atomic bomb dropped to intimidate russia

As for target cities, the committee agreed that the following should be exempt from Army Air Force bombing so they would be available for nuclear targeting: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura Arsenal. Historians have suggested a number of ways in which the atomic bomb might have alienated Stalin- 1. During a conversation with Joseph E. Davies, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Truman said that he wanted to delay talks with Stalin and Churchill until July when the first atomic device had been tested. [41]. For emphasis on the shock of the atomic bomb, see also Lawrence Freedman and Saki Dockrill, Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock, in Saki Dockrill, ed.,From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima : the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941-1945(New York, St. Martins Press, 1994), 191-214. Maddox, 83-84; Hasegawa, 126-128. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. However, many historians believe that the attack on Japan-occupied Manchuria by the previously neutral Soviet Union on August 8 had more impact on Japan's leaders. [54], This summary included several intercepted messages from Sato, who conveyed his despair and exasperation over what he saw as Tokyos inability to develop terms for ending the war: [I]f the Government and the Military dilly-dally in bringing this resolution to fruition, then all Japan will be reduced to ashes. Sato remained skeptical that the Soviets would have any interest in discussions with Tokyo: it is absolutely unthinkable that Russia would ignore the Three Power Proclamation and then engage in conversations with our special envoy., Documents 60A-D: These messages convey the process of creating and transmitting the execution order to bomb Hiroshima. In contrast to Alperovitzs argument that Forrestal tried to modify the terms of unconditional surrender to give the Japanese an out, Frank sees Forrestals account of the Sato-Togo exchange as additional evidence that senior U.S. officials understood that Tokyo was not on the cusp of surrender. [49], Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, box 19, 29 July 1945, Having been asked by Truman to join the delegation to the Potsdam conference, former-Ambassador Davies sat at the table with the Big Three throughout the discussions. [18]. Frightened by the rapid movement of Soviet forces into Manchuria and worried that the army might launch a coup, the peace party set in motion a plan to persuade Hirohito to meet with the cabinet and the Big Six to resolve the stalemate over the response to the Allies. The nuclear bomb had the prosaic official name of izdeliye 602 ("item 602"), but it's gone down in history with the nickname of Tsar Bomba the Russian way of calling it the emperor of nuclear bombs.. That name was no exaggeration. If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for unconditional surrender by explicitly or implicitly guaranteeing a constitutional monarchy would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did? If Russia used a nuclear weapon of any type, "I expect (the president) to say we're in a new situation, and the U.S. will directly enter the war against Russia to stop this government that has . Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 916-917 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima], In 1944 Navy minister Mitsumasa Yonai ordered rear admiral Sokichi Takagi to go on sick leave so that he could undertake a secret mission to find a way to end the war. The original 2005 posting included a wide range of material, including formerly top secret "Magic" summaries of intercepted Japanese communications and the first-ever full translations from the Japanese of accounts of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the Emperors decision to surrender. Photo restoration by TX Unlimited, San Francisco, A nuclear weapon of the "Little Boy" type, the uranium gun-type detonated over Hiroshima. Alperovitz, however, treats it as additional evidence that strongly suggests that Truman saw alternatives to using the bomb. Some of the key elements of Stimsons argument were his assumption that Japan is susceptible to reason and that Japanese might be even more inclined to surrender if we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty. The possibility of a Soviet attack would be part of the threat. As part of the threat message, Stimson alluded to the inevitability and completeness of the destruction which Japan could suffer, but he did not make it clear whether unconditional surrender terms should be clarified before using the atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 "superbomber" dropped a uranium bomb over Hiroshima in an attempt to force Japan's unconditional surrender. Sayuri Romei examines Soviet records produced in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the continuing importance of Hiroshima to Russian foreign policy. [39], The last item discusses Japanese contacts with representatives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland. [73] As it turned out, a few hours later, at 4:05 p.m., the White House received the Japanese surrender announcement. Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons-- to intimidate the Soviets--or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end? The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a total death toll of around 140,000. Dbq help!! By early August he decided that 9-10 August 1945 would be the best dates for striking Japanese forces in Manchuria. The atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Although they have been public for 30 years, new translations of these sources are now freely accessible on the Wilson Centers Digital Archive. objectives. Truman Plays Part of Himself in Skit at Gridiron Dinner, and List of Members and Guests at the Gridiron Show,The Washington Post, 16 December 1945. Open Document. At the time of the first report, various methods for producing a chain reaction were envisioned and money was being budgeted to try them out. