Political Lies Are More Plausible Than Reality: American and Japanese Lies about Atomic Bombing

[Ed. Note: This article is based on the author’s presentation for the Modern Japan History Association “New Books on Japan” Lecture Series on 20 April 2025, chaired by Professor Kirsten Ziomek, Director of Asian Studies at Adelphi University in New York, and amended from a supplementary blogpost originally published here. See an extended Q&A transcript based on the presentation here.]

Introduction:

During the Asia-Pacific War, which lasted 15 years from September 1931 to August 1945, Japanese Imperial troops, operating under the supreme command of Emperor Hirohito, committed numerous atrocities against civilians in occupied territories as well as combatants and prisoners of war (POWs) of enemy forces across various regions of China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A thoroughgoing examination of numerous archival documents and testimonies substantiates this fact.¹

In particular, the Japanese military in China engaged in a brutal war of consistent aggression from the outset. It is estimated that the number of Chinese casualties amounted to approximately 20 million, including those who were indirectly affected by Japanese conduct, such as famine, over 15 years. In addition to the phenomenal number of Chinese victims, the following are the estimated numbers of other Asian fatalities of Japanese military violence during these 15 years of war: 1.5 million in India, 2 million in Vietnam, 100,000 in Malaya and Singapore, 1.11 million in the Philippines, and 4 million in Indonesia. If the losses of Pacific Islanders are added, it can be speculated that about 30 million people died as a result of the war that Japan conducted.²

The number of victims of Nazi war crimes including the Holocaust is estimated to be between 17 and 18 million. Of course, the victims of well-planned genocide committed by the Nazis over five years cannot be easily compared with thirty million direct and indirect victims of the Japanese military activities in the Asia-Pacific over 15 years. Unlike the Nazi regime, the Japanese military government did not entertain a clear policy of genocide. Yet, considering the massive number of the victims, consequently it can be said that the Japanese treatment of the Asians and Pacific Islanders during the Asia-Pacific War was undoubtedly genocidal.

On the one hand, the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 AM on 6 August 1945, followed by a second on Nagasaki at 11:02 AM on 9 August. The victims of the bombs were not only Japanese nationals, but also many Koreans who were brought to Japan and forced to work at military arsenals. In Nagasaki, there were also some Australian and Dutch POWs from the Allied forces captured by the Japanese military. Tens of thousands of others died soon after the bombs were dropped owing to a lack of medical supplies. By the end of 1945, an estimated 210,000 people including 40,000 Koreans had died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Countless more have died from various after-effects, including radiation, since 1945. Many of those who lived through this hellish experience also suffered serious psychological damage. The majority of victims of the atomic bombs were civilians.³

Furthermore, the United States military deployed a total of 160,800 tons of bombs and incendiaries against Japan, with more than ninety percent of these deployed from B-29s in the final five months of the Pacific war. Consequently, Japan, as a nation without an adequate air defense system, allowed 393 cities, towns and villages to be victimized by the U.S. aerial bombing. The estimated total number of victims was 1.02 million, including 560,000 deaths (excluding the deaths of Okinawans during the Battle of Okinawa). It is estimated that the majority of these casualties were women, children, and the elderly. This is indicative of the inaccuracy of the term “indiscriminate bombing,” which was used to describe the aerial bombardment. The term “discriminating bombing against civilians” is a more appropriate description for the majority of victims of the so-called “strategic bombing” being civilians, particularly women and children. Furthermore, from a quantitative perspective, the aerial bombardment of Japanese and Korean civilians by the United States can be regarded as a genocidal act.

Why did the Japanese, unlike the Germans, fail to develop a sense of collective responsibility for the wartime and colonial atrocities they committed, and why do they continue to fail to do so? The Japanese government and the Japanese people in general always emphasize the fact that Japan is the only nation in the world to have suffered the atomic bombing, while they tend to ignore the terrible wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial forces. At the same time, they also tend to forget the fact that there were many other Japanese and Koreans who were victims of the US fire-bombing. Of course, a sense of responsibility is closely linked to a sense of justice, and a collective sense of justice is an essential factor in the concept and practice of democracy. The failure to seriously address the issue of war responsibility is therefore not simply a matter of historical perspective. It is fundamentally a problem of a flaw in Japan’s “democracy.”

The aim of this paper is to find answers to this question by focusing on the atomic bombings – how the US made that decision, how Japan came to accept defeat, how both the US and Japan created their own state-sanctioned narratives to justify each decision, and how they accepted such narratives from each other for their own interests. I also tried to examine what kind of social and political problems arose as a result of this collaboration, and how the prevailing social and political problems currently confronted by the Japanese people are in essence, fundamentally rooted in the manner in which the war ended.

