I think history has shown that it was necessary to drop atomic bombs on Japan in WW2, have question on.?

Question

I realize President Truman made the final decision. However, my question is did Douglas MacArthur express views on the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, beforehand or afterwards; privately or publicly.

God Bless our veterans, they did so much in WW2, helping to end Cold War. Hate it they have not gotten better care and treatment and are in this inept mess in Iraq.

The time taken for the thoughtful responses from the very learned authorities is much appreciated.

Answer 1

Norman Cousins was a consultant to MacArthur during the war. I found a quote from him;

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn that 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 did later anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

However, he was ready to use it north of the Yaloo river in Manchuria five years later.

I agree about the vets, they deserve better treatment, and I have harried Senator Durbin about it in the last year or so. What got me, apart from the large number of people coming back with traumatic head injuries, was the lack of medical support for returning reservists who were disabled. I think my exact words were that I was appalled that someone comes home with an empty sleeve and can't get the medical attention they deserve. The Senator and his office are very good about responding to this kind of enquiry. I get e-mails, letters and phone calls in response. Add to this, that he seems to have rolled up his sleeves and dived right in to the problems going on at the Marion (Illinois) VA hospital.

I've been quite pleased with the results I got from writing to my US Senator, it's well worth the time.

Answer 2

See if Robert Torricelli and Andre Carroll's book helps, starting around p. 147. In Baker's book, around p. 121, MacArthur didn't even know of such a thing until a little less than a week before hand. Similar message in Benge and Benge, starting on page 155. So MacArthur may have things to say afterwards, but he was out of the circle on what started the bomb (as was Truman when he was Vice President), or even the decision to use it. To MacArthur, it was just a bomb (a very special and very big bomb, but an explosive tool to fight a war). There was no romanticism, no monsterous hysteria, only one really, expensive and unbelievably powerful tool of war.


Baker, Paul R. 1976. The Atomic Bomb: The Great Decision. Dryden Press.

Benge, Janet, and Geoff Benge. 1958. Douglas MacArthur: What Greater Honor. Emerald. [Descriptive but not something you would use in a college reference list, if that is where you are writing]

Harding, Harold F. 1952. The Age of Danger: Major Speeches of American Problems. Random House.

Torricelli, Robert G., and Andrew Carroll. In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century. New York: Kodansha America [a Japanese company].

BTW, Japan was working on their own atomic bomb, and they got assistance, even uranium, from Germany. If the war carried on too much longer, they might have used theirs on us (but they probably couldn't have delivered it except in a tactical suicide detonation).

Answer 3

History has not shown it was necessary. Not at all. The Germans were out of the war, and the Japanese were basically done as well. Their economy was a mess, they had lost their navy... what necessity was there? That, and what was the point of dropping the SECOND bomb? That's just murder, no matter how you slice it. They never even gave the Japanese a chance to draft their surrender.

And since when did WWII veterans end the Cold War? That ended in the 1980s, not 1945.

If you want to know about MacArthur's views, why don't you go to your local university library and look him up.

Answer 4

Different times, and different rules of war. Back then the aftermath of an Atomic Bomb was not completely understood because it was so new. In short, the US had a new weapon that was extremely powerful, the Japanese Empire used Genocide as a doctrine and the President had to select between loosing an estimated 50K more US service members in a ground invasion of Japan or use the new 'Super Weapon' from a distance. If they would have known what we know now, they would have selected to go with the 50K casualty rate. But pre-atomic bomb use many Americans felt the Japanese deserved it and much more. Not to mention that the Japanese tortured each and every prisoner of war, if they died it was the will of the Empire.

Answer 5

If MacArthur expressed his views privately, we'll never know about it unless someone repeats those views in a biography. As to public expression - not that I can recall. But it's quite likely that Truman got a opinions from someone in the field, like MacArthur, if not from MacArthur himself, or Truman's advisors would certainly have consulted with the military in the field.

Answer 6

To me the most important fact to remember is that if Truman had not decided to drop the bomb the war would have lasted longer.

It would have taken a Million troops to take the main island and Millions of Japanese would have fought to the death.

Truman did not want to hold on to it only to be ask why he didn't us a weapon that could have ended the war sooner.

That's what made the decision for him.

Also the Soviets wanted a piece of Japan.

Answer 7

Sorry, I disagree. I've spent years on this issue, and I've come to the conclusion the drops were not really necessary.

Japan had lost the war. The country was broken. You couldn't purchase a pair of shoes in Tokyo. Their soldiers were flying their planes into our battleships in a desperate last fling. They had L.O.S.T lost!

There is no question of it either. In fact their leaders were at the Vatican, suing for peace on the day of the drops.

Truman was framed into going along. It had nothing to do with Japan. It was to scare Russia and China, since we knew that with the war over they would be our next adversaries in time.

As I say, I've dwelt on this for years. I'm a published Truman scholar. I once thought he had made the right decision.

I now understand the decision was made for him by the military. He had to go along or be framed as a weak leader.

It was a huge and tragic miscalculation, because it established us as a country that would use the bomb, and led to the next fifty years of paranoia and fear mongering.