fatalities in the worst case.
Given that the Japanese would have surrendered "in all probability" by Nov. 1, and remembering that the United States lost 300,000 soldiers in four years of battle against an initially vigorous Germany and Japan, Truman and Churchill's estimates of casualties are certainly gross exaggerations.
A close look at the surrender process and the fate of the Japanese emperor sheds further doubt on the need to drop the A-bombs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit on Aug. 6 and 9, and Japan offered to surrender on Aug. 10, leading many to conclude that the war abruptly ended under the impact of the A-bombs.
A strange conclusion, because the largest conventional air raid of the war, marshalling 1,014 aircraft, took place in the early morning hours of Aug. 15 (Japanese time).
In fact, the Japanese offer of Aug. 10 was conditioned on the emperor staying in place. The U.S. response was ambiguous, and the Japanese held fast until the massive Aug. 15 bombings evoked a final Japanese surrender.
In the end, the emperor's power was diminished, but he was still in place. So much for the U.S. demand of "unconditional surrender," a foolish position that shackled diplomacy and probably prolonged the war.
It is common knowledge that the emperor had great religious significance, but it is less widely recognized that he was essential to the United States' own postwar plans. Without the emperor to issue orders to lay down arms and to serve as a figure of stability, U.S. occupation and control of Japan would have been much more difficult than the piece of cake it turned out to be.
If compromise on the emperor was necessary for our own good after the bombings, isn't it reasonable to suspect that compromise prior to the atomic bombings could have brought the war to an even earlier end? And couldn't this have saved the lives of U.S. soldiers who died in the days and weeks preceding the actual surrender?
President Truman's failure to resolve the emperor issue before the bombs were dropped also set the stage for the nuclear-arms race. Recent research shows that Truman was well aware of Japan's weakened condition and strongly believed that the Soviet invasion would by itself end the war, obviating the need to drop the A-bombs.
Soviet involvement was, of course, the least desirable way to end the war, particularly in view of their overbearing attitude toward Poland and other Eastern European countries. For this reason, Truman attempted to delay Soviet entry from the Aug. 8 date agreed to at Yalta to Aug. 15. The delay was designed to push the Soviets into a backup position should U.S. efforts fail to break the Japanese; it also gave the U.S. a chance to use its new weapon "in real time."
Needless to say, the Soviets, who had scores to settle from the disastrous 1905 war with Japan, didn't appreciate being relegated to a back-seat role simply to give the United States time to demonstrate its nuclear prowess. The maneuver only served to exacerbate the paranoid and totalitarian tendencies of Joseph Stalin and helped usher us directly into the ruinous Cold War arms race. An earlier compromise on the emperor issue might have alleviated nuclear suspicions between the superpowers, suspicions that put the entire world at risk for decades.

Frank Munley is associate professor of physics at Roanoke College.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB