WWII Articles

The nation was plunged into war by the worst military disaster in its history--the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Caught flatfooted, the United States quickly whipped itself into fighting shape. War production revived the depression-drugged economy, stimulating the growth of numerous "boom towns," many of them in the South and West. A panicky government interned some 110,000 Japanese-Americans in so-called relocation centers, and a few race riots involving blacks and Chicanos blotted the wartime record, but for the most part the United States' many racial and ethnic minorities were willing and welcome partners in the war effort. Millions of new defense-related jobs created unprecedented employment opportunities for women. As the mighty U.S. economic machine went into high gear, the tide of battle slowly began to turn. U.S. troops fought their way agonizingly up the chains of Pacific islands from New Guinea toward Japan. In Europe the hard-pressed and ever-suspicious Soviet Union, eager to have the Western allies share equally in the bloodletting, clamored ceaselessly for a second front. After frustrating postponements, the Western allies at last invaded the north French coast on D-Day, June 6, 1944. After Germany was hammered into inglorious defeat in May 1945, Japan was atom-bombed into submission in August 1945. World War II ended as the nuclear age dawned, ushered in by an ominous mushroom-shaped cloud.

The War Transforms the Economy (1943)
As war orders flooded the nation's factories, the decade-old blight of depression was banished, and the face of the United States was transformed. Millions of workers pulled up stakes and moved to the bustling war production centers. Older cities were bursting with war workers, many of them desperate for housing. New towns appeared almost overnight, especially in the wide-open West. The billions of dollars of war contracts financed a virtual revolution in the U.S. economy, conferring enormous advantages on certain businesses and regions. In the selection that follows, which changes are deemed most beneficial and which most harmful? What factors most shaped the decisions about where and how to spend defense dollars? Which economic effects of the war proved most lasting? Which of the author's predictions turned out to be most accurate?

While big industry, fed by government capital and war orders, is growing bigger every day, small industry is being wrecked by the withholding of priorities and materials. The problem is clearly stated by investigators for the Senate Committee on Education and Labor:

Throughout the first two and a half years of our effort one hundred of America's largest corporations have received 75 per cent of all war contracts by dollar volume. To them has gone the bulk of new plants built at Government expense, over fourteen billions of dollars. To them are flowing in increasing numbers the workers seeking jobs in war industry. America, a land of giant corporations before the war, will emerge from this war with a larger share of its vastly expanded economy controlled by a smaller number of firms.

This situation . . . has been accompanied by the destruction of one small community after another through the shutting down of its factories and the migration of its people. The face of America is already greatly changed. If we continue destroying America's small business and uprooting smaller communities, and many of our large ones as well, we shall not recognize postwar America.

. . . Certain advantages will undoubtedly accrue from this new emphasis on bigness. In the housing industry, for example, inefficient contractors operating on a shoestring are being replaced by large companies building two hundred to a thousand dwelling units at one time. To keep under the $6,000 ceiling on private homes built for war workers and at the same time make a profit, large-scale operations become imperative. Modern building methods are employed out of necessity. More important, large companies are learning that there are big opportunities in building houses which wage earners can afford to rent or buy. Here we have the nucleus of what may become a vast postwar industry capable of immeasurably improving the environment in which millions of our people live. . . .

We have built an enormous portion of our vast war plant within close range of big industries where expert management and skilled labor were at hand. Baltimore, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Hartford, St. Louis, Detroit, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and numerous other cities find their manufacturing plants expanding at a rate that seemed impossible in peacetime. Detroit has sucked into its voracious mills enough manpower to make a new city much larger than Denver. Its satellite cities--Flint, Saginaw, Lansing, and Jackson--appear to have duplicated that feat on a smaller scale.

Of course, the lightning of war did not strike all the big cities with equal intensity. New York is suffering from a wave of unemployment because its consumer-goods industries are not readily adjustable to the making of tanks, airplanes, or ammunition. The jewelry industry in Providence is quietly starving for metal. But at near-by Hartford, where typewriters have given way to pistols and machine-tool makers are enjoying their golden age, every foot of space and every ounce of energy is at a premium. War is pushing Hartford ahead as ruthlessly as it is shoving New York behind. . . .

One exception to the general trend stands out in striking contrast. That is the sudden spurt of industrialization in the West. Great Salt Lake and Utah valleys, for example, are undergoing the most profound changes they have experienced since Brigham Young's pioneers broke their parched soil nearly a hundred years ago. Great military establishments have taken the place of quiet farms. Peaceful landscapes have given way to smoke-belching behemoths of industry. Aluminum, radio parts, coke, steel, and other strategic products are beginning to pour out of an area that has heretofore been noted chiefly for the exportation of Mormonism. . . .

Taken as a unit, the West is feeling the stimulus of war industry more keenly than either the North or the South. In 1940 the West had only 10.5 per cent of the country's population. But more than 13 per cent of the government's war-plant fund is being spent there, chiefly for permanent assets. One explanation is the pull of power. Southern California, the beneficiary of Boulder Dam power, has become a seething caldron of war industry. San Diego was until recently known as the "hottest spot" in the whole national picture of wartime dislocations. Los Angeles has eclipsed even the fantastic peacetime records of that city. The Golden State as a whole is getting more than $390,000,000 in Federal money for war plants. That gives it a sizable lead on the great industrial state of New York, and puts it far ahead of all New England in the wartime expansion of industrial capacity.

In the Northwest, Seattle is the hub of an amazing workshop for war. Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams are doing for the Northwest what Boulder Dam has done for Southern California and Nevada. Their great resources of power attract war industries as certainly as a bag of oats attracts a mule. The investment of Federal funds in war plants in the state of Washington will equal $80 per capita (1940 census). That outpouring of funds added to previous investments in power has given the Columbia River Valley and Puget Sound region great opportunity to raid neighboring states for manpower. And they are making the most of it. War has thus thrown into double-quick pace the industrial revolution that was already under way in the West.

The meaning of these social and economic upheavals is plain. "The hand that signs the war contract," as a Senate committee said recently, "is the hand that shapes the future." Metal-ribbed Nevada has acquired new government-financed plants costing the equivalent of nearly $600 for every resident. The agricultural Dakotas have no new war plants. In each case the consequences will be far-reaching. For in this nationwide mobilization there is no chance to maintain the status quo. If strategy and geography do not thrust a community into the maelstrom of war activity, its resources will be drained into other areas where they can better serve the national interest. So the whole pattern of our economic and social life is undergoing kaleidoscopic changes, without so much as a bomb being dropped on our shores.

Merlo J. Pusey, "Revolution at Home," South Atlantic Quarterly 42 (July 1943): 207-219, published by Duke University Press.

