WASHINGTON--A widely accepted notion in the United States is that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to accelerate Japan’s surrender in World War II. The “winning weapons” are believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives that would have been lost if the United States had invaded mainland Japan.
But one prominent U.S. scholar says this logic is sheer “mythology.”
“If you know that the Japanese are trying to surrender and looking for better surrender terms, why would you drop the atomic bomb if the invasion is not going to start for another three months?” Peter Kuznick, a professor of history at American University, said in a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun.
Challenging American “exceptionalism,” the professor and filmmaker Oliver Stone co-authored a book and a 10-part Showtime documentary series, both titled “The Untold History of the United States (2012-2013).”
Kuznick also plans to hold an atomic bomb exhibition starting on June 13 at the university to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs.
On the 50th anniversary, American University, in cooperation with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, co-hosted a similar event that displayed many artifacts that were originally supposed to be part of the "denied" Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit.
Excerpts of the interview follow:
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Question: First of all, I would like to ask about the American reaction toward your documentary and book, “The Untold History of the United States,” with Mr. Oliver Stone.
Peter KUZNICK: I would say that 85 percent of the reviews and comments have been extremely positive. We have had scholars say this is the most important work of history in the 21st century.
Then we have some people who hate it. You’ve got the conservatives, the right-wingers, and you’ve got a group that we call “Cold War liberals.” These are the people who brought us the war in Vietnam. It’s important to remember that the Vietnam War was much more a Democratic war than a Republican war.
“Cold War liberals” are people like Hillary Clinton. She would be a good example, somebody who is a Democrat and liberal on some policies, but supports every war there is.
But, the overall majority of reviews and commentaries have been very, very positive.
Q: What would be the background of that positive reaction? Because 20 years ago, veterans in particular were very much against the kind of discourse that challenges the “winning weapons” notion.
A: A lot of the people who were still active and vibrant 20 years ago, the ones who participated in World War II, have passed away. The intensity of the debate over the decision to drop the bombs seems to have been toned down a little bit. It’s really 50th anniversaries more than 70th anniversaries that offer the last chance that the generation involved in something has to shape its own legacy.
The problem they have with the bomb controversy is that these veterans who fought in World War II, who believe, truly, that World War II was a good war, and they believe that if you criticize any part of it then the whole narrative is going to fall apart and disintegrate.
What we tried to tell them is that it was the American soldiers who won the war, and not the atomic bomb, and that in some ways by giving some of the credit to the bomb, instead of to the hard efforts of American soldiers during the war, they are actually diminishing the contribution that the soldiers made. They are insulting the memory of the soldiers.
What they were taught was that they were about to invade Japan, and they would possibly have been killed in an invasion. They know the Japanese were fierce. They were resistant. Many were fanatics and were going to fights to the death, and many Americans would have been killed. That’s what they were told at the time. The American people believed it at the time. Still, a lot of people believe it, especially the older generation.
And so, they still believe that Harry Truman was a hero, and that he saved their lives. They don’t really know about the Soviet invasion. They don’t know about the surrender terms that the Japanese were seeking. They don’t know about Truman’s inflexibility when it came to changing the surrender terms. They only know the mythology and not the real history.
Q: As for the military perspective, I went to the Navy Museum at the Navy Yard, and I was very surprised to find a section about World War II. The explanation about A-bombs said that the destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 135,000 people, had little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on the ninth of August, fulfilling a promise at the Yalta Conference in February, changed their minds.
A: It is interesting because many U.S. naval leaders at the time said that. You had Adm. King and you had Adm. Nimitz, and they both spoke out against the atomic bombing in 1945. King said it was not necessary, militarily, and Nimitz was even stronger in his condemnation.
You also had Adm. Leahy, who was Truman’s chief of staff. Adm. Leahy made the strongest comments against the bomb and said it was barbaric. He said Truman wanted to kill as many women and children as he could.
Q: Have you ever heard of this kind of a change in mind-set in military circles?
A: No. That’s why I am so surprised that they would say that so clearly and so directly and so accurately. It’s not the American view yet, but the fact that this museum says that is worth exploring further. If you go to the Udvar-Hazy Annex to the Air and Space Museum, you don’t see any discussion like that. It’s just a celebration of the Enola Gay. That’s the Smithsonian Annex near Dulles Airport.
Q: From your perspective, what was the real intention or goal of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
A: I think Truman was hoping that it would speed up the Japanese surrender. He wanted to get the war over with, if he could, before the Russians got in and got what the U.S. promised them at Yalta, the concessions. He thought if he could keep the Russians from getting concessions that would be good.
You have to remember that the Soviet leaders understood the situation better than anybody. The Japanese Supreme War Council decided in May to approach the Soviets to try and see if they could help to get Japan better surrender terms. They sent former Prime Minister Koki Hirota to meet with Yakov Malik, the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo.
Former Prime Minister Hirota went to see Yakov Malik a couple of times in early June, and Malik concluded that the Japanese were desperate to surrender. So, Stalin knew that. And so, they knew that the atomic bombings weren’t necessary to end the war. So, the reaction among the Soviet leaders, when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima, was that the real target was the Soviet Union. It wasn’t Japan.
Leslie Groves said, “There was never from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this project any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and the project was conducted on that basis.”
Q: From your perspective, the myth of the winning weapon has been challenged by other scholars, that the Soviet factor was more decisive.
A: Yes, but Truman knew that. The important thing to realize is how well Truman knew that. He said he was going to Potsdam for one reason: to make sure that Russia was coming into the war. When he got Stalin’s agreement, he says, “Stalin will be in the Jap war by August 15th, ‘fini Japs’ when that occurs.”
He said that the Japanese would be finished when the Soviets entered the war. So he knows that the Russian entry is going to be decisive.
