Name:__________________________

The Impact of the Atomic Bomb – Analysis/Reflection

Directions: Please answer the following questions based on the primary/secondary sources
provided. When you are finished, please answer the reflection questions to sum up your
thoughts. We will be discussing these answers in small groups when we’re done. **THIS WILL
COUNT AS A 15-POINT SUMMATIVE PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT**

The first series of questions are based on the following excerpt:

Nuclear bombs cannot possibly remain a “secret weapon” at the exclusive disposal of this
country for more than a few years. The scientific facts on which their construction is based are
well known to scientists of other countries. Unless an effective internal control of nuclear
explosives is instituted, a race for nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the first
revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world. . . . In the war to which an
armaments race is likely to lead, the United States, with its concentration of population and
industry in comparative few metropolitan districts, will be at a disadvantage compared to
nations whose population and industry are scattered over large areas.

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced
attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States were to be the first to release this new
means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, we would sacrifice public support
throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of
reaching international agreement on the future control of such weapons.
Source: Scientists’ Petition Against Use of the Atomic Bomb (authored by Leo Szilard), June 1945

1. How correct is the scientific community that developed the atomic bomb in saying that it
“cannot possibly remain a ‘secret weapon’” due to the fact that the science behind it is “well-
known to scientists of other countries” once/if it is used against Japan? Explain your answer.
2. What are your thoughts on the proposal made by these scientists to establish “international
control” over the development/use of atomic weapons? Is this something that needs to be
exclusive to one nation or will jealousy/fear over an “atomic monopoly” inevitably give way to a
nuclear arms race (as scientists accurately predicted would happen during the Cold War)?

3. If you were President Truman, how much consideration would you give to the warnings being
given by the scientists who developed the bomb now putting forward this petition before
making the decision to use the weapon against Japan? Would this have any effect on making
you reconsider or is the military/political/moral sacrifice in the future “worth it” to end the war
on your terms sooner rather than later?
The second series of questions are based on the following excerpt:

The invasion [of Japan] was going to take place: there’s no question about that. It was not theoretical or
merely rumored in order to scare the Japanese. By July 10, 1945, the prelanding naval and aerial
bombardment of the coast had begun, and the battleships Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and King George V
were steaming up and down the coast, softening it up with their sixteen-inch shells.

On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith [US economist and diplomat] is persuaded that the Japanese
would have surrendered surely by November 1945 without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were
unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. The A-bombs meant, he says, “a
difference, at most, of two or three weeks.” But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on
the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and
Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. “Two or three weeks,” says Galbraith. Two weeks
more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world
if you’re one of those thousands or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the
Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on August 15th, the war pursued its accustomed
course: on the 12th of August, eight American POWs were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first
United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk by the Japanese (all aboard drowned); the destroyer
Callaghan went down (the seventieth to be sunk). That's a bit of what happened in six days
of the “two or three weeks posited” by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of
Price Administration in Washington. I don't demand that he experience having his [expletive] shot off. I
merely note that he didn't.”
Source: Prof. Paul Fussell, Thank God For The Atom Bomb and Other Essays, 1988.
Note: Fussell served in WWII in the 103rd Infantry Division in Europe. He became a professor of English and
Literature at both Rutgers University (1955-1983) and the University of Pennsylvania (1983-1994) after graduating
with honors from Harvard University (with both a Masters’ and a Doctorate) in 1952.

1. What evidence does Fussell give to prove his point in contrast the one made by John Kenneth
Galbraith in this article?
2. Fussell’s overall point of this essay was that the dropping of the bomb hastened the end of the
war and saved American lives in the process. As a WWII veteran (but keep in mind he never saw
combat in the Pacific due to a wound her received in liberating Europe) is he more entitled to an
opinion than an analysis like Gallbraith whom he criticizes? Please explain your answer.
The third series of questions are based on the following excerpt:

In an Academy Award-winning 2003 documentary called The Fog of War, Robert McNamara (former
Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ during Vietnam and an air force captain assigned to do statistical
work for Gen. Curtis LeMay during WWII) was quoted as saying in terms of the bombs being used on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “If we’d lost [WWII], we’d have been prosecuted as war criminals…we were
rationalizing it in that what we did was only immoral and wrong if we lost the war. What makes it
immoral if you lose but not immoral if you win?”

1. Based on what you read, do you consider the dropping of the atomic bombs comparable to a
“war crime”? Please explain your answer.

2. What are your thoughts on the quote, “What makes it immoral if you lose but not immoral if
you win?” in terms of the use of the bombs? Is there truly “morality” in using weapons of mass
destruction as long as you “win” the conflict?
The fourth series of questions come from the following excerpt:
“As the Allied leaders gathered at Potsdam in July 1945…reports poured in confirming the Japanese
desire to end the war if allowed to surrender conditionally with Emperor Hirohito retaining his title. The
evidence that top US officials recognized the signals emanating from Tokyo is unassailable. President
Truman in his diary wrote, “Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.” Secretary of the
Navy James Forrestal wrote about, “evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war.” In his 1966
book The Secret Surrender Office of Secret Services official (and later Central Intelligence Agency head)
Allan Dulles recalled, “I went to the Potsdam conference and reported there to Secretary of War [Henry]
Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo – they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor.

“At Potsdam, US Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied
commander in Europe, that the atomic bomb’s use was now imminent. Eisenhower reacted strongly.
He described his response in a Newsweek interview, “I told [Stimson] I was against it on two counts.
First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.
Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.