A Japanese-American Is Convicted (1943)
Fearing Japanese invasion and possible sabotage, the secretary of war in early 1942 ordered the removal of Japanese-Americans from Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. Though later upheld by the Supreme Court, the constitutionality of the removal order was questioned at the time and has been hotly debated ever since. One young Japanese-American citizen, Gordon K. Hirabayashi, refused to register for deportation and deliberately violated an 8:00 P.M. curfew imposed on Japanese-Americans in his native city of Seattle. He was tried and convicted for both offenses, and the Supreme Court, in the decision excerpted here, upheld his conviction. What were Hirabayashi's principal reasons for denying the military orders? How does the Court justify the government's actions? Are the Court's arguments convincing? (In early 1985 a federal court in San Francisco overturned Hirabayashi's conviction of forty-three years earlier.)

Appellant asserted that the indictment should be dismissed because he was an American citizen who had never been a subject of and had never borne allegiance to the Empire of Japan, and also because the Act of March 21, 1942, was an unconstitutional delegation of Congressional power. On the trial to a jury it appeared that appellant was born in Seattle in 1918, of Japanese parents who had come from Japan to the United States, and who had never afterward returned to Japan; that he was educated in the Washington public schools and at the time of his arrest was a senior in the University of Washington; that he had never been in Japan or had any association with Japanese residing there.

The evidence showed that appellant had failed to report to the Civil Control Station on May 11 or May 12, 1942, as directed, to register for evacuation from the military area. He admitted failure to do so, and stated it had at all times been his belief that he would be waiving his rights as an American citizen by so doing. The evidence also showed that for like reason he was away from his place of residence after 8:00 P.M. on May 9, 1942. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on both counts and appellant was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of three months on each, the sentences to run concurrently. . . .

Appellant does not deny that he knowingly failed to obey the curfew order as charged in the second count of the indictment, or that the order was authorized by the terms of Executive Order No. 9066, or that the challenged Act of Congress purports to punish with criminal penalties disobedience of such an order. His contentions are only that Congress unconstitutionally delegated its legislative power to the military commander by authorizing him to impose the challenged regulation, and that, even if the regulation were in other respects lawfully authorized, the Fifth Amendment prohibits the discrimination made between citizens of Japanese descent and those of other ancestry. . . .

The war power of the national government is "the power to wage war successfully." It extends to every matter and activity so related to war as substantially to affect its conduct and progress. The power is not restricted to the winning of victories in the field and the repulse of enemy forces. It embraces every phase of the national defense, including the protection of war materials and the members of the armed forces from injury and from the dangers which attend the rise, prosecution and progress of war. . . .

The actions taken must be appraised in the light of the conditions with which the President and Congress were confronted in the early months of 1942. . . .

The challenged orders were defense measures for the avowed purpose of safeguarding the military area in question, at a time of threatened air raids and invasion by the Japanese forces, from the danger of sabotage and espionage. As the curfew was made applicable to citizens residing in the area only if they were of Japanese ancestry, our inquiry must be whether in the light of all the facts and circumstances there was any substantial basis for the conclusion, in which Congress and the military commander united, that the curfew as applied was a protective measure necessary to meet the threat of sabotage and espionage which would substantially affect the war effort and which might reasonably be expected to aid a threatened enemy invasion. The alternative which appellant insists must be accepted is for the military authorities to impose the curfew on all citizens within the military area, or on none. In a case of threatened danger requiring prompt action, it is a choice between inflicting obviously needless hardship on the many, or sitting passive and unresisting in the presence of the threat. We think that constitutional government, in time of war, is not so powerless and does not compel so hard a choice if those charged with the responsibility of our national defense have reasonable ground for believing that the threat is real. . . . At a time of threatened Japanese attack upon this country, the nature of our inhabitants' attachments to the Japanese enemy was consequently a matter of grave concern. Of the 126,000 persons of Japanese descent in the United States, citizens and noncitizens, approximately 112,000 resided in California, Oregon and Washington at the time of the adoption of the military regulations. Of these approximately two-thirds are citizens because born in the United States. Not only did the great majority of such persons reside within the Pacific Coast states but they were concentrated in or near three of the large cities, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles, all in Military Area No. 1.

There is support for the view that social, economic and political conditions which have prevailed since the close of the last century, when the Japanese began to come to this country in substantial numbers, have intensified their solidarity and have in large measure prevented their assimilation as an integral part of the white population. In addition, large numbers of children of Japanese parentage are sent to Japanese language schools outside the regular hours of public schools in the locality. Some of these schools are generally believed to be sources of Japanese nationalistic propaganda, cultivating allegiance to Japan. Considerable numbers, estimated to be approximately 10,000, of American-born children of Japanese parentage have been sent to Japan for all or a part of their education.

Congress and the Executive, including the military commander, could have attributed special significance, in its bearing on the loyalties of persons of Japanese descent, to the maintenance of Japan by its system of dual citizenship. Children born in the United States of Japanese alien parents, and especially those chidren born before December 1, 1924, are under many circumstances deemed, by Japanese law, to be citizens of Japan. No official census of those whom Japan regards as having thus retained Japanese citizenship is available, but there is ground for the belief that the number is large.

The large number of resident alien Japanese, approximately one-third of all Japanese inhabitants of the country, are of mature years and occupy positions of influence in Japanese communities. The association of influential Japanese residents with Japanese Consulates has been deemed a ready means for the dissemination of propaganda and for the maintenance of the influence of the Japanese Government with the Japanese population in this country.

As a result of all these conditions affecting the life of the Japanese, both aliens and citizens, in the Pacific Coast area, there has been relatively little social intercourse between them and the white population. The restrictions, both practical and legal, affecting the privileges and opportunities afforded to persons of Japanese extraction residing in the United States, have been sources of irritation and may well have tended to increase their isolation, and in many instances their attachments to Japan and its institutions.

Viewing these data in all their aspects, Congress and the Executive could reasonably have concluded that these conditions have encouraged the continued attachment of members of this group to Japan and Japanese institutions. These are only some of the many considerations which those charged with the responsibility for the national defense could take into account in determining the nature and extent of the danger of espionage and sabotage, in the event of invasion or air raid attack. The extent of that danger could be definitely known only after the event and after it was too late to meet it. Whatever views we may entertain regarding the loyalty to this country of the citizens of Japanese ancestry, we cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained. We cannot say that the war-making branches of the Government did not have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons could not readily be isolated and separately dealt with, and constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to guard against it.

Appellant does not deny that, given the danger, a curfew was an appropriate measure against sabotage. It is an obvious protection against the perpetration of sabotage most readily committed during the hours of darkness. If it was an appropriate exercise of the war power its validity is not impaired because it has restricted the citizen's liberty. Like every military control of the population of a dangerous zone in wartime, it necessarily involves some infringement of individual liberty, just as does the police establishment of fire lines during a fire, or the confinement of people to their houses during an air raid alarm--neither of which could be thought to be an infringement of constitutional right. Like them, the validity of the restraints of the curfew order depends on all the conditions which obtain at the time the curfew is imposed and which support the order imposing it.

