The nuclear attacks on the mainly civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 are well-researched and much debated. The postwar US narrative is remarkable, because it openly concedes that the bombs were deliberately used to kill a large number of civilians (something usually considered to be a war crime) but justifies it in terms of military advantage and potentially lower fatalities for the US. In this article, I argue that this narrative is not only historically and logically flawed, but also deeply revolting, because it leads to justifying all kinds of war crimes and discarding international humanitarian law altogether. Since the two main “critical” narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are plagued by biases of their own and completely miss this crucial point, I propose a principled yet not moralizing reassessment of the nuclear bombings: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were understandable in the context of total war, in which moral and legal standards had steadily been eroded, but they were war crimes nonetheless, and as such no longer justifiable. Nothing is to be lost by the US or the West by embracing this reality.
Introduction
On 6 August 1945, a nuclear bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing around 70,000 civilians. Three days later, on 9 August 1945, another nuclear bomb (of a different type) was detonated over Nagasaki, claiming around 50,000 civilian lives while inflicting little military damage. The attacks were led on cities that had hitherto been purposefully left “untouched” by the ongoing campaign of napalm bombings of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe between March and June, which killed over 200,000 civilians and left millions homeless.
The nuclear attacks had been prepared for months – with the explicit goal of creating carnage among civilians to achieve maximal psychological damage. How come that such barbarous acts have rarely been condemned in the Western world, when much more limited war crimes in Vietnam or Iraq were? How come that, 75 years after the fact, Americans living in peace and having nothing to fear from Japan still mostly support the bombings? How come that the voluntary obliteration of two cities is often equated to negative effects of nuclear testing?
This article is an attempt to retrace, dissect and criticize the main narratives surrounding Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the West, which I believe to be extremely unsatisfactory. The stage is set with a chapter reconstructing the decisions leading to the nuclear attacks – which, we will see, were not at all seen to pose a moral dilemma, but rather considered to be a natural evolution of the war. The second chapter retraces and deconstructs the official US narrative, its rationalization and metamorphosis of a war crime into an act of benevolence. After an interlude, which shows the parallels with other psychological warfare campaigns, such as German terror against civilians during the Second World War, the fourth chapter unveils the fundamental issue with the justification of the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and shows that accepting it leads to disregarding the laws governing warfare altogether. In the fifth chapter, I will review the two main alternative narratives – the “revisionist“ and the “nuclear disarmament” narratives – and shed light on their shortcomings and underlying hypocrisies. I will conclude by proposing a principled and yet humble reassessment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in line with international law and doing away with double standards. An appendix arguing for the classification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes from a purely legalistic perspective is attached for the interested reader.
1. Genesis of a war crime
Few war crimes have been prepared as thoroughly and openly as the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The entire genesis leading to the events of August 1945 is laid out in memoirs, memoranda, reports and minutes of meetings. It offers enough material for several monographs, but the main story is strikingly simple. Using nuclear weapons on civilian targets was essentially the only option taken into consideration, by politicians, generals and (most) scientists alike.
The US nuclear programme was tasked with designing, testing and making nuclear warheads ready for battle faster than Germany. It turned out that the Manhattan Project had no real competitor, as neither Germany nor Japan had managed to establish promising nuclear programmes. Nevertheless, by 1944, both the bomb casings and bomber designs had been developed and in early 1945, the last technical issues in the design of the two bomb types had been solved. In May, Germany surrendered, leaving only Japan as a possible target for nuclear weapons. By that time, it was completely obvious that the Japanese nuclear programme posed no danger.
Yet the bombs had been developed to be used; and the question was how, not if. To address this question, a “Target Committee” consisting of military and scientific representatives was established to select suitable targets on 27 April 1945. At that time, the strategy of targeting Japanese civilians with napalm bombs had already been in use for over a month, causing the most deadly bombing in human history on 10 March 1945, when around 100,000 civilians were killed in Tokyo. They were indiscriminate in nature and did not directly target military buildings, but were built on the premise that civilian destruction out of proportion with the military objective was perfectly acceptable and actually a positive side-effect by crushing enemy morale.
In line with such indiscriminate (euphemistically called “strategic“) bombings, the Target Committee limited its choice to large urban areas that had previously not been bombed, so that nuclear destruction would be sufficiently impressive by itself. These areas were “preserved” by the Air Force until August, a clear indication of their limited military value. Contrary to the fire bombings, the nuclear bombs were designed with civilian destruction and psychological terror as the primary goal, with military destruction being a positive side effect.