“General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Pacific and the second-
highest ranking active-duty officer in the US Army, conferred the bomb, “completely unnecessary from a
military point of view”. He held a press conference on August 6, before the bomb was drop was
announced to the public and told reporters that the Japanese were “already beaten” and that he was
thinking about “the possibilities of the next war with its horrors magnified 10,000 times”.

“Truman was dining on board the USS Augusta on his way back from Potsdam when he learned of
Hiroshima. He jumped up and exclaimed, “This is the greatest thing in history.” He shortly thereafter
said that announcing the news of Hiroshima to the American public was the “happiest” announcement
he had ever made.

“Soviet leaders were anything but jubilant. Knowing that the bomb was not needed to defeat a nation
already on life support, they concluded that the Soviet Union was the real target. The Americans, they
figured, wanted to speed the Japanese surrender in hope of ending the Pacific war without any further
Soviet assistance. Even more disconcerting, they concluded that the Americans, by using it on
Hiroshima when it was clearly not necessary, were signaling that the United States wouldn’t hesitate to
use it against them too if they threatened any future US interests.

“Political leaders, including Stalin and Foreign Minister Molotov, were unequivocally alarmed. Soviet
physicist Yuli Khariton recalled that, “The whole Soviet government interpreted Hiroshima as atomic
blackmail against the USSR, as a threat to unleash a new, even more terrible and devastating war.”

“On August 9, three days after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, what Japan had been
fearing the most came true. The Soviet Red Army attacked Japanese forces in their occupied province of
Manchuria and quicky began to push the exhausted Japanese army back. Later that morning an
emergency meeting of the Japanese high military command was called. It was at this meeting that the
dropping of the second atomic bomb earlier that day on the city of Nagasaki was briefly mentioned. But
the Soviet invasion totally demoralized the Japanese leaders. For Japanese leaders contemplating
surrender, the atomic bombs provided an added inducement but not the decisive one. Prime Minister
Suzuki stated, “Japan must surrender immediately or else the Soviet Union will not only take Manchuria,
but also Hokkaido island (Japan’s cultural center). This would destroy the foundation of Japan.” Thus,
with the Red Army rapidly approaching the Japanese main islands, the Japanese leadership decided to
surrender to the Americans, whom they viewed as much more likely to keep their emperor. After all,
the USSR had killed their own in 1918.

“After the war, Japanese leaders attributed the surrender to both the atom bombs and the Soviet
invasion. Deputy Chief of Staff of the Japanese Army Torashiro Kawabe explained,

“It was only in a gradual manner that the horrible wreckage which had been made of Hiroshima
became known…In comparison, the Soviet entry into the Pacific war was a great shock when it
actually came. Reports reaching Tokyo described Russian forces as ‘invading in swarms.’ It gave
us all the most severe shock and alarm because we had been in constant fear of it with a vivid
imagination that ‘the vast Red Army forces in Europe were now being turned against us.”

Admiral Soemu Toyoda agreed: “I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than
the atom bombs did more to hasten the surrender.” Lt. General Sumihisa Ikeda, director of Japan’s
General Planning Agency, said that, “upon hearing of the Soviet entry into the war, I felt that our
chances were gone.” The Japanese Army Ministry responded similarly to a direct question from General
Headquarters stating, “The Soviet participation in the war had the most direct impact on Japan’s
decision to surrender.” A study conducted by the US War Department in January 1946 came to the
same conclusion, finding, “little mention of the use of the atomic bomb by the US in the discussion
leading up to the [surrender] decision…it is almost a certainty that the Japanese would have
surrendered upon the entry of Russia into the war.”

Six of the US’s seven five-star officers who received their final star in WWII rejected the idea that the
atomic bombs were needed to end the war. Douglas MacArthur always maintained that the war would
have ended months earlier if the US had modified its surrender terms. General Henry “Hap” Arnold
wrote, “it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on
the verge of collapse.” General Curtis LeMay argued, “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end
of the war.” Many Naval officers agreed. Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief of the US Navy, told
his aide, “I don’t think we should do it at this time. It is not necessary.” Admiral William “Bull” Halsey,
commander in chief of the South Pacific fleet spoke publicly after the war, “The atomic bomb was an
unnecessary experiment…it was a mistake to ever drop it.”

Brigadier General Carter Clarke, who was in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted diplomatic
cables (such as the ones Japan was sending out as “peace feelers”) stated, “We brought them down to
an abject surrender through the sinking of their merchant ships and hunger alone; and when we didn’t
need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and THEY knew we didn’t need to do it, we used
them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”
-Source: Dr. Peter Kuznick, History Department -- American University, The Untold History of the United
States, 2012
1. Kuznick has close to 20 sources throughout this excerpt to prove his three main points: that the
Japanese were ready to surrender BEFORE the atomic bombs were used, that the bombs were
NOT the main cause of the Japanese surrender, and that the real “audience” for the bomb was
the USSR. In your opinion, did he make a strong case for his claims with the sources he found?
Please explain your answer.

2. How does Kuznick’s perspective of the use of the atomic bombs differ from Paul Fussell’s?
Which side do you believe more to be the truth?
Reflection Questions:
Think about what we’ve learned about the use of the atomic bombs (with the sources serving as
historical facts/arguments). Please give a brief reflection answer to the following questions:

a) Which ONE source did you find most interesting/informative about the atomic bomb’s
impact? Why?

b) How has your overall knowledge about the creation/use of the atomic bomb been
impacted/expanded/influenced by what you’ve read here? Please explain your answer.