But appellant insists that the exercise of the power is inappropriate and unconstitutional because it discriminates against citizens of Japanese ancestry, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment contains no equal protection clause and it restrains only such discriminatory legislation by Congress as amounts to a denial of due process. . . . Congress may hit a particular danger where it is seen, without providing for others which are not so evident or so urgent. . . . Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification or discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection. . . . We may assume that these considerations would be controlling here were it not for the fact that the danger of espionage and sabotage, in time of war and of threatened invasion, calls upon the military authorities to scrutinize every relevant fact bearing on the loyalty of populations in the danger areas. Because racial discriminations are in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited, it by no means follows that, in dealing with the perils of war, Congress and the Executive are wholly precluded from taking into account those facts and circumstances which are relevant to measures for our national defense and for the successful prosecution of the war, and which may in fact place citizens of one ancestry in a different category from others. "We must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding," "a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."* The adoption by Government, in the crisis of war and of threatened invasion, of measures for the public safety, based upon the recognition of facts and circumstances which indicate that a group of one national extraction may menace that safety more than others, is not wholly beyond the limits of the Constitution and is not to be condemned merely because in other and in most circumstances racial distinctions are irrelevant. . . .

*The quotation is from John Marshall's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).

Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 83 (1943).

A Black American Ponders the War's Meaning (1942)
Blacks had bitter memories of World War I, when they had clamored in vain to play a major role in the "war to make the world safe for democracy." Despite urgent manpower needs, in 1917-1918 African-Americans had been deemed unfit for combat assignments and relegated mostly to "labor battalions" in the army. At home they won only limited access to war-related jobs and were the victims of several bloody race riots at war's end. In the light of this sorry record, it was an open question whether blacks would support the Allied cause in World War II. Japanese propagandists tried to exploit the United States' vexed history of race relations by claiming brotherhood with African-Americans as another "people of color" oppressed by white rule. On what grounds did the black author of the following essay decide to support the war? Was he being realistic? Might he have been disillusioned or pleased with the course of the civil rights movement after the war?

War had no heroic traditions for me. Wars were white folks'. All wars in historical memory. The last war, and the Spanish-American War before that, and the Civil War. I had been brought up in a way that admitted of no heroics. I think my parents were right. Life for them was a fierce, bitter, soul-searching war of spiritual and economic attrition; they fought it without heroics, but with stubborn heroism. Their heroism was screwed up to a pitch of idealism so intense that it found a safety valve in cynicism about the heroics of white folks' war. This cynicism went back at least as far as my paternal grandmother, whose fierce eyes used to lash the faces of her five grandchildren as she said, "An' he done som'pin big an' brave away down dere to Chickymorgy an' dey made a iron image of him 'cause he got his head blowed off an' his stomick blowed out fightin' to keep his slaves." I cannot convey the scorn and the cynicism she put into her picture of that hero-son of her slave-master, but I have never forgotten.

I was nearly ten when we entered the last war in 1917. The European fighting, and the sinking of the Lusitania, had seemed as remote, as distantly meaningless to us, as the Battle of Hastings. Then we went in and suddenly the city was flag-draped, slogan-plastered, and as riotously gay as on circus half-holidays. I remember one fine Sunday we came upon an immense new billboard with a new slogan: GIVE! TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY. My brother, who was the oldest of us, asked what making the world safe for democracy meant. My father frowned, but before he could answer, my mother broke in.

"It's just something to say, like . . ."--and then she was stuck until she hit upon one of the family's old jokes--"like 'Let's make a million dollars.'" We all laughed, but the bitter core of her meaning lay revealed, even for the youngest of us, like the stone in a halved peach. . . .

And so, since I have reached maturity and thought a man's thoughts and had a man's--a Negro man's--experiences, I have thought that I could never believe in war again. Yet I believe in this one.

There are many things about this war that I do not like, just as there are many things about "practical" Christianity that I do not like. But I believe in Christianity, and if I accept the shoddy and unfulfilling in the conduct of this war, I do it as voluntarily and as purposefully as I accept the trash in the workings of "practical" Christianity. I do not like the odor of political pandering that arises from some groups. I do not like these "race incidents" in the camps. I do not like the world's not knowing officially that there were Negro soldiers on Bataan with General Wainwright.* I do not like the constant references to the Japs as "yellow bastards," "yellow bellies," and "yellow monkeys," as if color had something to do with treachery, as if color were the issue and the thing we are fighting rather than oppression, slavery, and a way of life hateful and nauseating. These and other things I do not like, yet I believe in the war. . . .

This is a war to keep men free. The struggle to broaden and lengthen the road of freedom--our own private and important war to enlarge freedom here in America--will come later. That this private, intra-American war will be carried on and won is the only real reason we Negroes have to fight. We must keep the road open. Did we not believe in a victory in that intra-American war, we could not believe in nor stomach the compulsion of this. If we could not believe in the realization of democratic freedom for ourselves, certainly no one could ask us to die for the preservation of that ideal for others. But to broaden and lengthen the road of freedom is different from preserving it. And our first duty is to keep the road of freedom open. It must be done continuously. It is the duty of the whole people to do this. Our next duty (and this, too, is the whole people's) is to broaden the road so that more people can travel it without snarling traffic. To die in these duties is to die for something. . . .

I believe in this war, finally, because I believe in the ultimate vindication of the wisdom of the brotherhood of man. This is not foggy idealism. I think that the growing manifestations of the interdependence of all men is an argument for the wisdom of brotherhood. I think that the shrunk compass of the world is an argument. I think that the talk of united nations and of planned interdependence is an argument.

More immediately, I believe in this war because I believe in America. I believe in what America professes to stand for. Nor is this, I think, whistling in the dark. There are a great many things wrong here. There are only a few men of good will. I do not lose sight of that. I know the inequalities, the outraged hopes and faith, the inbred hate; and I know that there are people who wish merely to lay these by in the closet of the national mind until the crisis is over. But it would be equally foolish for me to lose sight of the advances that are made, the barriers that are leveled, the privileges that grow. Foolish, too, to remain blind to the distinction that exists between simple race prejudice, already growing moribund under the impact of this war, and theories of racial superiority as a basic tenet of a societal system--theories that at bottom are the avowed justification for suppression, defilement and murder.

I will take this that I have here. I will take the democratic theory. The bit of road of freedom that stretches through America is worth fighting to preserve. The very fact that I, a Negro in America, can fight against the evils in America is worth fighting for. This open fighting against the wrongs one hates is the mark and the hope of democratic freedom. I do not underestimate the struggle. I know the learning that must take place, the evils that must be broken, the depths that must be climbed. But I am free to help in doing these things. I count. I am free (though only a little as yet) to pound blows at the huge body of my American world until, like a chastened mother, she gives me nurture with the rest.