The target list was modified a number of times, the most important change being the removal of Kyoto from the list. Kyoto was spared not because of concern for the loss of life, but because Secretary of War Stimson had by chance visited and liked the city and thought destroying it would risk bringing Japan closer to the USSR after the war. Nagasaki was added to the list in late July and bombed because of bad weather over Kokura. The decision when and which target to drop the second bomb on was left to lower-ranking officers of the Tinian air base.
In addition to the Target Committee, an “Interim Committee” led by Robert Oppenheimer was supposed to advise the military from a scientific point of view. It could have been some sort of conscience of the Manhattan project. Instead, it did not even try to consider other options than the most destructive use of the weapons and bluntly recommended (perhaps in a bid to justify the Manhattan Project itself, given that there was no more competing nuclear program and that the war was about to be won):
“[…] that the weapon be used against Japan at the earliest opportunity, that it be used without warning, and that it be used on a dual target, namely, a military installation or war plant surrounded by or adjacent to homes or other buildings most susceptible to damage.” (Notes by the Interim Committee, 21 June 1945)
The military, political and scientific deciders, had long prepared to use the nuclear bombs as fast as possible and in the most “effective” way. And in the age of fire bombings, effectiveness was measured in lives taken and houses destroyed. A few US scientists around Leo Szilard saved their conscience by pointing out the numerous alternatives of using nuclear bombs in ways that would spare civilians and nonetheless elicit a massive psychological response. They were totally ignored. Some other factors also clearly played a role and Stimson throughout May and June 1945 noted in his diary that using nuclear bombs would confer an advantage to the US against the USSR.
On 16 July 1945, the first nuclear test was successfully conducted, and by the end of July, during the Potsdam conference, the bombs were being prepared for use. The ultimatum on Japan of 26 July 1945 threatens Japan with complete destruction if it did not unconditionally surrender.
On 6 August, Hiroshima was bombed. The Japanese took around a day to grasp the extent of the damage. On 7 August, President Truman released a written statement in which it was announced (he did not write it) that a novel bomb had been used. On 9 August, he made a radio statement including a very curious claim, given the selection of the target and the death toll consisting of 90% civilians:
“The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” (Truman on 9 August 1945)
There is a very convincing argument to be made (by looking at previous diary entries and even more categorical drafts of this statement) that Truman (unlike any of the people involved in selecting the targets) really believed up to this point that the target had been primarily military, since he had left the selection process to Stimson and others. In any case, by the time the statement was made, the wheels were in motion and second bomb was already on its way to Nagasaki, because no provision to assess the damage of the first bomb (or the reaction of Japan!) before using the second had been made. Afterwards, Truman vetoed the use of further nuclear bombs without his explicit consent.
On 9 August, the USSR also declared war on Japan and started an offensive in China, something that had long been planned but potentially hastened by the bombing of Hiroshima. This factor and a number of other rapid evolutions seem as important in hastening Japanese surrender as the nuclear attacks themselves. On 15 August, Japan surrendered, opening the stage for the second act of the war crime – its discursive metamorphosis into an act of benevolence.
The fact that nuclear bombs (and quite possibly more than two) would be used on large civilian targets was a foregone conclusion for much of the military, political and scientific establishment as early as May 1945. There were multiple goals, including crushing Japanese morale and limiting the postwar influence of the USSR by ending the war rapidly, while moral reasoning played virtually no role. There is scant evidence that the decision makers thought one (or two) nuclear bombs would suffice to end the war.
2. A metamorphosis: from war crime to benevolence
The targeting of civilians in cities is a common war tactic and the Second World War is no exception, beginning with Japanese and German air raids and leading to Allied fire bombing campaigns on Germany and Japan. The nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, as we have seen, prepared using the same (a)moral compass as the fire bombings were. The novelty was the new tool and the prospect of a stronger psychological impact, which in turn led the decision makers to go one step further than indiscriminate bombings, carefully preparing attacks on hitherto preserved targets with little military relevance.