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the people of Hiroshima. With Truman having ordered a halt to the atomic bombings [See document 78], Marshall wrote on Grove's memo that the bomb was not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President., Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 10-12, 1945, Japans prospective surrender was the subject of detailed discussion between Harriman, British Ambassador Kerr, and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov during the evening of August 10 (with a follow-up meeting occurring at 2 a.m.). The controversy, especially the arguments made by Alperovitz and others about atomic diplomacy quickly became caught up in heated debates over Cold War revisionism. The controversy simmered over the years with major contributions by Martin Sherwin and Barton J. Bernstein but it became explosive during the mid-1990s when curators at the National Air and Space Museum met the wrath of the Air Force Association over a proposed historical exhibit on the Enola Gay. Relations between the United States and Japan worsened when Japanese forces took aim at Indochina with the goal of capturing oil rich areas of the East Indies. The continued controversy has revolved around the following, among other, questions: This compilation will not attempt to answer these questions or use primary sources to stake out positions on any of them. Riabevs notes, it is possible that Berias copy of this letter ended up in Stalins papers. Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (Safe File), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1, Tacitly dissenting from the Targeting Committees recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall argued for initial nuclear use against a clear-cut military target such as a large naval installation. If that did not work, manufacturing areas could be targeted, but only after warning their inhabitants. [12]. Augusta, Truman learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and announced it twice, first to those in the wardroom (socializing/dining area for commissioned officers), and then to the sailors mess. Brown recounted Byrnes debriefing of the 10 August White House meeting on the Japanese peace offer, an account which differed somewhat from that in the Stimson diary. (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. The point was to keep the bombing mission crew safe; concern about radiation effects had no impact on targeting decisions. 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. Dropped the Atom Bomb One reason as to why the United States dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima was because it would have saved American lives and ended the war with Japan very quickly. Robert J. Maddox has cited this document to support his argument that top U.S. officials recognized that Japan was not close to surrender because Japan was trying to stave off defeat. In a close analysis of this document, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who is also skeptical of claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, argues that each of the three possibilities proposed by Weckerling contained an element of truth, but none was entirely correct. Barton J. Bernsteins numerous articles in scholarly publications (many of them are listed in Walkers assessment of the literature) constitute an invaluable guide to primary sources. One recommendation shared by many of the scientists, whether they supported the report or not, was that the United States inform Stalin of the bomb before it was used. Frank and Hasegawa divide over the impact of the Soviet declaration of war, with Frank declaring that the Soviet intervention was significant but not decisive and Hasegawa arguing that the two atomic bombs were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. In the belly of the bomber was Little Boy, an atomic bomb. Read more, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NWWashington, DC 20004-3027, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project. [66]. Russia hurried in and the war ended., Truman characterized the Potsdam Declaration as a fair warning, but it was an ultimatum. See also Malloy, A Very Pleasant Way to Die, 539-540. Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link. With more information on the Alamogordo test available, Groves provided Marshall with detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. 5. The traditional argument was that Stalin was angry because Truman did not tell him about the Atomic Bomb. [34], On the eve of the Potsdam conference, Leo Szilard circulated a petition as part of a final effort to discourage military use of the bomb. Tagaki was soon at the center of a cabal of Japanese defense officials, civil servants, and academics, which concluded that, in the end, the emperor would have to impose his decision on the military and the government. Takagi kept a detailed account of his activities, part of which was in diary form, the other part of which he kept on index cards. Counterfactual issues are also disputed, for example whether there were alternatives to the atomic bombings, or would the Japanese have surrendered had a demonstration of the bomb been used to produced shock and awe. For the distances, see Norris, 407. Atomic diplomacy refers to attempts to use the threat of nuclear warfare to achieve diplomatic goals. Collectively the decoded messages were known as Magic. How this came about is explained in an internal history of pre-war and World War II Army and Navy code-breaking activities prepared by William F. Friedman, a central