*Bataan was an area in the Philippines through which Jonathan Wainwright's captured American garrison was cruelly forced to march to prisoner-of-war camps in May 1942--the "Bataan Death March."

J. Saunders Redding, "A Negro Looks at This War," American Mercury 55 (November 1942): 585-592.

War Warnings from Washington (1941)
The military officials in Washington had cracked Tokyo's secret code. They knew from intercepted messages, especially after Secretary Hull's final note of November 26, that Japan was about to attack. But they could only guess where. The following war warnings were dispatched to Pacific commanders, including General MacArthur, who was caught with his planes down in the Philippines some eight hours after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. The messages from Washington did not mention Hawaii, evidently because of the belief, fortified by reports of massed ship movements, that the Japanese were about to strike in Southeast Asia. The surprised U.S. commanders later complained that they had not been properly warned. Comment critically in the light of these warnings. What grounds existed for the assumption that the attack would not come at Pearl Harbor?

[Navy Department to Pacific Commanders, November 24, 1941]

Chances of favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan very doubtful. This situation, coupled with statements of Japanese Government and movements their naval and military forces, indicates in our opinion that a surprise aggressive movement in any direction, including attack on Philippines or Guam, is a possibility. Chief of Staff has seen this dispatch; concurs and requests action [by the respective addresses] to inform senior Army officers their areas. Utmost secrecy necessary in order not to complicate an already tense situation or precipitate Japanese action.

[Navy Department to Asiatic and Pacific Fleets, November 27, 1941]

This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased, and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days. The number and equipment of Japanese troops, and the organization of naval task forces, indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai [Siam] or Kra [Malay] peninsula, or possibly Borneo [Dutch East Indies]. . . .

Pearl Harbor Attack; Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Cong. 1st sess. (1946), pt. xiv, pp. 1405, 1406.

Admiral H. E. Kimmel Defends Himself (1946)
In 1942, after carrier-based Japanese bombers had crippled the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on that fateful Sunday morning, the special Roberts commission found Admiral H. E. Kimmel and General W. C. Short guilty of "dereliction of duty." But the army and navy conducted their own investigations and concluded that there were no grounds for a court-martial. After the war a full-dress joint congressional investigation (10 million words) elicited the following testimony from Admiral Kimmel, who must be judged in the light of three points. First, as early as 1932 the navy had staged a successful mock (Japanese) raid on Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning with carrier-based aircraft. Second, the attacking Japanese carriers had been lost to U.S. naval intelligence for some days. Third, four hours and thirteen minutes before the surprise attack the navy sighted an enemy submarine off the mouth of Pearl Harbor; an hour and ten minutes before the strike the navy fired upon and sank a Japanese submarine off the mouth of Pearl Harbor. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Kimmel's defense?

The so-called "war warning" dispatch of November 27 did not warn the Pacific Fleet of an attack in the Hawaiian area. It did not state expressly or by implication that an attack in the Hawaiian area was imminent or probable. It did not repeal or modify the advice previously given me by the Navy Department that no move against Pearl Harbor was imminent or planned by Japan.

The phrase "war warning" cannot be made a catch-all for all the contingencies hindsight may suggest. It is a characterization of the specific information which the dispatch contained. . . .

In brief, on November 27, the Navy Department suggested that I send from the immediate vicinity of Pearl Harbor the carriers of the fleet, which constituted the fleet's main striking defense against an air attack.*

On November 27, the War and Navy Departments suggested that we send from the island of Oahu [site of Pearl Harbor] 50 percent of the Army's resources in pursuit planes.

These proposals came to us on the very same day of the so-called "war warning."

In these circumstances no reasonable man in my position would consider that the "war warning" was intended to suggest the likelihood of an attack in the Hawaiian area.

From November 27 to the time of the attack, all the information which I had from the Navy Department or from any other source, confirmed, and was consistent with, the Japanese movement in southeast Asia described in the dispatch of November 27. . . .

In short, all indications of the movements of Japanese military and naval forces which came to my attention confirmed the information in the dispatch of 27 November--that the Japanese were on the move against Thailand or the Kra [Malay] Peninsula in southeast Asia.

*Fortunately for the United States, the three great carriers were not at Pearl Harbor when the attack came.

Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. VI, pp. 2518, 2520, 2521.

Secretary Henry Stimson Charges Negligence (1946)
General Short, the army commander in Hawaii, complained that the warnings from Washington were not specific enough regarding a possible Japanese attack. He felt that he should have been advised that Washington, using a top-secret code-breaking device called "Magic," was intercepting Japanese coded messages (despite the need for secrecy in using these Magic intercepts). Yet on November 30--a week early--the Honolulu Advertiser had headlined a story "JAPANESE MAY STRIKE OVER WEEKEND." Newly installed army radar actually picked up the attacking Japanese planes fifty-three minutes in advance, but this evidence stirred no defense action. Secretary of War Stimson, who had served in three presidential cabinets, here defends his office before the joint congressional committee. Is his analogy to a sentinel convincing?

Many of the discussions on this subject indicated a failure to grasp the fundamental difference between the duties of an outpost command and those of the commander in chief of an army or nation and his military advisers.

The outpost commander is like a sentinel on duty in the face of the enemy. His fundamental duties are clear and precise. He must assume that the enemy will attack at his particular post; and that the enemy will attack at the time and in the way in which it will be most difficult to defeat him. It is not the duty of the outpost commander to speculate or rely on the possibilities of the enemy attacking at some other outpost instead of his own. It is his duty to meet him at his post at any time, and to make the best possible fight that can be made against him with the weapons with which he has been supplied.

On the other hand, the Commander in Chief of the Nation (and his advisers) . . . has much more difficult and complex duties to fulfill. Unlike the outpost commander, he must constantly watch, study, and estimate where the principal or most dangerous attack is most likely to come, in order that he may most effectively distribute his insufficient forces and munitions to meet it. He knows that his outposts are not all equally supplied or fortified, and that they are not all equally capable of defense. He knows also that from time to time they are of greatly varying importance to the grand strategy of the war. . . .

From the foregoing I believe that it was inevitable and proper that a far greater number of items of information coming through our Intelligence should be collected and considered and appraised by the General Staff at Washington than those which were transmitted to the commander of an outpost.

General Short had been told the two essential facts: (1) A war with Japan is threatening. (2) Hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given those two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of November 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight.

