Jonny's Reviews > Hiroshima Nagasaki

I can see that Paul Ham's examination of the Manhattan Project, the atomic attacks on the two titular cities and the grim aftermath of the bombings would likely polarize opinion.

The central argument of the book is that the justification for the dropping of the atomic bombs, that they brought the war to an end, is a fallacy. Indeed, even the expected capitulation of the Japanese government under the threat of a rain of atomic munitions was fatally flawed.

Ham argues, with some authority, that a national government which expected its soldiers to take on tanks with pole mines, whose trainee pilots were intended to finish their careers as guided missiles, and who failed to bat an eyelid at the incineration of thousands of its citizens every night, would hardly be likely to surrender just because cities were being annihilated in atomic blasts.

Indeed Mr Ham has very little positive to say about the USAAF's efforts over the Japanese Home Islands in particular. Curtis LeMay's firebombing policy, it's argued, for all it's fire and fury, had no great effect on the Japanese will or ability to resist because the Japanese war economy by this point simply didn't exist. All the raids did was cause human misery and prolong the racist nature of the Pacific war.

"LeMay’s concentration on civilian destruction preserved much of the nation’s war infrastructure: the visible rail network, the Kokura arsenal and vital coal ferry between Hokkaido and Honshu were still operating in mid-1945. So too were several major industrial centres. Their ‘strangulation’ would have defeated Japan ‘more efficiently’ than ‘individually destroying Japan’s cities’, according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey. LeMay was ordered not to do so, in line with his personal mission to destroy Japanese civilian morale. In the broader picture, the US naval blockade as well as Fleet Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey’s carrier aircraft – which attacked Japanese military targets with withering accuracy in July 1945 – destroyed Japan’s capacity to wage war more effectively than LeMay’s indiscriminate air offensive. That offensive may be judged a moral and military failure."

In the aftermath of the bombings, Ham further expands on this theme as he describes American medical and scientific teams fail to provide any medical relief for the survivors of the bombings, and in fact cause further harm by stealing any material gathered by Japanese doctors on the emerging radiation poisoning cases.

"There was never any pretence that the foreign medical teams entering Hiroshima and Nagasaki were there to ease the people’s suffering. Navy Secretary James Forrestal outlined their experimental role with crystalline clarity in a note to Truman on 18 November 1945. The study of the effect of radiation ‘on personnel’ – that is, Japanese civilians – he wrote, had started as soon as possible after Japan’s capitulation, under the auspices of the army and navy and the Manhattan Project: ‘Preliminary surveys involve about 14,000 Japanese who were exposed to the radiation of atomic fission. It is considered that the group and others yet to be identified offer a unique opportunity for the study of the medical and biological effects of radiation which is of utmost importance to the United States.’"

The argument that the Pacific War was ended not by the Bombs but by the Russian invasion of Manchuria is supported by his description of the political manoeuvring by the Japanese government in trying to broker a peace deal and is mirrored by the double dealings in Europe.

I enjoyed the book, having come to it looking for a different interpretation of events, wanting my preconceptions to be challenged and, although there was a false start, this is what I got. While I didn't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions reached, and was a little concerned by some of the references quoted - in particular his use of David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden when describing the European bombing offensives, I was generally carried by the narrative and the debate. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the birth of nuclear science and the workings of the Manhattan Project. The chapters dealing with the two raids are harrowing and surprisingly quite short, and although I found little new in the bombing of Hiroshima I learned a lot more about the effects of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Very much recommended to anyone interested in the war in the Far East or the start of the Cold War, or twentieth century history in general, or if you're comfortable with well written challenges to the orthodox history. As The Onion put it in The Onion Presents: Our Dumb Century, it may well have been a case of "Nagasaki bombed 'just for the Hell of it'".