We should, however, not make the mistake to consider the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being completely exceptional in this regard; in fact, a great deal of war crimes are exclusively directed at civilians, such as strategic rape campaigns or the shooting of hostages to retaliate for resistance attacks. What makes the nuclear attacks unique is their aftermath, the way they were retold and justified, the narrative that still leads more than half of Americans to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a good, and exemplary decision, and not as a wrong, but understandable one. In this chapter, I want to dissect this incredible metamorphosis of a war crime.
Usually, a state or society has three options in dealing with its “own” war crimes or crimes against humanity after the fact. It can:
- Deny that the crimes happened, dismissing all evidence as some form of propaganda or conspiracy – e.g. “There was no Armenian genocide.”
- Acknowledge the existence of the war crime in question, but minimize its extent, justifying it by referring to war crimes committed by other sides (which are then often inflated in magnitude) – e.g. “The Srebrenica massacre was merely a response to attacks by Bosniaks.”
- Acknowledge the extent of the crime and accept taking some sort of responsibility for it. This rarely happens without strong external pressure and sufficient time to overcome internal resistance – e.g. “Germany bears responsibility for the Holocaust.”
As outlined above, the public US narrative of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki raids started off with Truman’s misunderstanding (or lie) that the first nuclear bomb was intended to “avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” From there, it might have developed into denial, overstating the military importance and military casualties; it might have turned into a game of weighing up atrocities against each other, trying to minimize the atomic bombings in light of the unbelievably atrocious Japanese war crimes; it could also have led to simply recognizing and apologizing for the unmistakeable intent to kill civilians to possibly gain a military advantage.
In the end, neither of these options materialized, but it is interesting to see how Truman himself went through different rationalisations of the attacks within a few days’ time. Before and immediately after Hiroshima, as we saw above, he claimed (and possibly thought) that Hiroshima was primarily a military target, which means there would be no need for any justification for the bombings whatsoever. However, at some point before 9 August (before or after the Nagasaki attack), he seemed to realize that the casualties were mostly civilian and starts justifying the damage done as a collateral damage. At this point, he did not claim that the nuclear bombs were necessary or indeed would end the war, but still candidly professed that the USSR invasion would be decisive (something absolutely absent from the story later to be told):
“For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary. It is my opinion that after the Russians enter into war the Japanese will very shortly fold up.” (Truman to Richard Russell on 9 August 1945)
On 11 August, Truman, responding to a plea to stop further bombings (he had done just that the day before), chooses another option, at least implicitly acknowledging the existence of the atrocity, but minimizing its significance by referring to Japanese war crimes and Japanese bestiality in general:
“Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.” (Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert on 11 August 1945)
This very first response to a critical voice represents a very interesting alternative narrative that was probably close to what Truman, but also many soldiers and a large part of the US population instinctively felt, given the terrible reports of Japanese war crimes, in particular against US prisoners of war. The Japanese had largely been dehumanized in the eyes of Americans, which for example also led to large-scale mutilations of Japanese war dead.
However, the narrative of retaliation did not establish itself, possibly simply because of the political imperative of making Japan a loyal ally in the beginning Cold War. Instead, Truman (and many others, such as Henry Stimson in his article ”The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”) would make the case as follows:
“I ordered the Atomic Bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a terrible decision. But I made it. And I made it to save 250,000 boys from the United States, and I’d make it again under similar circumstances.” (Truman to Mary Jane Truman on 12 April 1948)
Leaving aside that Truman claims responsibility for a decision that he really left to the bureaucratic war machinery, this is an entirely different narrative. Let me break the reasoning down, also pointing some implicit parts in brackets:
- There were two options in August 1945: nuclear attacks [of purely civil targets] or a full invasion of Japan.
- The number of fatalities of a nuclear attack was far lower than that of an invasion, with numbers between 250,000 and 500,000 being quoted.
- This trade-off led to a “terrible decision” [of committing two war crimes].
The reasoning is based upon distorted evidence and fallacious logic. First, of course, there were (as there always are!) more than just two possible options for the US in August 1945. Szilard and Franck had already laid out a number of alternatives that would similarly showcase the power of the new weapon. The possibility of striking a purely military base or an empty but prominent area (such as Tokyo Bay) come to mind, or a gap between the two bombings, to name only a few options. Besides the nuclear bomb, there was an additional diplomatic option of explicitly offering the emperor to remain after the Japanese surrender (which happened anyway).
