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A review by books17
Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath by Paul Ham
4.0
Thanks to my girlfriend's parents for giving me this one for Christmas, most appreciated.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War 2 are two of the most controversial events in warfare. As a student of World War 2 - albeit I've always been much more interested in the European theater than the Pacific theater - I've read quite a lot about the subject, but it has always been tinged with a distinctly rationalist tone. 'Sure, it was a tragedy, but it stopped World War 2 so it was in service of good'.
This book is the first proper historical work I've read which has flown in the face of that narrative - if anything, the book is deeply biased against the use of the bombs, a point of view that I've always held myself so this review is likely to be flawed from the outset. But nevertheless, here we go.
The old samurai, in frock coats and winged collars, sitting at attention at the conference table in the government's well-stocked Tokyo shelter, continued to observe - in extremis - the ancient forms of deference and decorum of the warrior class; they lived in the shadow of an antique past, in the darkened codes of 'honour' and 'sacrifice', in whose interests they were willing to destroy their nation and race.
-p256
The book begins with an overview of the state of the world at the outset of 1945 - Roosevelt's death and Truman's ascendance, the defeat of Germany, the Japanese Empire's defeats and retreats throughout the pacific, and the research into the atomic bomb. As someone who hasn't been too interested in the Pacific theater until this point, this was valuable. I knew the broad strokes, but the first few chapters of Hiroshima Nagasaki do a fantastic job of laying the foundations for the deeper study to follow.
A chapter is dedicated to the US firebombing campaign which destroyed dozens of Japanese cities - including Tokyo and Osaka - and it is in this chapter that, if it weren't already, Ham's bias becomes self-evident. He labels this campaign of terror and wholesale civilian slaughter as the barbarism that it was, and doesn't shy away from the lack of Japanese response.
Fully the last two thirds of the book are dedicated to the preparation, use, and aftermath of the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man. This is the real meat of it. There are three major themes running throughout this section off the text - the brutality of the US campaign, the Japanese leadership's indifference to the slaughter of its people, and the argument of whether the bombings were 'justified'.
Ham is quite obviously a detractor of the United States' campaigns against the Japanese homeland - this is made obvious by the chapter dedicated to the firebombing campaigns across Honshu and Kyushu. I was vaguely aware that the US had firebombed Japan (especially from the film Grave of the Fireflies), but I didn't realise the extent of the campaign - pursuing a flawed philosophy that the death of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants would cripple Japanese morale to such a point that they would have no choice but to surrender (a concept that anyone who knew the slightest amount of Japanese zealotry at the time would have found laughable), Major Curtis LeMay intentionally targeted civilian population centres and displaced millions from their homes.
This campaign continued for several months until the Japanese surrender in August - concurrent with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ham doesn't pull any punches with these events - the injuries, destruction and sickness are described in full detail, from a child losing his eyes from the change in pressure (screaming 'Soldier-san, help me!' while nobody listened), to a girl who tried to pick up her brother and carry him to safety, and found his skin sloughing off his arms in bloody, wet sheets.
This was the great success that was heralded back at home in America.
Lewis [co-pilot of the Enola Gay] scribbled 'Just how many did we kill? My God, what have we done?' 'My God, look at that sonofabitch go!' he is said to have also shouted, according to other crew members.
-p298
65,000 of Hiroshima's 90,000 buildings were 'rendered unusable' and the rest partially damaged. Glass windows were blown out at a distance of up to 8 kilometres. But 'nothing was vaporised', the report noted optimistically.
p414
While the bombing of Hiroshima is portrayed as a tragic waste of human life, the bombing of Nagasaki is worse - in fact the Japanese, having received word of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria the day before, were drafting surrender terms to send to America when a messenger burst into the cabinet and notified them that another 'special bomb' had been dropped on Nagasaki - the Japanese cabinet ministers paused for a moment, then went back to their drafting.
For most, the news that 30,000 of your people had just been wiped out would be an event worth dropping everything for - but not so for the Imperial Japanese. Throughout the book, the Japanese leadership's total and utter lack of care for their people is drilled home again and again - it wasn't that they didn't care whether they died or not, it is that they were expected to die for the Motherland. The Japanese plans to rebuff a US land invasion was predicated on the 'one-hundred million' residents of Japan (in actual fact Japan only had a population of 70m at the time) rising up and repelling the western invader.
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were in the process of developing a 'field cap' to protect their people from the glare and heat of future atomic bombings - this goes to show how just how low a priority they placed on the bombings. They were prepared to weather more of them until the 'inevitable' land invasion. And the United States was prepared to drop more of them - had Japan not capitulated on August 15th, the US had a half dozen more bombs in the pipeline, with plans to drop them every 10 days or so.