Even without any such message, the outpost commander should have been on the alert. If he did not know that the relations between Japan and the United States were strained and might be broken at any time, he must have been almost the only man in Hawaii who did not know it, for the radio and the newspapers were blazoning out those facts daily, and he had a chief of staff and an intelligence officer to tell him so. And if he did not know that the Japanese were likely to strike without warning, he could not have read his history of Japan or known the lessons taught in Army schools in respect to such matters.*

Under these circumstances, which were of general knowledge and which he must have known, to cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take to the air for several hours, and to keep his anti-aircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, the radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief.

[The joint congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor was a partisan body that submitted two reports. The majority (six Democrats, joined by two Republicans) generally absolved the Democratic Roosevelt administration of responsibility for the surprise attack, while finding the Hawaii commanders guilty of "errors of judgment and not derelictions of duty." Two Republican senators filed a minority report highly critical of the Roosevelt administration.]

*Attacking without warning had been a feudal practice in Japan. The Japanese attacked the Chinese without warning in 1894 and 1931 and the Russians in 1904. In the age of Hitler, attacks without warning were commonplace, as indeed they have been throughout history.

Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. XI, pp. 5428-5429.

Franklin Roosevelt Awaits the Blow (1941)
On the evening of December 6--the day before Pearl Harbor--U.S. naval intelligence intercepted and decoded the bulk of Tokyo's warlike reply to Secretary Hull's last "tough" note (November 26). Commander Lester Schultz, a naval aide at the White House, promptly delivered these intercepts to the White House. Five years later he testified before the joint congressional committee concerning the president's reaction. Certain critics of Roosevelt claim that he now knew of the Japanese plan to strike Pearl Harbor the next day and that he deliberately exposed the fleet in order to lure the Japanese into an act of aggression that would unify American opinion. What light does Commander Schultz's testimony shed on this interpretation?

Commander Schultz.

The President read the papers, which took perhaps ten minutes. Then he handed them to [long-time Roosevelt adviser] Mr. [Harry] Hopkins. . . . Mr. Hopkins then read the papers and handed them back to the President. The President then turned toward Mr. Hopkins and said in substance . . . "This means war." Mr. Hopkins agreed, and they discussed then, for perhaps five minutes, the situation of the Japanese forces, that is, their deployment and--

Mr. Richardson [committee counsel].

Can you recall what either of them said?

Commander Schultz.

In substance I can. . . . Mr. Hopkins . . . expressed a view that since war was undoubtedly going to come at the convenience of the Japanese, it was too bad that we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise. The President nodded and then said in effect, "No, we can't do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people." Then he raised his voice, and this much I remember definitely. He said, "But we have a good record."

The impression that I got was that we would have to stand on that record; we could not make the first overt move. We would have to wait until it came.

During this discussion there was no mention of Pearl Harbor. The only geographic name I recall was Indochina. The time at which war might begin was not discussed, but from the manner of the discussion there was no indication that tomorrow was necessarily the day.

Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. X, pp. 4662-4663.

Communists Distrust Capitalists (1946)
General John R. Deane, the chief U.S. military liaison officer in Moscow, found the hard-pressed Russians willing to accept U.S. arms but not U.S. personnel. He concluded that the communist regime did not want its people tainted by exposure to capitalistic Americans, that it desired the prestige of winning solo victories, and that it regarded World War II as only one campaign in the long war against capitalism. Why permit possible future adversaries like the Americans to spy out the terrain and probe the Soviet Union's military weaknesses? In this postwar account, General Deane cites specific cases. Which ones seem to be least credible? What do they foreshadow regarding cooperation with Moscow after the war?

Whatever the reasons, the fact that Russia desired, insofar as possible, to play a lone hand was proved by undeniable evidence. In her darkest days she refused to allow a group of Allied bombers to base in the Caucasus in order to assist her at Stalingrad. Our well-meant voluntary efforts to support her advance in the Balkans with our Air Force operating from Italy brought forth protests rather than gratitude. No single American was allowed to enter the Soviet Union without pressure from the Ambassador or me, and then a visa was granted only after an exhaustive study of the background of the individual involved. Under these circumstances it was clear that nothing much could come of a partnership in which one of the principals was not only reluctant, but proficient in sabotaging its effectiveness. . . .

When General Eisenhower visited Moscow after the war, he held a press conference at which he stated that after January 1945 he was kept fully informed at all times of the essentials of the Red Army's plans, particularly the timing of their offensives, their objectives, and the direction of their main efforts. This was true, but his possession of such information was a far cry from the co-operative action that might normally be expected between allies. All the information Eisenhower had concerning the Red Army's plan was the result of our initiative in seeking to obtain it, and then it was only obtained after continuous pressure at the highest levels.

Not once during the war did Stalin or his subordinates seek a meeting with British or American authorities in order to present proposals for improving our co-operative effort. It was either the President or the Prime Minister [Churchill] who proposed [conferences at] Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam. No single event of the war irritated me more than seeing the President of the United States lifted from a wheel chair to automobile, to ship, to shore, and to aircraft, in order to go halfway around the world as the only possible means of meeting J. V. Stalin.

There were innumerable little ways in which our joint war effort could have been made more effective. We might have learned something of immeasurable value in defeating the German submarines had we been allowed to see Gdynia [naval base] as soon as it was taken; we might have brought Germany to her knees quicker had we been allowed to establish radar triangulation stations in Russia as navigational aids to our bomber formations in eastern Germany. We might have defeated Germany more quickly had we shared our operational experience by having observers on each other's fronts. We might have, we might have--on and on. No! In Soviet Russia each such venture would have meant a closer association with capitalistic foreigners. Well, perhaps we were among friends, but it was difficult to believe it.

[Deane further relates that when the British military mission in Moscow was disbanded at war's end, it was discovered that the place was "infested with well-concealed dictaphones." Everything said by these British allies of the Soviet Union was evidently recorded for the information of the Soviet secret police.]

Joseph Stalin Resents Second-Front Delays (1943)
The one kind of help that Stalin consistently demanded was the opening of a second front in France that would draw German divisions off the backs of the reeling Russians. As Stalingrad tottered, communists and other groups in the United States demanded a morale-boosting second front in 1942, even though it might end in bloody failure. Conservatives insisted that the two menaces be left alone to cut each other's throats. Drew Pearson, the keyhole columnist, declared in 1943 that this brutal course was the policy of Washington. Secretary of State Hull thereupon branded such allegations "monstrous and diabolical falsehoods." Stalin was not unaware of such talk when he angrily sent the following secret message to Winston Churchill (June 24, 1943), just after Churchill had again backed down on his promise of a second front in 1943. From the viewpoint of the Allies, what was the most alarming aspect of Stalin's heated response?

. . . When you now write that "it would be no help to Russia if we threw away a hundred thousand men in a disastrous cross-Channel attack," all I can do is remind you of the following.

