Hiroshima distraction

    I recently took a trip to Washington and talked to a number of knowledgeable and interesting people about nuclear weapons issues. One guy in particular said that talking about Hiroshima (which I sometimes do) was a distraction and would be detrimental to any effort to prohibit nuclear weapons. I asked him why and he said that if you raise the Hiroshima issue (did the Bomb win the war), it will raise such a fire-storm of protest from people who want to have their myths left alone that it would divert energy and attention from the real business at hand.

    I believe that you can't prohibit nuclear weapons without showing that they are not very useful (if they're useful, why ban them?) and the Hiroshima argument, it seems to me, is an essential part of that argument. But I was taken aback and gave what he'd said careful thought. Here's part of the email I sent him a couple of days later:

    I've spent a good deal of time thinking about what you said about Hiroshima. I heard you say that if this new interpretation were discussed widely it would be counterproductive for prohibiting nuclear weapons. Ordinary people would object strongly to the notion that Hiroshima was not effective in coercing the Japanese. You may be right, I'd be interested to see hard polling numbers. But that has not been my experience at all. (And I am the only one who has field tested this to any extent - as far as I'm aware.) Most ordinary people are interested and usually persuaded. Some small percentage don't like the argument or aren't persuaded. Some WWII veterans stand up and say, "I was waiting on a boat and you'll never convince me that bomb didn't save my life." And I usually say, "Thank you for your service," and move on.

    The group that really objects to the Hiroshima argument is not ordinary people, who are by and large willing to accept this revision, the group that gets upset are experts. Tell a mathematician that Fermat's Theorem is wrong or the value of pi is really just 4, and he will look aghast and argue vehemently. He's got something to lose. His whole career is based on those things being true. Tell a bus driver or a steel worker (if you can find one in the US) that Fermat's Theorem isn't true and he's liable to shrug his shoulders and say politely, "Well, isn't that something?" Tell an ordinary person that the Bomb didn't win the war and therefore it's more likely that we can ban nuclear weapons and he'll probably be pleased: 70% of Americans don't like nuclear weapons already.

    My experience talking to hundreds of ordinary citizens is that only a very small percentage get hung up on the fact that I want to re-interpret a relatively large fact from history. Young people, and college students in particular, have no difficulty believing the evidence. I recently talked to a guy in the peace movement and he suggested I go to Rotary clubs to speak. I'm happy to. My experience is that they'll like what I'm saying. I can say to people "The invention of the bomb was a remarkable technological feat, which we can all be proud of. And this new interpretation doesn't change the morality of the discussion at all. If you want to believe that bombing Hiroshima was wrong, you can go on believing that. If you want to believe that bombing Hiroshima was justified, you can believe that, too. You can make a case for either point. What I'm saying doesn't really impact either morality argument very much. I'm only saying the bomb wasn't effective."

    This is an important question that I'm not fully resolved about in my mind.
 

Comments

[Dinshaw Burjorjee]

I think that having used the bomb in Japan, people emotionally justify that it was necessary: they would hate to admit that it was an unnecessary massacre of thousands.
Most of what I've read suggests that the Japanese were ready to surrender, and that a demonstration would certainly have clinched the issue.

[Tim Kelly]

In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I would say that it was not the actual nuclear destruction alone that was the major factor in Japan's decision to capitulate but that it was also the implicit threat of more nuclear weapons being used against them. Of course at that time the United States did not have a stockpile of bombs to make Truman's "rain of ruin" a reality but Japan had no way of knowing that.

I would also like to note that at that point in the war I do not think that the weapons were at all necessary in forcing Japan to surrender, or for saving allied lives for that matter, as I believe a blockade and conventional destruction of their vital industries would have ended the conflict under allied terms.