figure in the development of U.S. government cryptology during the 20th century. If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? Frank, 273-274; Bernstein, The Alarming Japanese Buildup on Southern Kyushu, Growing U.S. 576 words. Some years after Trumans death, a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. Late in the evening of 9 August, the emperor and his advisers met in the bomb shelter of the Imperial Palace. In Japan and elsewhere around the world, each anniversary is observed with great solemnity. Fears and Counterfactual Analysis: Would the Planned November 1945 Invasion of Southern Kyushu Have Occurred?Pacific Historical Review68 (1999): 561-609. After the first successful test of the atomic bomb in 1945, U.S. officials immediately considered the potential non-military benefits that could be derived from the American nuclear monopoly. The proposal has been characterized as the most comprehensive attempt by any American policymaker to leverage diplomacy in order to shorten the Pacific War. If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an atomic diplomacy capability as a bonus? Reasons Why the U.S. The contacts never went far and Dulles never received encouragement to pursue them. [67], National Archives, RG 165, Army Operations OPD, Executive Files 1940-1945, box 12, Exec #2. The weekly illustrated magazine Asahi Graph also published a brief article on August 25 titled What is an atomic bomb?. 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. If it was, he believed that the bomb would be the master card in U.S. diplomacy. Early in the morning of August 9th Manchuria was invaded by the Soviet Union. Note: The second page of the diary entry includes a newspaper clipping of the Associated Presss transmission of the Byrnes note. While post-war justifications for the bomb suggested that an invasion of Japan could have produced very high levels of casualties (dead, wounded, or missing), from hundreds of thousands to a million, historians have vigorously debated the extent to which the estimates were inflated. 5g. Pages 12 through 15 of those notes refer to the atomic bombing of Japan: You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam. Three-quarters of a century on, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain emblematic of the dangers and human costs of warfare, specifically the use of nuclear weapons. Some will want to read declassified primary sources so they can further develop their own thinking about the issues. and offer details on potential protection (protective clothing against a uranium bomb includes rubber and any kind of insulation against electricity). More statistics and a detailed account of the raid is in Ronald Schaffer,Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 130-137. [61], Documents 73A-B: Ramsey Letter from Tinian Island, Library of Congress, J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, box 60, Ramsey, Norman. For example, one of McCloys aides, Colonel Fahey, argued against modification of unconditional surrender (see Appendix C`). The discussion of weapons effects centered on blast damage models; radiation and other effects were overlooked. 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. Quotation and statistics from Thomas R. Searle, `It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,The Journal of Military History55 (2002):103. Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable. A modern-day nuclear bomb . The ensuing war was costly. [14], Firebombing raids on other cities followed Tokyo, including Osaka, Kobe, Yokahama, and Nagoya, but with fewer casualties (many civilians had fled the cities). Tsar Bomba, (Russian: "King of Bombs") , byname of RDS-220, also called Big Ivan, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. If there was a misfire the weapon would be difficult for the Japanese to recover, which would not be the case if Tokyo was targeted. The question is: The Untied States decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a diplomatic measure calculated to intimidate the Soviet Union in the post-Second-World-War era rather then a strictly military measure designed to force Japan's unconditional suuender. [26]. 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. [38], Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, Magic Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs brought renewed attention to these documents more recently on August 5, 2015, the same day Naryshkin was pointing a finger at the United States in his speech. [20], Harrison-Bundy Files relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1108 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), File 77: "Interim Committee - International Control.". All Rights Reserved, FJHUMMING: Radio Libertys Russian Language Broadcasts from Taiwan, 75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In writing to the Soviet leadership, Soviet Ambassador to Japan Iakov Malik included a nine-page report resulting from a trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a group of staff members sent by the Soviet Embassy in September 1945. Naval Aide to the President Files, box 4, Berlin Conference File, Volume XI - Miscellaneous papers: Japan, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, On 2 July Stimson presented to President Truman a proposal that he had worked up with colleagues in the War Department, including McCloy, Marshall, and Grew. [66], Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 926-927 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima], As various factions in the government maneuvered on how to respond to the Byrnes note, Navy Minister Yonai and Admiral Tagaki discussed the latest developments. [48], This Magic summary includes messages from both Togo and Sato.

Matt Bissonnette On Delta Force, Lowline Hereford Cross, Articles A