First, your own Aide-Mémoire of June 1942, in which you declared that preparations were under way for an invasion, not by a hundred thousand, but by an Anglo-American force exceeding one million men at the very start of the operation.

Second, your February [1943] message, which mentioned extensive measures preparatory to the invasion of Western Europe in August or September 1943, which, apparently, envisaged an operation, not by a hundred thousand men, but by an adequate force.

So when you now declare: "I cannot see how a great British defeat and slaughter would aid the Soviet armies," is it not clear that a statement of this kind in relation to the Soviet Union is utterly groundless and directly contradicts your previous and responsible decisions, listed above, about extensive and vigorous measures by the British and Americans to organize the invasion this year, measures on which the complete success of the operation should hinge?

I shall not enlarge on the fact that this responsible decision, revoking your previous decisions on the invasion of Western Europe, was reached by you and the President without Soviet participation and without inviting its representatives to the Washington conference, although you cannot but be aware that the Soviet Union's role in the war against Germany and its interest in the problems of the second front are great enough.

There is no need to say that the Soviet Government cannot become reconciled to this disregard of vital Soviet interests in the war against the common enemy.

You say that you "quite understand" my disappointment. I must tell you that the point here is not just the disappointment of the Soviet Government, but the preservation of its confidence in its Allies, a confidence which is being subjected to severe stress. One should not forget that it is a question of saving millions of lives in the occupied areas of Western Europe and Russia, and of reducing the enormous sacrifices of the Soviet armies, compared with which the sacrifices of the Anglo-American armies are insignificant.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (1957), vol. 2, pp. 75-76.

Roosevelt Manages "Uncle Joe" (1943)
Roosevelt was eager to meet Stalin and soften his suspicions with the famous Roosevelt charm. "I can handle that old buzzard," he allegedly boasted in private. Late in 1943 the two men met for the first time, together with Prime Minister Churchill, at Teheran, the capital of Persia, which was as far away as Stalin would venture from his direction of the Soviet armies. Roosevelt reported his experiences to his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, who recalled them as follows. How might one account for Stalin's attitude early in the sessions?

"You know [reported Roosevelt], the Russians are interesting people. For the first three days I made absolutely no progress. I couldn't get any personal connection with Stalin, although I had done everything he asked me to do. I had stayed at his Embassy, gone to his dinners, been introduced to his ministers and generals. He was correct, stiff, solemn, not smiling, nothing human to get hold of. I felt pretty discouraged. If it was all going to be official paper work, there was no sense in my having made this long journey which the Russians had wanted. They couldn't come to America or any place in Europe for it. I had come there to accommodate Stalin. I felt pretty discouraged because I thought I was making no personal headway. What we were doing could have been done by the foreign ministers.

"I thought it over all night and made up my mind I had to do something desperate. I couldn't stay in Teheran forever. I had to cut through this icy surface so that later I could talk by telephone or letter in a personal way. I had scarcely seen Churchill alone during the conference. I had a feeling that the Russians did not feel right about seeing us conferring together in a language which we understood and they didn't.

"On my way to the conference room that morning we caught up with Winston [Churchill] and I had just a moment to say to him, 'Winston, I hope you won't be sore at me for what I am going to do.'

"Winston just shifted his cigar and grunted. I must say he behaved very decently afterward.

"I began almost as soon as we got into the conference room. I talked privately with Stalin. I didn't say anything that I hadn't said before, but it appeared quite chummy and confidential, enough so that the other Russians joined us to listen. Still no smile.

"Then I said, lifting my hand up to cover a whisper (which of course had to be interpreted), 'Winston is cranky this morning, he got up on the wrong side of the bed.'

"A vague smile passed over Stalin's eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. As soon as I sat down at the conference table, I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his [drinking?] habits. It began to register with Stalin. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally Stalin broke out into a deep, hearty guffaw, and for the first time in three days I saw light. I kept it up until Stalin was laughing with me, and it was then that I called him 'Uncle Joe.' He would have thought me fresh the day before, but that day he laughed and came over and shook my hand.

"From that time on our relations were personal, and Stalin himself indulged in an occasional witticism. The ice was broken and we talked like men and brothers.

"You know . . . he was deeply touched by the presentation of the sword which Churchill brought him from the British people."

[Relations between Roosevelt and Stalin remained friendly until several weeks before Roosevelt's death in April 1945. Then Stalin abusively charged bad faith in connection with the surrender of German troops in Italy, while Roosevelt came back with protests against Stalin's violations of his Yalta pledges, notably in connection with Poland.]

From The Roosevelt I Knew by Frances Perkins, pp. 83-85, 111-112. Copyright 1946 by Frances Perkins; (c) renewed 1974 by Susanna W. Coggeshall. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc.

Robert Sherwood Defends FDR (1948)
Late in 1942 the Allies launched a side-issue invasion of French North Africa, but Stalin refused to recognize it as a genuine second front. Shortly after Roosevelt flew to Casablanca, in French Morocco, for a conference with Prime Minister Churchill, his eighth cousin once removed. Roosevelt knew that the embittered Stalin was deeply suspicious of a possible deal between Hitler and the Allies. The Soviet Union might even make a separate peace with the Germans, as it had done, with disastrous effect, in 1918. At Roosevelt's instigation, the Casablanca conference proclaimed a policy of "unconditional surrender"--that is, the unconditional surrender of the Axis regimes but not "the destruction of the German populace, nor of the Italian or Japanese populace." Robert E. Sherwood, the ghostwriter associate of Roosevelt, here gives his version. Note how many different objectives the president had in view. Why can one argue that "unconditional surrender" did not prolong German resistance?

There were many propaganda experts, both British and American, who believed that the utterance of these words ["unconditional surrender"] would put the iron of desperate resistance into the Germans, Japanese, and Italians and thereby needlessly prolong the war and increase its cost; there are some who still believe that it did so. These critics were not necessarily opposed to the principle of total defeat--but they considered it a disastrous mistake for the President to announce it publicly. . . .

I wrote Winston Churchill asking him if he had discussed the unconditional surrender statement with Roosevelt before the press conference at Casablanca, and his reply was as follows: "I heard the words 'Unconditional Surrender' for the first time from the President's lips at the Conference. It must be remembered that at that moment no one had a right to proclaim that Victory was assured. Therefore, Defiance was the note. I would not myself have used these words, but I immediately stood by the President and have frequently defended the decision. It is false to suggest that it prolonged the war. Negotiation with Hitler was impossible. He was a maniac with supreme power to play his hand out to the end, which he did; and so did we."

Roosevelt himself absolved Churchill with all responsibility for the statement. Indeed, he suggested that it was an unpremeditated one on his own part. He said, "We had so much trouble getting those two French generals together that I thought to myself that this was as difficult as arranging the meeting of Grant and Lee--and then suddenly the press conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant 'Old Unconditional Surrender' and the next thing I knew, I had said it."

