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Besides material from the files of the Manhattan Project, this collection includes formerly Top Secret Ultra summaries and translations of Japanese diplomatic cable traffic intercepted under the Magic program. This memorandum from General Groves to General Marshall captured how far the Manhattan Project had come in less than two years since Bushs December 1942 report to President Roosevelt. For more on these developments, see Asada, "The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration," 486-488. Since the end of WWII, the popular view in the U.S. has been that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki precipitated Japan's surrender on August 15. In fact, after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the Japanese military's Information Division, in charge of media control, intended to announce that the bomb was an atomic one. The Hiroshima operation was originally slated to begin in early August depending on local conditions. This issue of the diplomatic summary also includes Togos account of his notification of the Soviet declaration of war, reports of Soviet military operations in the Far East, and intercepts of French diplomatic traffic. Frank Costigliola,France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War II(New York, Twayne, 1992), 38-39. On August 9, 1945, another bomber was in route to Japan, only this time they were heading for Nagasaki with "Fat Man," another atomic bomb. Historians and the public continue to debate if the bombings were justified, the causes of Japan's surrender, the casualties that would have resulted if the U.S. had invaded Japan, and more. It was a decision to loose the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings. However, the Department of the Interior opposed the disclosure of the nature of the weapon. Hoover proposed a compromise solution with Japan that would allow Tokyo to retain part of its empire in East Asia (including Korea and Japan) as a way to head off Soviet influence in the region. On the eve of the Potsdam Conference, a State Department draft of the proclamation to Japan contained language which modified unconditional surrender by promising to retain the emperor. The embassy teams included GRU members Mikhail Ivanov and German Sergeev in August, and TASS correspondent Anatoliy Varshavskiy, former acting military attach Mikhail Romanov, and Naval apparatus employee Sergey Kikenin in September. The 12 July 1945 Magic summary includes a report on a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow concerning the Emperors decision to seek Soviet help in ending the war. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, Still Pictures Branch, Subject Files, "Atomic Bomb"), Ground Zero at Hiroshima Today: This was the site of Shima Hospital; the atomic explosion occurred 1,870 feet above it (Photo courtesy of Lynn Eden,www.wholeworldonfire.com), The mushroom cloud over Nagasaki shortly after the bombing on August 9. In the course of the conversation, Harriman received a message from Washington that included the proposed U.S. reply and a request for Soviet support of the reply. Public Reaction to the Atomic Bomb and World Affairs, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, April 1947. Seventy-five years later, and with the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever, it is essential to keep exploring the meaning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how these tragedies still shape current global politics. To provide a fuller picture of the transition from U.S.-Japanese antagonism to reconciliation, the editor has done what could be done within time and resource constraints to present information on the activities and points of view of Japanese policymakers and diplomats. Also documented are U.S. decisions to target Japanese cities, pre-Hiroshima petitions by scientists questioning the military use of the A-bomb, proposals for demonstrating the effects of the bomb, debates over whether to modify unconditional surrender terms, reports from the bombing missions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and belated top-level awareness of the radiation effects of atomic weapons. With respect to the latter, It is possible that the destructive effects on life caused by the intense radioactivity of the products of the explosion may be as important as those of the explosion itself. This insight was overlooked when top officials of the Manhattan Project considered the targeting of Japan during 1945. An intercepted message from Togo to Sato showed that Tokyo remained interested in securing Moscows good office but that it is difficult to decide on concrete peace conditions here at home all at once. [W]e are exerting ourselves to collect the views of all quarters on the matter of concrete terms. Barton Bernstein, Richard Frank, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, among others, have argued that the Magic intercepts from the end of July and early August show that the Japanese were far from ready to surrender. [76]. After considerable pressure from Harriman, the Soviets signed off on the reply but not before tensions surfaced over the control of Japan--whether Moscow would have a Supreme Commander there as well. [68], George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein), While Truman had rescinded the order to drop nuclear bombs, the war was not yet over and uncertainty about Japans next step motivated war planner General John E. Hull (assistant chief of staff for the War Departments Operations Division), and one of Groves associates, Colonel L. E. Seeman, to continue thinking about further nuclear use and its relationship to a possible invasion of Japan. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, and I weighed that decision most prayerfully. [29], According to accounts based on post-war recollections and interviews, during the meeting McCloy raised the possibility of winding up the war by guaranteeing the preservation of the emperor albeit as a constitutional monarch. Which of the following was least likely a reason for Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb? That possibility would be difficult if the United States made first military use of the weapon. If the Japanese decided to keep fighting, G-2 opined that Atomic bombs will not have a decisive effect in the next 30 days. Richard Frank has pointed out that this and other documents indicate that high level military figures remained unsure as to how close Japan really was to surrender. With more information on the Alamogordo test available, Groves provided Marshall with detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. Receptive to pressure from Stimson, Truman recorded his decision to take Japans old capital (Kyoto) off the atomic bomb target list. Despite the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet declaration of war, and growing worry about domestic instability, the Japanese cabinet (whose decisions required unanimity) could not form a consensus to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Historian believed that there are two different possibilities. Japan was already a day late in responding to the Byrnes Note and Hirohito agreed to move quickly. To get production going, Bush wanted to establish a carefully chosen engineering group to study plans for possible production. This was the basis of the Top Policy Group, or the S-1 Committee, which Bush and James B. Conant quickly established. The United Kingdom, an Integrating Europe, and the NPT Negotiations, The Jupiter Missiles and the Endgame of the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Matter of Great Secrecy, We Are the Ones Who Manage the Affairs of the People: The Kuomintang Party School and its Legacy on both sides of the Taiwan Strait after 1949, Additional Radio Liberty Documents Now Online, Vietnams Struggles against Chinese Spies, American Spies, and Enemy Ideological Attacks, Cooperation between the North Korean and Polish Security Apparatuses in the 1980s, Top Secret Vietnamese Ministry of Interior Transcript of Speech Given by Minister of Interior Tran Quoc Hoan to a National Conference on Investigating Political Targets, The Secret Handwritten Memos behind Israels Nuclear Project: What Do They Tell Us and How to Study Them, Mexican Leadership in Addressing Nuclear Risks, 1962-1968, 1988 Vietnamese Public Security Magazine Article Defends Vietnams New Renovation Policy on Immigration/Emigration Policy against Resistance from within Public Securitys Own Ranks, Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy, Environmental Change and Security Program, North Korea International Documentation Project, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, The Middle East and North Africa Workforce Development Initiative, Science and Technology Innovation Program, Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition. Thus, the extent to which the bombings contributed to the end of World War II or the beginning of the Cold War remain live issues. At 8:15 am Hiroshima time, Little Boy was dropped. The documents introduced here were published in Russian for the first time in 1990, and the English version was included in an issue of the Soviet journal International Affairs (1990, no. [23] It is possible that Truman was informed of such discussions and their conclusions, although he clung to a belief that the prospective targets were strictly military. [36]. For more on the Uranium Committee, the decision to establish the S-1 Committee, and the overall context, see James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age(Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995), 140-154. The explosion over Hiroshima wiped out 95 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people. Reminding Stimson about the objections of some Manhattan project scientists to military use of the bomb, Harrison summarized the basic arguments of the Franck report. The total area devastated by the atomic strike on Hiroshima is shown in the darkened area (within the circle) of the photo. In light of Japans efforts to seek Soviet mediation, Stalin wanted to enter the war quickly lest Tokyo reach a compromise peace with the Americans and the British at Moscows expense. [66]. [32], Record Group 353, Records of Interdepartmental and Intradepartmental Committees, Secretarys Staff Meetings Minutes, 1944-1947 (copy from microfilm). [Editors Note: Originally prepared in July 2005 this posting has been updated, with new documents, changes in organization, and other editorial changes. Seventy years ago this month, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. General Douglas MacArthur had been slated as commander for military operations against Japans mainland, this letter to Truman from Forrestal shows that the latter believed that the matter was not settled. Toward that end, in 2005, at the time of the 60th anniversary of the bombings, staff at the National Security Archive compiled and scanned a significant number of declassified U.S. government documents to make them more widely available. For example, Bernstein