Second, there was absolutely no certainty that the two nuclear attacks would actually end the war, and, as we saw, nobody made such a claim before the bombs were used. Portraying the Japanese surrender as a necessary consequence of the nuclear attacks is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. On 8 August, the adviser to Stimson on nuclear matters was unsure whether the war would soon end and on 10 August, Stimson was surprised when Japan offered to surrender. And maybe most strikingly and as we saw above, Truman himself – as late as 9 August! – considered that the Soviet offensive would be decisive
Third, the estimates of US casualties and fatalities were massively inflated after the fact to support the narrative at hand. In reality, the main military estimated US fatalities to tens of thousands for a complete invasion of Japan. The reality is that razing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was seen as potentially reducing US casualties by a significant amount. It is also to be noted that US fatalities during combat in the entire four-year war, on all theatres was around 292,000, less than purely civilian fatalities directly caused by US firebombings and nuclear bombings in half a year in Japan alone.
The moral rehabilitation of the war crime does not completely end here, as there is a popular extension of the narrative claiming that the nuclear bombings were, in fact, used benevolently. Since comparing the number of Japanese civilians who really died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the number US soldiers who might have died (under questionable assumptions) does not make for a very convincing moral argument, some have gone so far as to claim that the nuclear attacks had actually saved Japanese lives. Stimson takes this route in his 1947 article by comparing the casualties of the nuclear bomb and the ones that fire bombings (!) would have made. The wretchedness of this line of thought, which asks for gratitude for two US war crimes preventing other, even more deadly US war crimes, requires no further explanation.
To conclude the dissection of the main postwar justification for destroying civilian targets, it is interesting to also note how it shifts the suffering from the victims to the perpetrators. The civilians who were knowingly targeted, who endured pain, mutilation and destruction and often death are not viewed as the main victims of the bomb. Instead, it is the conscience of the likes of Truman and Stimson that seems to have suffered the most in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The decision, not the destruction is portrayed as “terrible”, thus perniciously directing our empathy towards the tragic heroes who carry their horrific fate, not towards the actual victims of their bombings.
War crimes are usually denied, minimized or recognized by the perpetrators, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were metamorphosed into perfectly justifiable acts, into war crimes of benevolence. Furthering the perversity, the suffering of the victims was transformed into the suffering of those who had to make that “terrible decision”.
3. Interlude: the efficacy of terror
At this point, I find it interesting to change the perspective and transpose the justification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into other contexts and other war crimes. By drawing parallels between the justification of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the rationale behind other war crimes, I do not in any way imply any sort of equality of guilt, for quantifying guilt is not the point of this essay. I simply wish to show where the logic behind the official US narrative would also have applied.
The first example is medieval and thus anachronistic, but still close enough for analogy to appear. The Mongol invasions of the 13th and 14th century led to the destruction of much of central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe. This destruction was not the result of pointless brutality, since the Mongols were not – as they are sometimes portrayed – uncivilized beasts, who revelled in slaughter and destruction for its own sake. The massacres (or enslavement) of civilian populations who did not surrender, the complete destruction of cities such as Baghdad, which was one of the jewels of the world, were strategically used to provide a clear military advantage. The Mongol war crimes were not gratuitous, but rationally devised to induce terror in civilian populations, and through them in political and military rulers. This psychological warfare was extremely successful and led to a great number of rapid surrenders, accelerated many Mongol military campaigns and reduced Mongol casualties. In a way, it hastened peace (on the Mongols’ terms, of course).
The parallels to the narrative used to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be obvious and a Mongol warlord could use exactly the same justification as the US for their razing of cities and massacre of civilian populations – it indeed served military goals, reduced Mongol fatalities and hastened the end of the war. Obliteration for peace.
As a second example, let us consider a war crime contemporary to Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the execution of civilian hostages in retaliation for insurgent attacks, which was extensively used by occupying Nazi forces in Europe throughout the war. The aim, once again, was genuinely military. It was believed that killing a disproportionate number of civilians – 100 civilians for every German casualty – would discourage attacks from the resistance. The rational underpinning of such war crimes becomes clear when noting the adaptations of the strategy in light of its failures, which finally led to it being rescinded in 1943. The Nazi wretchedness was a calculated one; its goal was to rapidly end the war and limit German casualties. Quoting from the relevant judgement of the Nuremberg case:
“It is apparent from the evidence of these defendants that they considered military necessity, a matter to be determined by them, a complete justification of their acts.” (Judgement of the United States Military Tribunal (n 19))
The reasoning of German military commanders in occupied territories was extremely similar to Truman’s and Stimson’s justification devised after the nuclear bombs were used. The parallel is particularly striking, because from the German perspective in 1941 as well as from the US perspective in 1945, the war had essentially been won and was only dragged out by fanatics fighting a bloody guerilla warfare, who needed to be crushed rapidly. The best method was seen to be through psychological warfare and the murder of civilians. All of this was – just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki – genuinely intended to rapidly establish peace (on the victor’s terms, of course).
