Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of an American Myth

Another very fine book that makes the same point is James Carroll's recent "House of War." James Carroll's father was the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency as an Air Force LTG, giving James himself special insights into the very political decision to drop the A-bomb on the Japanese. In the words of Curtis LeMay who was very much involved in influencing and executing this action, "kill 'em, just kill 'em all," and "bomb them back to the stone age." Although these words were spoken by LeMay concerning WWII and Vietnam, respectively, they reveal a state of mind extant in the "House of War" (the Pentagon) and the president and his war-mongering advisors such as James Byrnes. As a resident of South Carolina, it is an embarassment to acknowledge Byrnes as a SC native. In fact, his statue stands in front of the courthouse in our small town.

My Father was drafted out of Harvard Graduate school. He scored very highly on IQ tests and was given a very sensitive job in the Ultra Code breaking project. He reported to a Lt General in the US army and was classified as an Army Intelligence officer. The story he told me before this book was ever published is identical to the general outlines of the story as related here by Alperovitz. He has always said that the Japanese were clearly looking to end the war a couple of months before the bomb was dropped. He also said that the general US military command was of the opinion that the Invasion of Japan was not going to be necessary Regardless of the presence of the Atom bomb or not. He cannot speak to what might or might not have been going on in Washington DC but he himself read the decrypts of Japanese messages being sent to intermediaries whom were charged with approaching the Americans with the intent to discontinue the war. He has said that the general consensus of the upper echelons of the military was that the bomb was used to intimidate the Russians who were behaving quite menacingly rather than to save American lives which might be lost in an invasion. He also said that he was always surprised that "nobody wrote a book about it". He was unaware of Alperovitz's work until I found it while in college.

Gar Alpervitz has written a review of history of the decision and a cover-up of the reasons for using the Atomic Bomb on Japan. If anyone wants to consider themselves educated on this very important topic, and not be a victim to the continuing propaganda extolling the virtues of instant incineration and lingering death, there is no better book to sober up with than this one. People who complain about revisionist history books miss the point entirely that revisionism can increase the accuracy of what we know about historical events. It is often uncomfortable to face ourselves in the harsh light of reality, but needed in these times of overwhelming propaganda brought to us by neo-conservative partisans.

Gar Alperovitz builds a strong case that the atomic bomb was not militarily necessary to end the war in the Pacific, but was used to advance American diplomatic and political interests in the post war period, especially with respect to the Soviet Union. In particular, the apparent reluctance of military leaders to use the bomb is most interesting.Of equal interest is the implicit suggestion that the after-the-fact efforts to justify the bomb's use and mute public criticism began a fifty year pattern of government secrecy, deception, and propaganda which threatens the democratic process even to this day, and that the cold war was arguably triggered by U.S. efforts to make the Soviet Union more "manageable" during the summer of 1945.Finally, I was impressed that the author was far less judgmental than he could have been. I expected a political diatribe when I started this book. Instead, I encountered a well researched objective analysis of original source material. Where evidence was missing, conflicting, or subject to varying interpretations, the author said so.

In an age when Truman has become the everyman's president, this book shines an extremely focussed light on what certainly is his most important decision. This book is not for the feint of heart. The story is told by reconstructing minute sequences of events from May through August of 1945 in order to unravel how the decision was made to deliver atomic weapons Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It uses excerpts from every written form of communication that has been found by historians in the past 50 years.The book is very interesting on three levels. First, it immerses the reader in the flow of information that actually existed for the president an his closest advisors. Second, it highlights for the reader the two most vexing problems for the president -- how to handle the Japanese surrender AND how to handle the Soviets stanglehold on Eastern Europe. Third, it honestly confronts the myths that have explained why the Americans dropped the bomb and how it has been rationalized as the "right thing to do."If you are a person that believes that the bomb saved "500,000 to a million American casualties and ended the war" and are willing to learn that this may not be true, read this book. Be warned though, it is very unsettling when one has believed this all ones life. I know I have been somewhat shocked.All this said, the book could be called pedandic to a fault. There is much repetition because many of the key communications are used over and over to make numerous points. On the other hand, the repetition does keep the key stuff close to the uninitiated reader (me).