cites the entries for 20 and 24 July to argue that American leaders did not view Soviet entry as a substitute for the bomb but that the latter would be so powerful, and the Soviet presence in Manchuria so militarily significant, that there was no need for actual Soviet intervention in the war. For Brown's diary entry of 3 August 9 1945 historians have developed conflicting interpretations (See discussion of document 57). Barton J. Bernstein, Introduction to Helen S. Hawkins et al. (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-BT), A "Fat Man" test unit being raised from the pit into the bomb bay of a B-29 for bombing practice during the weeks before the attack on Nagasaki. That is, the United States could possibly be in danger if the Nazis acquired more knowledge about how to build a bomb. The United States decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the Soviet Union in the post- Second-War era rather than a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional surrender. A more recent collection of documents, along with a bibliography, narrative, and chronology, is Michael KortsThe Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Merkulov reported that the United States had scheduled the test of a nuclear device for that same day, although the actual test took place 6 days later. This document is General Curtis LeMays report on the firebombing of Tokyo--the most destructive air raid in history--which burned down over 16 square miles of the city, killed up to 100,000 civilians (the official figure was 83,793), injured more than 40,000, and made over 1 million homeless. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (civil war), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by Big Six. Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. For some historians, the urban fire-bombing strategy facilitated atomic targeting by creating a new moral context, in which earlier proscriptions against intentional targeting of civilians had eroded. Thankfully, nuclear weapons have not been exploded in war since 1945, perhaps owing to the taboo against their use shaped by the dropping of the bombs on Japan. He believed that casualties would not be more than those produced by the battle for Luzon, some 31,000. [1], Ever since the atomic bombs were exploded over Japanese cities, historians, social scientists, journalists, World War II veterans, and ordinary citizens have engaged in intense controversy about the events of August 1945. Before he received Togos message, Sato had already met with Molotov on another matter. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States officially into World War II. Later that year, the Uranium Committee completed its report and OSRD Chairman Vannevar Bush reported the findings to President Roosevelt: As Bush emphasized, the U.S. findings were more conservative than those in the British MAUD report: the bomb would be somewhat less effective, would take longer to produce, and at a higher cost. [11]. Judgment at the Smithsonian(New York: Matthews and Company, 1995), pp. After a White House meeting on 14 August, British Minister John Balfour reported that Truman had remarked sadly that he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb to be dropped on Tokyo. This was likely emotional thinking spurred by anxiety and uncertainty. These cables are the earliest reports of the mission; the bombing of Nagasaki killed immediately at least 39,000 people, with more dying later. [56]. And the U.S. bombings hastened the Soviet Unions atomic bomb project and have fed a big-power nuclear arms race to this day. The first Japanese surrender offer was intercepted shortly before Tokyo broadcast it. How is the current debate about immigration in the United States rooted in our nations past? Harriman Papers, Library of Congress, box 211, Robert Pickens Meiklejohn World War II Diary At London and Moscow March 10, 1941-February 14, 1946, Volume II (Privately printed, 1980 [Printed from hand-written originals]) (Reproduced with permission), Robert P. Meiklejohn, who worked as Ambassador W. A. Harrimans administrative assistant at the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and London during and after World War II, kept a detailed diary of his experiences and observations. RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein). [Photograph: The atomic cloud rising over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. Officially named AN602 hydrogen bomb, it was originally intended to have a . [5] While the editor has a point of view on the issues, to the greatest extent possible he has tried to not let that influence document selection, e.g., by selectively withholding or including documents that may buttress one point of view or the other. By James Rothwell 5 October 2022 7:25am. This document is a typed-up version of the hand-written original (which Browns family has provided to Clemson University). Nevertheless, Anami argued, We are still left with some power to fight. Suzuki, who was working quietly with the peace party, declared that the Allied terms were acceptable because they gave a dim hope in the dark of preserving the emperor. Historians Herbert Feis and Gar Alperovitz raised searching questions about the first use of nuclear weapons and their broader political and diplomatic implications. Stimson had in mind a carefully timed warning delivered before the invasion of Japan. Included are documents on the early stages of the U.S. atomic bomb project, Army Air Force GeneralCurtis LeMays reporton the firebombing of Tokyo (March 1945), Secretary of War HenryStimsons requestsfor modification of unconditional surrender terms,Soviet documentsrelating to the events, excerpts from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries mentioned above, and selections from the diaries of Walter J. The 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is an occasion for sober reflection. What Hirohito accepted, however, was a proposal by the extreme nationalist Kiichiro Hiranuma which drew upon prevailing understandings of the kokutai: the mythical notion that the emperor was a living god. As the scientists had learned, a gun-type weapon based on plutonium was impossible because that element had an unexpected property: spontaneous neutron emissions would cause the weapon to fizzle.