Again, I want to emphasize that the Mongol mass murders and German retaliatory massacres are differ in many ways from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; US warfare in general was certainly not morally comparable to the Mongol or Nazi warfare. And yet the logic behind these atrocities is exactly the same as the logic used after the fact for the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: hastening the end of the war, avoiding casualties, making peace on the terms wished for. It is a justification that opens Pandora’s box of degrading international humanitarian law (the law of warfare) to a mere recommendation, as I will discuss in the next chapter.
4. Exceptionalism and the disregard for international humanitarian law
As the historical examples have shown, the main issue with the official US narrative about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not its distortion of reality, its incoherent logic or even its particularly unpleasant reversal of victimhood. The fundamental problem resides in its basic depravity, in it negating that the US is subjected to any limits in conducting warfare.
Let us leave aside the distorted facts and logical non sequiturs and assume for the sake of argument that razing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the ground really was the best way to minimize US fatalities and make sure the war would end. There is no question that the nuclear bombings were war crimes, at the very least by today’s standards (see the Appendix if you are into international law). So the US narrative – until today! – entails that certain war crimes can be appropriate military tools.
One could object that the justification of the nuclear bombings applies only to very specific war crimes for which there is a sizeable military benefit, which would somehow make them morally justifiable. But this is not the case, since the Mongol and Nazi examples showed that many atrocious war crimes – that few would be tempted to defend from today’s perspective – have a very significant military value and are easily morally justified from the perpetrators’ side.
The problem runs even deeper. There is a very common misunderstanding that only a tiny fraction of war crimes procure a military advantage, while it is quite the opposite: the vast majority of war crimes is caused by military goals. Instead of the cities razed by the Mongols or civilian mass executions in World War II, I could have mentioned strategic rape campaigns (in many wars), the massacre of Srebrenica, the starvation of Leningrad, chemical bombings of Kurdistan, torture of prisoners in Iraq etc. All of them included acts of extreme brutality, sometimes amplified by a few sadists, but at the core, they were caused by military decisions, framed in terms of providing a significant military advantage. Justifying the war crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of their possible positive military effects opens the door to justifying just about any war crime.
The basic tenet of international humanitarian law, codified from the 1864 Geneva Convention through the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949 with their additional Protocols is precisely to outlaw a certain number of practices regardless of the context and of their military value:
“The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.” (Hague Convention II (1899), Article 22)
Some forms of warfare are simply off limits and must not be justified through their supposedly positive consequences. It then becomes clear that the entire argument made in defence of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is based on a rejection of this basic principle, in a certain sense, a rejection of international humanitarian law (the law of warfare – jus in bello) altogether.
In Truman’s and Stimson’s fable about why they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the laws of warfare is no more than an advice, at least for the US. This position has not significantly been modified and continues to enjoy bipartisan support, which appears to have other concrete consequences, such as the US not ratifying the Additional Protocol I or violently rejecting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for its own citizens, while allowing the Security Council to refer war crimes committed by others to it. I believe that the postwar narrative on Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have played an important role in elaborating this doctrine of US exceptionalism: that it is not really bound by international law.
