In 2002, New York-based publishing company Simon and Shuster released a book by Stephen Ambrose, the renowned professor of American History who is best known locally for the time he spent (1971-1995) at the University of New Orleans. During that period, he championed and contributed heavily to the idea of building the definitive museum dedicated to the D-Day landings in Normandy. That plan was later enhanced to what is now The National World War II Museum, deservedly considered one of the best war museums in the world.
Ambrose died later that year, October 2002. The publication, titled “To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian,” was his last book, perhaps written with his condition in mind. In the book he revealed many of his thoughts about his life, beliefs and the country’s history, ranging from Valley Forge to Vietnam.
With the current popularity of the movie, “Oppenheimer,” Ambrose’s book comes to mind. He wrote frankly about his own inner debate concerning the bombing of Japan and he made a surprising admission.
“Here is the way I used to teach about Hiroshima,” Ambrose wrote. “By the summer of 1945 Japan was defeated, she had almost no fleet left. Her air force had been reduced to kamikazes. Her army was spread across Manchuria, Korea, China parts of Indonesia and Indochina. Because American submarines had all but eliminated Japan’s transports, Japan could not bring her army home to defend the home islands.”
By the time the bombs were dropped, 78 years ago years this week (Aug. 6 and 9, 1945), the Japanese had been told by American negotiators about the bomb and what could happen. The Japanese refused to surrender. With that a deadly invasion and land war was expected.
Japanese deaths from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were estimated as being possibly as high as 226,000. Even Oppenheimer, as the movie shows, went through personal torment about the bombs.
Harry Truman had only been president for four months following the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945. He was not aware of the atom bomb’s advanced state until he became president. The new president was faced with one of the most important decisions in world history, on short notice.
There was strong debate that the bombings should be delayed by a few more months to allow more time for negotiation. Germany had already surrendered, so maybe the Japanese would reconsider. Yet they had shown themselves to be rock hard during the war. The Nazis could be bastards but not even they forced their young pilots to destroy themselves as kamikazes. On the Japanese home front preparations were being made to sacrifice kids as human bombs once the expected Allies invasion began.
“Truman’s critics, including me,” Ambrose wrote, “charged that the sequence of events demonstrated that the use of the bomb was the first act of the Cold War not the last act of World War II. Truman used the bomb not so much to force the Japanese to surrender as to show the Russians what we had, and that we were not afraid to use it.”
Then there was the perceived Euro-racial bias, which argued that the United States would have never dropped the bomb on Berlin.
A few pages later, however, Ambrose confessed to being influenced by time:
“Here is what I learned since then," he continued. “The Japanese government was by no means rational or ready to surrender. There were logical, sensible people in Japan. but they were not allowed a say in decision making. No scientists, professors, lawyers, not even a politician had influence. They were dedicated to (Emperor) Hirohito and the military who believed they could inflict enough casualties to force the Americans to negotiate.”
According to Ambrose, the Japanese had kamikaze planes hidden in forests as well as kamikaze power boats. They were ready to sacrifice the whole nation to preserve their personal honor.
So, Ambrose, who knew more about the war than just about anyone, changed his original position about the events of August 1945.
“The need to end the war was overwhelming," wrote Ambrose. "The Japanese were starving and killing American POWs, mainly fliers who had been shot down over Japan. Meanwhile thousands of more civilians in the Japanese-held territories in Asia and the offshores islands were dying everyday because of Japanese mistreatment.
“So today, I tell my students," Ambrose concluded, "‘Thank God for Harry Truman’ for his courage and decisiveness.”
There is a scene in the film in which Truman and Robert Oppenheimer met, not long after the bombing, for the first time. The meeting did not go well. Truman was cheerful in expressing why the bombings were the right thing to do, Oppenheimer, one of the bomb’s inventors, seemed depressed.
In the battlefields of the minds, the war continued.
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