American intelligence was saying that. If you look at American intelligence reports from April 11th or July 2nd or the report to the Joint Chiefs for the week of the Potsdam meeting, they are all very explicit. They say that if the Soviets come into the war, the war is over. The Japanese will know that there is no point in resisting any longer.
We knew that because we had been intercepting Japanese cables. We had broken the code. The U.S. knew that the Japanese dreaded the thought of the Soviets coming into the war, and that they did, and that the Japanese would recognize that they had no chance.
The thing is that Truman understood that the Japanese were trying to find an honorable way to surrender. Truman refers to the intercepted July 18th telegram as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.” So he knew this, and everybody around him knew this.
Q: They knew, but they wanted to use the A-bombs.
A: They wanted to use it. Because, look at the logic. We dropped the bombs on August 6th and on August 9th to prevent an invasion that’s not going to start for two or three months. So, what is the logic there? If you know that the Japanese are trying to surrender and looking for better surrender terms, why would you drop the atomic bomb if the invasion is not going to start for another three months. You can’t say that, really. It defies logic to say that this was dropped in order to prevent an invasion.
Q: But after the war, they totally covered up those kinds of challenges toward the winning weapon idea? Does this notion still work among the American public? Or are they starting to wonder?
A: No, the American people don’t think very much for themselves, unfortunately. They are not critical. They are not thinking about these kinds of issues. They should be thinking. They should be questioning, but it is hard to get them to focus and to concentrate.
That’s why when Oliver Stone and I go around the country, the episode we usually show is our episode about the atomic bombings, because we think that that is so central.
Q: What happened to the American education system?
A: That was one of the things that motivated Oliver Stone to want to do this project with me. He read what his daughter’s high school textbook said about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was terrible. He knows what most high school students are being taught. What most high school students are learning is a defense of the atomic bombings.
Q: Still, I understand that during the George W. Bush era, they didn’t want to talk about that so-called revisionist discourse. But under the Obama administration, he is supposed to promote that counterargument.
A: I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. But Obama, to his credit, actually does care about these issues. He’s been anti-nuclear for a long time. He marched in 1982 in Central Park for the nuclear freeze.
So Obama, when he was in college, was, I think, in favor of nuclear abolition. In his famous Prague speech in the spring of 2009, he said some interesting things. He said that we need to abolish nuclear weapons. It was a powerful speech.
Unfortunately, he said that the United States, however, won’t be the first country to do so. The United States will probably be the last country to do so. He talks about the need for a deterrent.
But he said that the United States has a special responsibility to lead the struggle because the United States is the only country that ever dropped atomic bombs in warfare. That is at least an admission. In the beginning of his administration, when we had more faith in him, some of us pushed very hard for him to come to Hiroshima with us.
Q: Is it still possible?
A: It is still possible, but a lot of people have demanded that if he goes he should apologize to the hibakusha. I don’t think he is going to apologize. It would still be very controversial in the United States for him to go. The only American president who has ever been to Hiroshima was Jimmy Carter. This was not while he was in office. It was after he was in office.
Obama should go, but he should go there and make a real commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons. If you look at his programs, he makes it sound like he is against nuclear weapons, but the reality is that he has called for modernizing America’s nuclear arsenals. People have estimated that it is going to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years to do what Obama has planned. So, Obama has certainly been hypocritical, calling for the abolition, but acting the opposite.
Q: From June 13th, you will have the A-Bomb Exhibition at American University, with atomic bomb panels painted by Mr. and Mrs. Maruki. Why now? What is your goal?
A: I deal with this issue all the time. This has been my passion for the last 20 years. There are two reasons why we’re doing it here, at American University, now. One is that it is the 20th anniversary of the 1995 exhibit that we did at American University with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--actually the first overseas exhibits those A-bomb museums had every done. And secondly, because it is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings.
The younger generation is much more critical of nuclear weapons. Americans, overall, right now, are tired of war. After the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and the fighting in Syria and now Yemen, Americans are war-weary. The American people have had enough of war, enough of fighting and killing. So, I think a lot of people would look at this with an open mind. That is all I ask for, is to have a chance to reach them.
I find that the students are very interested in the subject, but they are not very knowledgeable. They don’t really know. I asked a group of students, about 20 undergraduates, the other day when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima--and not a single one knew the date.
In the past, some of the students would always know August 6th, but in this group none of them did. I am finding that the students are becoming less knowledgeable on a lot of subjects as we move further away from them. So to them, the atomic bomb is the distant past, 70 years ago. Their grandfathers were their age back then. Well even their great grandfathers were their age. That’s a problem.
You’ve got the Abe administration committed to whitewashing history and sanitizing history, and misleading the public about history. In the United States, the presidents whitewash history by perpetuating certain myths. When Obama greeted the troops coming home from Iraq at Fort Bragg, he said: “What makes you different from armies in other countries is that you go over there without any intention of trying to get oil or wealth or land. We just do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
This is about American exceptionalism, American altruism, and American benevolence, which the American people still buy into, to some extent. There is a lot more questioning of it now than there used to be. The belief in American exceptionalism is a lot stronger among the Republicans than it is among the Democrats in the United States.
Q: What kind of message would you like to convey through the exhibition?
A: The crucial lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the atomic bombs put the human species on a glide path to extinction. Truman knew he was opening the door to annihilating all life on this planet when he dropped those atomic bombs. We can’t go on giving the Trumans or Bushes or Obamas or Putins or other leaders veto power over the continued existence of our species. And that is the message that Oliver Stone and I are trying desperately to convey.
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Peter Kuznick, professor of history at American University, is a New York native. He was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and remains active in anti-war and nuclear abolition efforts. In 1995, he founded American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute, which he directs. Every summer, since 1995, he has taken institute students on a study-abroad class to Kyoto, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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