The official US narrative used to justify the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is incompatible with the very foundation of international humanitarian law. Framing military operations only in terms of weighing military costs and benefits, means that belligerents can use unlimited means. Most – perhaps all – war crimes can be justified in the exact same way as Truman and Stimson justified bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The similarity of the US credo with the 19th century German doctrine according to which “military success takes precedence over the obligation to observe law” (“Kriegsraison geht vor Kriegsmanier”) is striking. It goes without saying that this doctrine was denounced after both World Wars by the Allies as being unacceptable. There is not much to add to the Nuremberg tribunal’s judgement regarding the execution of civilian hostages, except for the hope that the universality of the argument may one day be recognized:
“We do not concur in the view that the rules of warfare are anything less than they purport to be. Military necessity or expediency do not justify a violation of positive rules. […] the rules of International Law must be followed even if it results in the loss of a battle or even a war. Expediency or necessity cannot warrant their violation.” (Judgement of the United States Military Tribunal (n 19))
To conclude this chapter, let me briefly deal with two objections that could be raised against my critique of the reasoning behind main US narrative. The first one is that certain methods of warfare might be justified when used by the right side and that the US certainly was on the right side of World War II. Being on the “right” side would thus justify committing acts that would be considered war crimes if employed by the “wrong” side. I do not question the fact that, broadly speaking, the US was fighting a “just war” in World War II. However, one of the causes of US superiority was precisely that they were fighting against enemies who had decided not to abide by the rules of warfare. The moral superiority of the Allies was grounded in their greater adherence to international humanitarian law. It would be absurd to let this superiority justify disregarding the very rules constituting it. Additionally, justifying war crimes by being on the “right” is just as dangerous as justifying them for giving a military advantage, since every warring party naturally considers itself to be on the “right” side of history.
A second, more serious, concern is that my defence of international humanitarian law and condemnation in principle of war crimes is theoretical and does not withstand the “reality” of war. This is a valid point on the descriptive level, and as I tried to outline in the historical part of the essay, the context of the erosion of moral and legal standards throughout the war explains why civilian targets were chosen much better than the subsequent narrative of a careful calculation designed to minimize overall casualties. In an otherwise quite unconvincing article the physicist Karl Compton candidly states his world-view:
“Was the use of the atomic bomb inhuman? All war is inhuman. […] Compare [it] with the results of two B-29 incendiary raids over Tokyo. One of these raids killed about 125,000 people, the other nearly 100,000.” (Karl Compton, 1946)
Compton reveals how much moral standards had decayed by the end of the war, how, by that point, the US’s own war crimes had led to justifying dropping the nuclear bomb, garnered with the fatalistic platitude “all war is inhuman”. There is no question that the reality of war has the tendency to produce deviations from legal and moral standards. But this is merely a descriptive statement of the psychology behind the war crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not a normative one, not a justification of any sort. It explains that Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed acceptable by the standards of 1945, when all means were deemed appropriate to end the war, but also allows for a reconsideration of the attacks after the war, held to peaceable norms.
This differentiation between understanding and judging would open the door for a relatively painless shift in the US narrative. It could continue to express empathy for the motives of the actors who decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, given the difficult context in which they made the decision, while at the same recognizing that these were war crimes by any reasonable definition, that the real victims were Japanese civilians, and that the US should not be judged by other standards than other nations. Unfortunately, since any change in position would be domestically framed as a “weakness”, and a betrayal of veterans there is now little to expect from US officials in this regard.
“In the United States, the ‘collective memory’ of World War II sees the war as ‘our finest hour.” […] If we did some terrible things, they had to be done; the Germans and Japanese brought the punishment they received – their well-deserved punishment, many members of the war generation would say – on themselves.” (Sherwin (1995))
5. Another metamorphosis: a war crime as the original sin
Before dealing with alternative narratives and their shortcomings, it is instructive to summarize the core of the main argument developed in the last chapter. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were predominantly civilian targets, which makes their deliberate bombing a war crime. The subsequent US justification that the nuclear attacks might have reduced US fatalities opens the door to justifying war crimes in general, since most of them have military goals. The US narrative is thus based on the premise that international law is irrelevant in times of war, or at least does not concern the US.
This line of reasoning relies on very broadly accepted facts and is completely independent of the question whether the nuclear bomb actually shortened the war or the controversy about the “real” intention of using nuclear weapons. Finally, the fact that the bomb was nuclear is not in principle relevant – the point is that massive civilian destruction was traded for a psychological military advantage.
Strangely enough, most voices critical of the Truman and Stimson narrative ignore this line of reasoning and focus on peripheral points supporting specific political aims. The left-leaning “revisionist“ camp is generally suspicious of US foreign policy and focusses on the intentions behind using the bombs, building an equally teleological (and shaky) alternative story intent on showing that the attacks did nothing to end war and that therefore, the US used nuclear bombs only to start the Cold War in a strong position. The official narrative of essentially benevolent US intentions is replaced with a counter-narrative of essentially malevolent US intentions, ignoring the question of the universality of the prohibition of war crimes as independent of their military value.
