The case against the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in WWII

We’ve been conditioned to accept the moral and strategic certainty underlying the use of nukes against Japan. It’s time to reassess America’s sanctifying myth.

In an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in April 2024, Tucker Carlson made the following comments about the use of nuclear weapons in WWII by the United States against Japan (transcript courtesy of Washington Examiner):

I love, by the way, that people on my side — I’ll just admit it, on the Right — have spent the last 80 years defending dropping nuclear bombs on civilians. Like, are you joking? That’s just prima facie evil. If you can’t — ‘Well, if we hadn’t done that, then this, that, the other thing, that was actually a great savings’ — no. It’s wrong to drop nuclear weapons on people, and if you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil. It’s not a tough one, right? It’s not a hard call for me. So, with that in mind, why would you want nuclear weapons? It’s like just a mindless, childish sort of exercise to justify, like, ‘Oh no, it’s really good because someone else could get’ — how about, no? How about spending all of your effort to prevent this from happening?

Though Tucker was blunt, my view is that he’s correct. The use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. against Japan was morally wrong. It was also strategically unnecessary.

The Use Of Nukes Was Immoral

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally wrong because they disproportionately killed and wounded civilians and damaged civilian property and infrastructure. As “few” as 125,000 people died in the two attacks, and the true death toll could exceed a quarter of a million people, the majority of whom were not military personnel, but civilians including women, children, and the elderly.

Now it’s certainly true that it’s essentially impossible to have a war without civilian casualties. But in a U.S. precision bombing mission, like many of the bombing missions over Germany in WWII, U.S. bomber crews were targeting specific locations of military value, like a factory or a railroad junction. During many of those missions, some of the bombs unintentionally missed their target and killed civilians. In every case, this was a great tragedy, but it wasn’t the purpose of the mission. The problem with a weapon like an atom bomb is that it’s completely indiscriminate. The sheer scale of the explosive power of even the small-by-modern-standards nuclear bombs used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki means that they were used knowing they would kill tens of thousands of civilians at a minimum. Many of the victims were killed instantly by the intense heat of the bombs. Many more were killed when they were struck by debris, or when the building they were in collapsed on them. Many others died slow, excruciating deaths from severe radiation burns and exposure.

I contend that the mass killing of civilians as a means of attempting to compel surrender amounts to a war crime. If you think that’s going too far, imagine if Germany or Japan had detonated nuclear weapons over American cities during the war in an attempt to compel Washington to surrender. I don’t think we’d be quick to just dismiss those attacks by invoking the line “war is hell.”

The Use Of Nukes Was Unnecessary

Perhaps you agree with me so far, or at least think I’m not entirely out to lunch. “But,” you might say, “by dropping the Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we saved many, many more lives by avoiding an invasion of Japan that would have resulted in death on a much, much larger scale.” It’s true that the U.S. had drawn up extensive plans for an invasion of the Japanese home islands. And because there were limited potential landing areas in Japan due to geography, the Japanese military had accurately predicted the general nature of the proposed Allied invasion and made extensive defensive plans of their own. It was estimated that Operation Downfall would have resulted in the deaths of as many as one million Allied troops, and many more Japanese military personnel and civilians. Moreover, it’s commonly asserted by defenders of the use of nuclear weapons that Japan’s Bushido culture would have compelled the Japanese to fight to the death of their nation rather than suffer the dishonor of surrendering to the Allies. All combined, this has become something of a sanctifying myth of the atomic bombings. “It was awful, but it was the lesser of two evils.” There are some problems with this perspective.

First, we know what really happened: Japan surrendered to the Allies and didn’t fight to the last Japanese man, woman, and child. If they were really prepared to do that, as is alleged, why would the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have deterred them? After all, hundreds of thousands of Japanese had already been killed in U.S. fire-bombing campaigns. Estimates of the deaths from these campaigns vary from as “little” as 300,000 to as high as 900,000. Given that, as is commonly understood, it was the use of nuclear weapons that compelled the Japanese to surrender, we know at least one thing was capable of deterring them from national suicide. It’s worth asking the following question: “Could anything other than the use of nuclear weapons or an unimaginably costly invasion of the home islands have compelled them to surrender?” You’re never allowed to ponder that question. You’re always told that the U.S. had either one “necessary evil” option or an even worse “necessary evil” option.

Second, we know that the Japanese were putting out feelers indicating a possible willingness to surrender as early as spring 1945. The following excerpt comes from the U.S. Department of Energy’s website dedicated to the Manhattan Project:

Prior to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, elements existed within the Japanese government that were trying to find a way to end the war. In June and July 1945, Japan attempted to enlist the help of the Soviet Union to serve as an intermediary in negotiations. No direct communication occurred with the United States about peace talks, but American leaders knew of these maneuvers because the United States for a long time had been intercepting and decoding many internal Japanese diplomatic communications. From these intercepts, the United States learned that some within the Japanese government advocated outright surrender. A few diplomats overseas cabled home to urge just that.