Ham makes his opinion on whether the bombings were justified well known by the closing chapter (tellingly titled 'Why'). The main reasons for justifying the use of the bombs is that they ended the war, and that if they hadn't used the bombs then the US would have risked a bloody land invasion of the Japanese mainland, killing many more Japanese and Americans in the process.
Ham carefully deconstructs these justifications. As stated above, and at numerous points throughout the text, the Japanese officials placed little importance on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the same could not be said of those on the ground in those two cities, who experienced likely the closest representation of hell on earth yet - dozens of Japanese cities had already been wiped out wholesale by the American firebombing campaign, what were two more? The real impetus for Japan's surrender was the Soviet Union's surprising and crushing invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria and Korea between the bombings. Nothing matched the fear Japan held for a Russia, and their surrender to America on the 15th was merely picking the lesser of the two evils to capitulate to.
That the bombings removed the need for a US land invasion is also a fallacy - the US leadership had in fact abandoned the possibility of a land invasion of Japan in the early stages of 1945 as too costly, far before the atomic bomb was first tested. Later attempts to use this as the justification for the bombings by Truman and other American officials neatly avoids this point.
Of course, a less virtuous explanation often given is that the bombings are proportionate 'revenge' for the attack at Pearl Harbour, and the Japanese atrocities throughout the war. I won't dignify this with any more words.
In the end, the thing that finally brought Japan to the table was Emperor Hirohito giving his own judgement - in the past when the Emperor had suggested peace or surrender, the militant armed forces had killed those advisors closest to him - obviously they had corrupted his Majesty for him to suggest such things. But as the dust settled on Nagasaki, the Voice of the Sacred Crane stating once and for all that victory was no longer possible was the real decider - and tellingly, during his surrender address, Hirohito only pointed to the Soviet invasion as the reason for this.
As stated, I've always been on the view that the atomic bombings are wholly unjustifiable. Nothing - no atrocities, contingencies, possibilities or plans - justifies the instant murder of tens of thousands of civilians, and the slow and painful deaths of tens of thousands more. Having been to Hiroshima, having stood on the Aioi Bridge and under the hypocenter, I cannot feel anything other than disgust that this was something that human beings did to their own.
At a time of war, people will applaud any story their government feeds them. Americans continue to swear blind that the bombs alone ended the war; that they were America's 'least abhorrent' choice. These are plainly false propositions, salves to uneasy consciences over what was actually done on 6 and 9 August 1945 when, under a summer sky, without warning, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children felt the sun fall on their heads.
-p510
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War 2 are two of the most controversial events in warfare. As a student of World War 2 - albeit I've always been much more interested in the European theater than the Pacific theater - I've read quite a lot about the subject, but it has always been tinged with a distinctly rationalist tone. 'Sure, it was a tragedy, but it stopped World War 2 so it was in service of good'.
This book is the first proper historical work I've read which has flown in the face of that narrative - if anything, the book is deeply biased against the use of the bombs, a point of view that I've always held myself so this review is likely to be flawed from the outset. But nevertheless, here we go.
The old samurai, in frock coats and winged collars, sitting at attention at the conference table in the government's well-stocked Tokyo shelter, continued to observe - in extremis - the ancient forms of deference and decorum of the warrior class; they lived in the shadow of an antique past, in the darkened codes of 'honour' and 'sacrifice', in whose interests they were willing to destroy their nation and race.
-p256
The book begins with an overview of the state of the world at the outset of 1945 - Roosevelt's death and Truman's ascendance, the defeat of Germany, the Japanese Empire's defeats and retreats throughout the pacific, and the research into the atomic bomb. As someone who hasn't been too interested in the Pacific theater until this point, this was valuable. I knew the broad strokes, but the first few chapters of Hiroshima Nagasaki do a fantastic job of laying the foundations for the deeper study to follow.
A chapter is dedicated to the US firebombing campaign which destroyed dozens of Japanese cities - including Tokyo and Osaka - and it is in this chapter that, if it weren't already, Ham's bias becomes self-evident. He labels this campaign of terror and wholesale civilian slaughter as the barbarism that it was, and doesn't shy away from the lack of Japanese response.
Fully the last two thirds of the book are dedicated to the preparation, use, and aftermath of the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man. This is the real meat of it. There are three major themes running throughout this section off the text - the brutality of the US campaign, the Japanese leadership's indifference to the slaughter of its people, and the argument of whether the bombings were 'justified'.
Ham is quite obviously a detractor of the United States' campaigns against the Japanese homeland - this is made obvious by the chapter dedicated to the firebombing campaigns across Honshu and Kyushu. I was vaguely aware that the US had firebombed Japan (especially from the film Grave of the Fireflies), but I didn't realise the extent of the campaign - pursuing a flawed philosophy that the death of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants would cripple Japanese morale to such a point that they would have no choice but to surrender (a concept that anyone who knew the slightest amount of Japanese zealotry at the time would have found laughable), Major Curtis LeMay intentionally targeted civilian population centres and displaced millions from their homes.