The “nuclear disarmament” narrative about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was instigated by scientists opposing the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, enjoys an even larger visibility, inter alia through its “Doomsday Clock” and reflects much of Western public opinion, particularly in countries without nuclear weapons. It frames Hiroshima and Nagasaki in quasi-religious terms: as an original sin that led to a world with nuclear weapons, a sin leading all of us to doom. In this narrative, it does not really matter whether the bomb was used on a military or civilian target, with or without warning, once or twice. The main point is that nuclear weapons were used, and the genie let out of the box.
The question is then shifted from the (un)justifiability of war crimes to the (un)justifiability of military nuclear programmes, which are supposed to make nuclear destruction more likely. There is certainly a good point to be made for nuclear disarmament and I do not deny that unintentional nuclear holocaust has been a real threat to mankind, but framing Hiroshima and Nagasaki only in terms of an arms race, conflating a war crime with subsequent nuclear testing betrays intellectual dishonesty and shaky moral standards.
By portraying the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as inevitable consequences of nuclear armament, the disarmament narrative ironically exonerates those who made the choice to bomb civilians from their responsibility. Hiroshima and Nagasaki undergo a metamorphosis from concrete war crimes into abstract symbols of a dark nuclear age, which mankind has to be saved from.
The pinnacle of this disturbing hodgepodge of all matters “nuclear” can currently be witnessed in the promotion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which aims to ban nuclear weapons altogether. The aim might be sensible, but since no nuclear power has ratified it, its proponents have to make up for its hollowness with bombastic public campaigns, in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki tend to feature prominently. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a main driving force of the international alliance, goes so far as to claim that the treaty is meant to honour the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
“[The] Nuclear Ban Treaty is a rallying call, an advocacy tool and a basis for progress towards nuclear disarmament. The most meaningful way to honor the Hibakusha is to answer their appeal for a nuclear weapons free world and make concrete progress towards nuclear disarmament – the TPNW, the first globally applicable multilateral agreement to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons, is one of them.” (ICAN, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear Ban)
This narrative is warped, since the horrors which the “Hibakusha” suffered through would have been prevented with nuclear bombs developed (possibly even employed) but the US simply abiding by the basic rules of warfare. Promoting the nuclear disarmament agenda by portraying the victims of a war crime as abstract victims of nuclear armament – without ever mentioning the illegal nature of the bombings themselves – is a tasteless distortion of history. It might make sense to refer to victims of nuclear testing to justify the urgency for nuclear disarmament, but it might be that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just sells better.
Similar manipulations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are used by a number of states that promote the TPNW, and Austria is unfortunately no exception. Again, what particularly bothers me is the cowardice of this PR-oriented foreign policy, which happily uses Hiroshima and Nagasaki as rhetorical tools to open portentous speeches meant to oppose nuclear weapons but at the same time shies away from mentioning the revolting choice of civilian targets and from using the two appropriate words: “war crime”.
Those – often Western – states passionately arguing for the TPNW are putting on a carefully choreographed show to avoid overstepping the limits of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki narrative. They therefore do not really bother the US, which is neither bound to nor cares about talk of nuclear disarmament. Question nuclear weapons in general? Fine. Question the justification for Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Better not, it might lead to a backlash.
To conclude this chapter and essay, I would like to plead for another narrative about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a narrative that tries to understand the specific conditions leading to the bombings in 1945, that does not absolve Japan from facing its own terrible history, that does not claim to give definitive answers to questions which have none (did the bombs end the war?), that does not focus on vilifying the US, but that simply recognizes two facts: (i) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes; (ii) war crimes must not be justified because they provide military gains or shorten wars, even when employed by the “right” side.
An honest, balanced assessment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not impossible. It is possible to try to understand the specific context of total war and its erosion of moral and legal standards, to avoid the trap of minimizing Japanese war crimes and vilifying the US, while also remaining firmly committed to the principle that war crimes never can be justified by projected military gains, even when committed by the “right” side. There is nothing to be lost in such a reappraisal, only a great deal humility and decency to be regained.
I believe the global public opinion is, albeit very slowly, moving towards readiness for this truth. Retelling the story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki differently will not lead to unnecessary trials or reparations, will not open new wounds nor tarnish the West’s reputation. There is nothing to be lost, but the truth – and a great deal of decency – to be regained by being principled and renouncing double standards.