See also these comments from Norman Cousins, consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan:

When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the Emperor.

Do comments like these prove that Japan would have surrendered had the U.S. not dropped the bombs? No. We’re afforded no certainty with respect to counterfactual circumstances. What they do, though, is undercut the sanctifying myth that the Japanese were entirely fanatical and unwilling to surrender otherwise. Were there hardliners within the Japanese chain of command who were resolutely determined not to surrender? That certainly seems to have been the case. But there were also more moderate thinkers and voices, and those are the ones who ultimately won out.

The following quote from Dwight Eisenhower speaks to his confidence in the eventuality of Japanese surrender even had the bombs not been dropped, as well as his misgivings about the moral implications of the U.S. use of the bombs:

I told him [Secretary of War Henry 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.

Although defenders of the use of the atomic bombs point to the fact that far fewer lives were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki than would have been lost in a battle to forcibly take Japan, I think it’s worth considering that sacrificing one million American troops (and far more Japanese soldiers and civilians) because of an unwillingness to accept anything less than an unconditional surrender by Japan is horrendously immoral. There are never just two options. A nation seeking to conduct war justly seeks to minimize civilian casualties, not inflict them.

When I’ve attempted to have this conversation on X (formerly Twitter), more often than not my politely stated difference of opinion with conventional thought on the topic is met with rage, vulgar language, and name-calling. At the very least, the use of nuclear weapons against Japan ought to be a debatable topic given the horrendous loss of civilian life.

Plus, if the moral and strategic framework I’ve outlined here is correct, the long-lasting damage done to the world by the use of nuclear weapons in war is that it makes it easier to argue for the use of them in the future. We must hope that no innocents anywhere ever again find themselves beneath a nuclear mushroom cloud.

I’d like to conclude by addressing a few of the most common objections that are brought up to challenge the view that the atomic bombings of Japan were unnecessary:

Objection: The Japanese didn't surrender after the first nuclear bombing. This supports the claim that Japan's fanatical Bushido culture wouldn't countenance the ignominy of surrender.

This is a very "2024" objection. No one outside of the very few involved in the Manhattan Project had ever seen a nuclear explosion or its aftermath prior to Hiroshima. Additionally, while today every single minor public emergency is documented by multiple cell phone cameras and immediately available to the entire world, that wasn't the reality of life in 1945. The first Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, and that same day President Truman announced to the world that the U.S. had used a nuclear weapon in war for the first time. Japan understandably wanted confirmation that that is what actually happened rather than war propaganda. Hiroshima is 500 miles from Tokyo. In 2024, that's a ten-hour trip by car. Given the state of 1945 highway/railroad development, it's unclear whether the trip could be accomplished in that length of time even under ideal conditions, much less after years of war and bombing campaigns attacking such infrastructure. The second Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki a mere three days later. That's really not much time to assess the validity of U.S. claims, assess the damage from the first bomb, and make plans in response. I'm not saying that's conclusive evidence that Japan would have surrendered after a single Bomb was dropped had they had more time to consider their situation. What I'm suggesting is that the objection that even a nuclear attack wasn't enough to compel Japanese surrender due to their fanaticism isn't as strong as it might seem at first blush.

With respect to the so-called fanatical Japanese honor culture of the era, I recently came across an interesting anecdote. A U.S. naval aviator from the U.S.S. Lexington who participated in a raid on Japanese naval vessels in New Guinea wrote in 1942 about the propaganda surrounding the Japanese Bushido culture:

Imagine my astonishment to see the Japs running in all directions to escape our bombs and bullets. The romantic writers who spent years misinforming us by telling of Japanese immunity to fear and of the universal Japanese desire to be killed fighting for their emperor should have seen the interest those Japs showed in remaining alive.

Objection: The Kyūjō incident (an attempted coup against Emperor Hirohito after both Bombs had been dropped) is evidence that Japan's Bushido culture wouldn't permit Japan to surrender.

This gets brought up a lot, but it's an incredibly weak objection because the coup was unsuccessful. The coup failed because its members couldn't persuade other members of the Japanese chain of command to permit them to place the emperor under house arrest. This is actually evidence in favor of my position that Japan's leadership wasn't fully committed to fanatical national suicide, and that there were more moderate factions within the chain of command who ultimately prevailed over the hardliners.

Objection: Had Truman not used the atomic bombs, my father (or grandfather) would have had to invade Japan to compel Japanese surrender, and I may not be alive today.

I acutely understand the sentiment. My grandfather too may have been re-tasked after having participated in the war in Europe to the force planned to take part in invading the Japanese home islands. If so, I might not be here to write this post. However, just because I and others may have benefited materially from the use of atomic bombs against Japan, that doesn't make their use morally right. Secondarily, all we can do is speculate about alternate scenarios that didn't take place. The Japanese may have surrendered anyway (as many in the U.S. chain of command believed was likely), and cooler heads may have prevailed against those pushing for an invasion of the home islands.