Roosevelt, for some reason, often liked to picture himself as a rather frivolous fellow who did not give sufficient attention to the consequences of chance remarks. In this explanation, indicating a spur-of-the-moment slip of the tongue, he certainly did considerably less than justice to himself. For this announcement of unconditional surrender was very deeply deliberated. Whether it was wise or foolish, whether it prolonged the war or shortened it--or even if it had no effect whatsoever on the duration (which seems possible)--it was a true statement of Roosevelt's considered policy and he refused all suggestions that he retract the statement or soften it and continued refusal to the day of his death. In fact, he restated it a great many times. . . .

What Roosevelt was saying was that there would be no negotiated peace, no compromise with Nazism and Fascism, no "escape clauses" provided by another Fourteen Points which could lead to another Hitler. (The Ghost of Woodrow Wilson was again at his shoulder.) Roosevelt wanted this uncompromising purpose to be brought home to the American people and the Russians and the Chinese, and to the people of France and other occupied nations, and he wanted it brought home to the Germans--that neither by continuance of force nor by contrivance of a new spirit of sweet reasonableness could their present leaders gain for them a soft peace. He wanted to ensure that when the war was won it would stay won.

Cordell Hull Opposes Unconditional Surrender (1948)
"Unconditional surrender" had its warm supporters. In addition to the advantages already indicated, it would hearten German-conquered peoples like the Poles; it would key the Allies up for greater sacrifices; it would postpone disruptive arguments among the Allies over surrender terms; it would avert a quarrel like that with Germany after 1918 over the armistice terms. Yet critics like Senator Wheeler of Montana branded "unconditional surrender" as "brutal" and "asinine." It was vague and easily misinterpreted; it would provide ammunition for enemy propagandists; it would close the door to negotiations with Germany; it would pave the way for Soviet ascendancy in Eastern Europe. Secretary of State Hull, somewhat miffed, advanced additional arguments in his Memoirs. Notice what he reveals about relations between the president and the State Department. Would the alternative policy that he suggests have made more sense?

The principle of unconditional surrender overshadowed our policy toward the Axis and their satellites and our planning for their future.

Originally this principle had not formed part of the State Department's thinking. We were as much surprised as Mr. Churchill when, for the first time, the President, in the Prime Minister's presence, stated it suddenly to a press conference during the Casablanca Conference in January, 1943. I was told that the Prime Minister was dumbfounded.

Basically, I was opposed to the principle for two reasons, as were many of my associates. One was that it might prolong the war by solidifying Axis resistance into one of desperation. The people of the Axis countries, by believing they had nothing to look forward to but unconditional surrender to the will of their conquerors, might go on fighting long after calmer judgment had convinced them that their fight was hopeless.

The President himself had qualified his unconditional surrender phrase by stating at Casablanca that this did not mean the destruction of the people of Germany, Japan, and Italy, but the ending of a philosophy based on conquest and subjugation of other peoples. Nevertheless the phrase itself spread more widely than the qualification, and it became a weapon in the hands of Nazi propagandists.

The second reason was that the principle logically required the victor nations to be ready to take over every phase of the national and local Governments of the conquered countries, and to operate all governmental activities and properties. We and our Allies were in no way prepared to undertake this vast obligation.

I thought that our principle of surrender should be flexible. In some cases the most severe terms should be imposed. I had Germany and Japan in mind in this connection. In other cases we would have preliminary informal conversations that would result in substantial adjustments away from the terms of unconditional surrender. Here I had in mind Italy and the Axis satellite states, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.

In our postwar-planning discussions in the State Department, which had begun more than three years prior to the Casablanca Conference, we had not embraced the idea of unconditional surrender. In the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942, each Government simply pledged itself not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies. Nevertheless, after the President had stated the principle so emphatically at Casablanca, there was nothing we could do except to follow it at least in form. It was to rise on numerous occasions to plague us and to require explanation.

[Ironically, Japan did not surrender unconditionally in 1945 but held out for the retention of the emperor.]

Japan's Horrified Reaction (1945)
With Germany knocked out of the war, President Truman journeyed to Potsdam, near Berlin, in July 1945, to concert plans with Stalin and the British leaders. He was there informed that U.S. scientists had experimentally detonated the first atomic bomb in history. The conferees now called on the Japanese to surrender or be destroyed, although the Potsdam ultimatum made no reference, as perhaps it should have, to the existence of the fantastic new weapon. When Tokyo brushed aside the demand for surrender, Truman ordered the dropping of atomic bombs (the only two the United States then had)* on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). The horrified reaction of the Nippon Times is herewith given. Determine whether there was force in the Japanese charge of hypocrisy, and whether there is any moral difference between atomic bombing and large-scale incendiary bombing of civilian centers. (The Japanese had already bombed civilian centers, beginning with Shanghai in 1932.) Did the Japanese refusal to respond to the Potsdam ultimatum justify the bombing?

How can a human being with any claim to a sense of moral responsibility deliberately let loose an instrument of destruction which can at one stroke annihilate an appalling segment of mankind? This is not war; this is not even murder; this is pure nihilism. This is a crime against God and humanity which strikes at the very basis of moral existence. What meaning is there in any international law, in any rule of human conduct, in any concept of right and wrong, if the very foundations of morality are to be overthrown as the use of this instrument of total destruction threatens to do?

The crime of the Americans stands out in ghastly repulsiveness all the more for the ironic contradiction it affords to their lying pretensions. For in their noisy statements, they have always claimed to be the champions of fairness and humanitarianism. In the early days of the China Affair [beginning in 1937], the United States repeatedly protested against the bombing operations of the Japanese forces, notwithstanding the fact that the Japanese operations were conducted on a limited scale against strictly military objectives. But where its own actions are concerned, the United States seems to see no inconsistency in committing on an unimaginably vast scale the very same crime it had falsely accused others of committing.

This hypocritical character of the Americans had already been amply demonstrated in the previous bombings of Japanese cities. Strewing explosives and fire bombs indiscriminately over an extensive area, hitting large cities and small towns without distinction, wiping out vast districts which could not be mistaken as being anything but strictly residential in character, burning or blasting to death countless thousands of helpless women and children, and machine-gunning fleeing refugees, the American raiders had already shown how completely they violate in their actual deeds the principles of humanity which they mouth in conspicuous pretense.

But now beside the latest technique of total destruction which the Americans have adopted, their earliest crimes pale into relative insignificance. What more barbarous atrocity can there be than to wipe out at one stroke the population of a whole city without distinction**--men, women, and children; the aged, the weak, the infirm; those in positions of authority, and those with no power at all; all snuffed out without being given a chance of lifting even a finger in either defense or defiance!