This campaign continued for several months until the Japanese surrender in August - concurrent with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ham doesn't pull any punches with these events - the injuries, destruction and sickness are described in full detail, from a child losing his eyes from the change in pressure (screaming 'Soldier-san, help me!' while nobody listened), to a girl who tried to pick up her brother and carry him to safety, and found his skin sloughing off his arms in bloody, wet sheets.
This was the great success that was heralded back at home in America.
Lewis [co-pilot of the Enola Gay] scribbled 'Just how many did we kill? My God, what have we done?' 'My God, look at that sonofabitch go!' he is said to have also shouted, according to other crew members.
-p298
65,000 of Hiroshima's 90,000 buildings were 'rendered unusable' and the rest partially damaged. Glass windows were blown out at a distance of up to 8 kilometres. But 'nothing was vaporised', the report noted optimistically.
p414
While the bombing of Hiroshima is portrayed as a tragic waste of human life, the bombing of Nagasaki is worse - in fact the Japanese, having received word of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria the day before, were drafting surrender terms to send to America when a messenger burst into the cabinet and notified them that another 'special bomb' had been dropped on Nagasaki - the Japanese cabinet ministers paused for a moment, then went back to their drafting.
For most, the news that 30,000 of your people had just been wiped out would be an event worth dropping everything for - but not so for the Imperial Japanese. Throughout the book, the Japanese leadership's total and utter lack of care for their people is drilled home again and again - it wasn't that they didn't care whether they died or not, it is that they were expected to die for the Motherland. The Japanese plans to rebuff a US land invasion was predicated on the 'one-hundred million' residents of Japan (in actual fact Japan only had a population of 70m at the time) rising up and repelling the western invader.
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were in the process of developing a 'field cap' to protect their people from the glare and heat of future atomic bombings - this goes to show how just how low a priority they placed on the bombings. They were prepared to weather more of them until the 'inevitable' land invasion. And the United States was prepared to drop more of them - had Japan not capitulated on August 15th, the US had a half dozen more bombs in the pipeline, with plans to drop them every 10 days or so.
Ham makes his opinion on whether the bombings were justified well known by the closing chapter (tellingly titled 'Why'). The main reasons for justifying the use of the bombs is that they ended the war, and that if they hadn't used the bombs then the US would have risked a bloody land invasion of the Japanese mainland, killing many more Japanese and Americans in the process.
Ham carefully deconstructs these justifications. As stated above, and at numerous points throughout the text, the Japanese officials placed little importance on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the same could not be said of those on the ground in those two cities, who experienced likely the closest representation of hell on earth yet - dozens of Japanese cities had already been wiped out wholesale by the American firebombing campaign, what were two more? The real impetus for Japan's surrender was the Soviet Union's surprising and crushing invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria and Korea between the bombings. Nothing matched the fear Japan held for a Russia, and their surrender to America on the 15th was merely picking the lesser of the two evils to capitulate to.
That the bombings removed the need for a US land invasion is also a fallacy - the US leadership had in fact abandoned the possibility of a land invasion of Japan in the early stages of 1945 as too costly, far before the atomic bomb was first tested. Later attempts to use this as the justification for the bombings by Truman and other American officials neatly avoids this point.
Of course, a less virtuous explanation often given is that the bombings are proportionate 'revenge' for the attack at Pearl Harbour, and the Japanese atrocities throughout the war. I won't dignify this with any more words.
In the end, the thing that finally brought Japan to the table was Emperor Hirohito giving his own judgement - in the past when the Emperor had suggested peace or surrender, the militant armed forces had killed those advisors closest to him - obviously they had corrupted his Majesty for him to suggest such things. But as the dust settled on Nagasaki, the Voice of the Sacred Crane stating once and for all that victory was no longer possible was the real decider - and tellingly, during his surrender address, Hirohito only pointed to the Soviet invasion as the reason for this.
As stated, I've always been on the view that the atomic bombings are wholly unjustifiable. Nothing - no atrocities, contingencies, possibilities or plans - justifies the instant murder of tens of thousands of civilians, and the slow and painful deaths of tens of thousands more. Having been to Hiroshima, having stood on the Aioi Bridge and under the hypocenter, I cannot feel anything other than disgust that this was something that human beings did to their own.
At a time of war, people will applaud any story their government feeds them. Americans continue to swear blind that the bombs alone ended the war; that they were America's 'least abhorrent' choice. These are plainly false propositions, salves to uneasy consciences over what was actually done on 6 and 9 August 1945 when, under a summer sky, without warning, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children felt the sun fall on their heads.
-p510