Every year, in early August, new articles appear that debate whether the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 was justified. Earlier this month, the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, was no exception.
www.lawfareblog.com
This article contains a number of blatant falsehoods.
The Hopkins claim was the most recent inflation of estimates building on what Rufus Miles called the “myth of half a million American lives saved.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson originally claimed in his famous 1947 Harper’s article that an invasion was expected to produce “over a million American casualties [wounded and killed] to American forces alone” (emphasis added). Winston Churchill, in his memoirs, claimed instead that the invasion would have produced one million American fatalities and an additional 500,000 thousand allied fatalities. But the serious historians studying this issue come to a different conclusion, finding that the range of estimates of U.S. deaths in the 1945 military records was significantly lower than the mythical half a million figure.
There were official estimates that invading Japan could result in a million American deaths, plus millions more Americans maimed and gravely wounded.
Claims that there were no such estimates, or that the estimates were exaggerations, are lies.
Although Hiroshima contained some military-related industrial facilities—an army headquarters and troop-loading docks—the vibrant city of over a quarter of a million men, women and children was hardly “a military base.” Indeed, less than 10 percent of the individuals killed on Aug. 6, 1945, were Japanese military personnel.
Another lie. About 15% of the dead at Hiroshima were Japanese soldiers.
Describing the headquarters that was in charge of repelling our invasion as merely "an army headquarters" is also deliberately misleading.
As is true with all counterfactuals, we can’t know with certainty whether the Japanese government would have surrendered without the dropping of the bomb if this compromise had been offered when Stimson suggested. Among the many tragedies of Hiroshima, however, is that Truman refused to try this diplomatic maneuver earlier.
Truman had no ability to try it earlier, since Japan was not willing to try it before August 10.
The international law of armed conflict has evolved considerably since 1945, and an attack like that against Hiroshima would be illegal today. It would violate three requirements of the law of armed conflict codified in the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions: to not intentionally attack civilians (the principle of distinction); to ensure that incidental damage against civilians is not excessive compared to the direct military advantage gained from an attack against a lawful target (the principle of proportionality), especially where, as here, the value of the identified military targets in Hiroshima was modest; and to take all feasible precautions to minimize collateral damage against civilians (the precautionary principle).
All sorts of lies here. The US didn't intentionally attack civilians. The identified military targets in Hiroshima were highly significant and far from modest.
The implication that the US did not try to minimize collateral damage is also a lie. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were warned with leaflets that they would soon be destroyed by the US Air Force.
Because it would have entailed the awful human costs of an invasion, Truman’s demand for Japan’s unconditional surrender to end the war was indefensible. Seeking to avoid the larger losses that would flow from an unjust demand for unconditional surrender cannot justify the Hiroshima attack.
Truman didn't demand unconditional surrender. The Potsdam Proclamation was a list of surrender terms.
But had Truman actually demanded unconditional surrender, that would have been entirely defensible and perfectly legitimate.
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