The United States may claim, in a lame attempt to raise a pretext in justification of its latest action, that a policy of utter annihilation is necessitated by Japan's failure to heed the recent demand for unconditional surrender. But the question of surrendering or not surrendering certainly can have not the slightest relevance to the question of whether it is justifiable to use a method which under any circumstance is strictly condemned alike by the principles of international law and of morality. For this American outrage against the fundamental moral sense of mankind, Japan must proclaim to the world its protest against the United States, which has made itself the archenemy of humanity.

*The third bomb was not scheduled to be ready until about August 24, two weeks after the dropping of the second one.

**At Hiroshima about 150,000 people were killed and wounded out of a total population of some 350,000. The firebomb raid on Tokyo of March 10, 1945, killed an estimated 83,000 people.

Nippon Times (Tokyo), August 10, 1945.

The Christian Century Deplores the Bombing (1945)
The use of the atomic bomb was reluctantly but overwhelmingly recommended by Truman's large corps of expert advisers. Some of the scientists at first proposed test demonstrations in an uninhabited place, but the United States had only two bombs, and they might prove to be humiliating duds. They could not wreak much damage in desert areas and might leave the Japanese unimpressed. If the cities to be bombed were warned in advance, the Japanese might move American prisoners of war to them and at the same time ambush the U.S. bombers. Japan was reeling, but it perhaps had enough suicide resistance left to exact a million casualties, while losing more than a million of its own people. The atomic bomb, indicating that awesome forces were working against the Japanese, might stun them into a quick surrender--as it did. (A dry-run demonstration would have weakened this effect.) The cost was perhaps 150,000 Japanese lives, as against 2 million--Japanese, American, and British. The Christian Century, a prominent Protestant journal published in Chicago, did not accept the philosophy of a "mercy bombing." Which, if any, of its suggestions would have strengthened the moral position of the United States?

Something like a moral earthquake has followed the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Its continued tremors throughout the world have diverted attention even from the military victory itself. . . . It is our belief that the use made of the atomic bomb has placed our nation in an indefensible moral position.

We do not propose to debate the issue of military necessity, though the facts are clearly on one side of this issue. The atomic bomb was used at a time when Japan's navy was sunk, her air force virtually destroyed, her homeland surrounded, her supplies cut off, and our forces poised for the final stroke. Recognition of her imminent defeat could be read between the lines of every Japanese communiqué. Neither do we intend to challenge Mr. Churchill's highly speculative assertion that the use of the bomb saved the lives of more than one million American and 250,000 British soldiers.

We believe, however, that these lives could have been saved had our government followed a different course, more honorable and more humane. Our leaders seem not to have weighed the moral considerations involved. No sooner was the bomb ready than it was rushed to the front and dropped on two helpless cities, destroying more lives than the United States has lost in the entire war.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the bomb would ultimately be employed to bring Japan to the point of surrender. . . . But there was no military advantage in hurling the bomb upon Japan without warning. The least we might have done was to announce to our foe that we possessed the atomic bomb; that its destructive power was beyond anything known in warfare; and that its terrible effectiveness had been experimentally demonstrated in this country. We could thus have warned Japan of what was in store for her unless she surrendered immediately. If she doubted the good faith of our representations, it would have been a simple matter to select a demonstration target in the enemy's own country at a place where the loss of human life would be at a minimum.

If, despite such warning, Japan had still held out, we would have been in a far less questionable position had we then dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At least our record of deliberation and ample warning would have been clear. Instead, with brutal disregard of any principle of humanity, we "demonstrated" the bomb on two great cities, utterly extinguishing them.* This course has placed the United States in a bad light throughout the world. What the use of poison gas did to the reputation of Germany in World War I, the use of the atomic bomb has done for the reputation of the United States in World War II. Our future security is menaced by our own act, and our influence for justice and humanity in international affairs has been sadly crippled.

*Hiroshima was about three-fourths devastated; Nagasaki, one-third.

Harry Truman Justifies the Bombing (1945)
German scientists were known to be working on an atomic bomb, and Roosevelt was persuaded to push forward with an ultrasecret competing project that ultimately cost some $2.5 billion. The charge was made--without proof--that Truman had to use the new weapon or face an investigation of squandered money. More probable was his desire to end the Far Eastern war speedily, before the bothersome Russians came in. The evidence is strong that they hurried up their six-day participation following the dropping of the first bomb. At all events, President Truman accepted full responsibility for his decision and later defended it in his Memoirs, as excerpted here. Did he make the decision by himself? Did he try to use the bomb as a lawful weapon? In the light of conditions at the time, rather than hindsight, was he justified in his action?

My own knowledge of these [atomic] developments had come about only after I became President, when Secretary [of War] Stimson had given me the full story. He had told me at that time that the project was nearing completion, and that a bomb could be expected within another four months. It was at his suggestion, too, that I had then set up a committee of top men and had asked them to study with great care the implications the new weapon might have for us. . . .

It was their recommendation that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done. They recommended further that it should be used without specific warning, and against a target that would clearly show its devastating strength. I had realized, of course, that an atomic bomb explosion would inflict damage and casualties beyond imagination. On the other hand, the scientific advisers of the committee reported, "We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use." It was their conclusion that no technical demonstration they might propose, such as over a deserted island, would be likely to bring the war to an end. It had to be used against an enemy target.

The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon, and never had any doubt that it should be used. The top military advisers to the President recommended its use, and when I talked to Churchill, he unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the war.

In deciding to use this bomb I wanted to make sure that it would be used as a weapon of war in the manner prescribed by the laws of war. That meant that I wanted it dropped on a military target. I had told Stimson that the bomb should be dropped as nearly as possibly upon a war production center of prime military importance. . . .

Four cities were finally recommended as targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki. They were listed in that order as targets for the first attack. The order of selection was in accordance with the military importance of these cities, but allowance would be given for weather conditions at the time of the bombing.

[The devastating impact of the atomic bomb, together with the Soviet Union's sudden entry into the war against Japan, undoubtedly forced the Japanese surrender sooner than would otherwise have been possible. Even so, the fanatical military men in Tokyo almost won out for a last-ditch stand.

In 1959, during interchanges with the students of Columbia University, former president Truman vigorously justified his action. He noted that "when we asked them to surrender at Potsdam, they gave us a very snotty answer. That is what I got. . . . They told me to go to hell, words to that effect." Mr. Truman insisted that the dropping of the bomb was "just a military maneuver, that is all," because "we were destroying the factories that were making more munitions." He then concluded: "All this uproar about what we did and what could have been stopped--should we take these wonderful Monday morning quarterbacks, the experts who are supposed to be right? They don't know what they are talking about. I was there. I did it. I would do it again." (Truman Speaks [New York: Columbia University Press, 1960], pp. 73-74.)]