Appendix: a legal perspective
In this appendix, I wish to dispel the myth according to which the nuclear bombings of August 1945 should not, at least in a strict legal sense, be considered as war crimes. It is not, as we have seen, the main justification for the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but is sometimes used to add a veneer of legality to standard narrative justifying the use of nuclear bombs on civilian targets laid out above.
According to the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, civilian populations are afforded extensive protection: “Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives” (Art. 48). More specifically, “indiscriminate attacks” and attacks with the primary purpose of “spreading terror” are outlawed (Art. 51). To avoid any misunderstanding, the Convention explicitly mentions that bombings such as the fire bombings of Japan or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered as indiscriminate:
“[…] an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” (1977 Additional Protocol I, Art. 51)
A number of further provisions also prohibit detonating nuclear bombs over cities, such as the prohibition of targeting cultural and religious objects (Art. 53) or the prohibition of causing widespread and long-term natural damage (Art. 55), so there can be no debate that, at the very least by the standards of the 1977 Additional Protocol, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime on several accounts.
The only – and purely legalistic – trick used to escape this qualification is to claim that the nuclear bombings of 1945 cannot be called war crimes because at the time there was no explicit international prohibition of such acts. As we have already seen, this defence is patently absurd, coming from the US, the very country that developed tribunals and laws – the “Nuremberg Charter” – after the fact to condemn war criminals. The entire judicial system set up after the Second World War to try Axis defendants in Nuremberg and Tokyo, was rightly built on the premise that there was no need for explicit Treaty prohibitions to try war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that customary international law was sufficient.
Refusing to call the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes entails refusing to accept the legitimacy of the principles of the trials of Nuremberg and Tokyo – ultimately also refusing to accept that the Holocaust could be called crimes against humanity.
Claiming that dropping nuclear bombs on cities was no war crime is thus just as ridiculous as claiming that there could be no crime of genocide before the the 1948 Genocide Convention had entered in force. The US has not only itself created such a retro-active mechanism directly after the Second World War, but is has also not shied away from applying retroactive qualifications for much older crimes against humanity, such as the Armenian genocide, which was condemned by extensive majority in Congress in 2019.
Moreover, it can be shown that nuclear bombings also violated a number of Treaty Law provisions already in force in 1945, such as Articles 22, 23 and 27 of the 1907 Hague Convention, which forbid employing arms “calculated to cause unnecessary suffering”, as well as customary international law, which by 1945 already reflected most of the provisions of the 1977 Additional Protocol cited above, that had been included in the 1923 Draft Hague Rules on Air Warfare and the 1938 Amsterdam Draft Convention. In 1963 a Japanese court considered this body of evidence and indeed ruled that the bombings were a crime under international law. Interestingly, the court was very measured in its judgement, acknowledging that this “total war“ against Japan was of a special nature, while carefully laying out why this circumstancd alone did not justify what it calls “blind aerial bombardment“ behind enemy front lines.
Beyond these legal intricacies, it is important to note that the US itself recognized the prohibition of indiscriminate bombing as reflecting international law before and during the Second World War. In 1937, it protested against the Japanese bombing of non-combatant population: “any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large populace engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to principles of law and of humanity“; in 1939, President Roosevelt urgently appealed to all sides to “under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities” and up to 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson publicly assured that “there has been no change in the policy against conducting ‘terror bombings’ against civilian populations”. As we saw, even after the nuclear attacks, the President somewhat bizarrely claimed that “we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians“, which was not true but does indicate that he considered that there was rules of warfare applying to nuclear bombs. All these statements show unequivocally that the US considered indiscriminate bombings to be contrary to customary international law throughout the Second World War.
“One other thing LeMay said, and I heard him say it myself: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.” On that last point, I think he was right. We would have been. But what makes one’s conduct immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” (Robert McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 3 August 2003)
To summarize, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are textbook examples of war crimes. The prohibition of indiscriminate bombings was already in force in 1945 and had been repeatedly recognized by the US, which therefore cannot claim being a “persistent objector” to the rule. If we hold it to the more stringent account of subsequent developments in international humanitarian law, which is what the US does for other war crimes, they constitute a violation of an even wider array of norms belonging to international humanitarian law.