[10] For both the gun-type and the implosion weapons, a production schedule had been established and both would be available during 1945. Sadao Asada, The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japans Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration,Pacific Historical Review67 (1998): 101-148; Bix, 523; Frank, 348; Hasegawa, 298. [28], In a report to Stimson, Oppenheimer and colleagues on the scientific advisory panel--Arthur Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Enrico Fermitacitly disagreed with the report of the Met Lab scientists. In any event, historians have used information from the diary to support various interpretations. In late February 1945, months before atomic bombs were ready for use, the high command selected Tinian, an island in the Northern Marianas Islands, for that base. See for example, Bernstein (1995), 140-141. How and when it should be used had been the subject of high-level debate for months. Japans cultural capital, Kyoto, would not stay on the list. Another intercept of a cable from Togo to Sato shows that the Foreign Minister rejected unconditional surrender and that the Emperor was not asking the Russians mediation in anything like unconditional surrender. Incidentally, this `Magic Diplomatic Summary indicates the broad scope and capabilities of the program; for example, it includes translations of intercepted French messages (see pages 8-9). I. [38], Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, Magic Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18. Also included, to give a wider perspective, were translations of Japanese documents not widely available before. For an important study of how contemporary officials and scientists looked at the atomic bomb prior to first use in Japan, see Michael D. Gordin,Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Bernstein, however, notes that Bard later denied that he had a meeting with Truman and that White House appointment logs support that claim. Confronting the Problem of Radiation Poisoning, XII. [5]. Brewster suggested that Japan could be used as a target for a demonstration of the bomb, which he did not further define. In 1991 articles, Barton Bernstein and Marc Gallicchio used this and other evidence to develop the argument that concepts of tactical nuclear weapons use first came to light at the close of World War II.[69]. National Archives Identifier 535795] atomic bomb dropped to intimidate russia. Some years after Trumans death, a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. Brown, special assistant to Secretary of State James Byrnes. Read more, The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project is a global network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of international nuclear history through archival documents, oral history interviews, and other empirical sources. Those and other questions will be subjects of discussion well into the indefinite future. After President Roosevelt died on April 12th, 1945, it became Harry Trumans job to decide how to end the war. It had nothing to do with Russia or Britain or Germany. Washington's biggest test blast was 1,000 times as large. Members of the Supreme War Councilthe Big Six[62]wanted the reply to Potsdam to include at least four conditions (e.g., no occupation, voluntary disarmament); they were willing to fight to the finish. 25,000 more were injured. For background on Magic and the Purple code, see John Prados,Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), 161-172 and David Kahn,The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing(New York: Scribner, 1996), 1-67. [56] Groves also provided the schedule for the delivery of the weapons: the components of the gun-type bomb to be used on Hiroshima had arrived on Tinian, while the parts of the second weapon to be dropped were leaving San Francisco. For a useful discussion of the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombings, see Alex Wellerstein, Tokyo vs. Hiroshima,Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog,22 September 2014. The combination of the first bomb and the Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Tokyos surrender. [40]. Moreover, to shed light on the considerations that induced Japans surrender, this briefing book includes new translations of Japanese primary sources on crucial events, including accounts of the conferences on August 9 and 14, where Emperor Hirohito made decisions to accept Allied terms of surrender. 5b, Despite the reports pouring in from Japan about radiation sickness among the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Groves and Dr. Charles Rea, a surgeon who was head of the base hospital at Oak Ridge (and had no specialized knowledge about the biological effects of radiation) dismissed the reports as propaganda.