However, prior to addressing this question, it is important to briefly examine the historical development of the indiscriminate bombing in the Asia-Pacific during the Asia-Pacific War, which culminated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

1. Indiscriminate bombings conducted by Japan during the Asia-Pacific War

It has been frequently proposed that the inaugural deployment of aircraft as a weapon of war occurred during the colonial conflicts in the Balkans and North Africa in early 1910s.

Similarly, there is a Japanese military document indicating that Japan used poison gas in 1930 during the Musha Incident, an uprising by indigenous Taiwanese in October that year. This incident occurred during Japan’s colonial rule of Taiwan, where poison gas was reportedly used in experimental air strikes.⁴

On 18 September 1931, Japanese forces invaded northeast China, claiming that Chinese forces had destroyed the railway at Lake Liu near Mukden in southern Manchuria, although this had actually been done by the Japanese themselves to provide a pretext for the invasion. Following the commencement of the Kwantung Army’s invasion of Manchuria, aerial bombardment of the city of Jinzhou of Liaoxi (present-day Liaoning) Province commenced on 10 October 1931 under the order of Lieutenant Colonel Ishiwara Kanji. A formation of twelve bombers was responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of the railway station, a hospital and university buildings, with a total of seventy-five 55-pound bombs being dropped. This air raid occurred six years prior to the Nazi bombing of Guernica in Spain and marked the inaugural instance of indiscriminate bombing in East Asia. Upon receiving a report of this sudden air raid, Emperor Hirohito endorsed it as a “necessary action” and expressed his willingness to reinforce the troops, inquiring as to whether the Kwantung Army would require additional support forces.⁵

In January 1932, the Japanese imperial forces commenced a series of much better known and more substantial aerial bombardments of Chinese urban centers, beginning with an attack on Shanghai. On 7 July 1937, a skirmish occurred between Japanese and Chinese troops near Lugouqiao (Marco Polo) Bridge over the Yongding River in Fengtai, a suburb south of Beijing. The Japanese government took advantage of this incident, commencing a full-scale war against China, with the intention of annexing the whole country.

In the aftermath of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, there was a notable escalation in Japanese military operations in China. This resulted in numerous additional cities, including Beijing, Wuhan, Guangdong, and Chongqing, becoming targets of indiscriminate bombing by the Japanese forces. While the Nanjing Massacre is now widely known, it is less well documented that approximately 600 individuals were victims of repeated Japanese bombings of Nanjing City in late September 1937.⁶ Despite the absence of military facilities and arsenals in Chongqing, the city was subjected to over 200 aerial bombings over a three-year period from 1938, resulting in the deaths of approximately 20,000 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians. The city became a target for Japanese aerial bombing simply because it became the capital of the Guomindang.⁷

2. Indiscriminate firebombing of Japan’s main islands by the U.S.

At that time, bombing civilians was still shocking. On 28 September 1937, the General Assembly of the League of Nations adopted a resolution unanimously condemning Japan in the wake of the bombing of Nanjing. In a public address in Chicago on 5 October, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt strongly condemned Japan, asserting that it had perpetrated the merciless killing of numerous Chinese non-combatants, including women and children, without a justifiable cause and without declaring war against China. However, in the final stage of the Asia-Pacific War, with the firebombing of numerous Japanese cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US forces were responsible for the deaths of large numbers of Japanese civilians, the majority of whom were women and children.

However, this was not the first U.S. attack of this kind. Prior to the commencement of the extensive and indiscriminate aerial bombardments of Japan in late November 1944, the U.S. forces had already initiated attacks on Japanese colonies in June 1944. For these operations, the U.S. forces utilized the recently constructed B-29 bomber base in Chengdu in Sichuan Province, in addition to one in Kolkata in India. These attacks were directed towards industrial zones situated along the South Manchurian Railway in Northeast China, as well as military bases located in Southeast Asia such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Singapore. Japanese military bases in Indochina, most notably Saigon, were subjected to intensive bombing raids, resulting in the deaths of many civilians.⁸

After establishing airbases in the Marianas, the USAAF (Army Air Forces) began its bombing campaign against Japan in late 1944. When Curtis LeMay took over as Commanding General of the 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific in late January 1945, USAAF’s bombing campaign quickly escalated to indiscriminate bombing with the new type of powerful incendiary bomb, napalm. When Lemay realized that even with the use of the powerful napalm bombs, high-altitude bombing did not achieve the desired level of destruction in the targeted areas, as the incendiary bombs dropped from high altitudes were scattered. This was to be changed to low-level bombing, which would drastically reduce the flying altitude to between 5,000 and 8,000 feet (1,500 and 2,400 meters). However, this would have greatly increased the risk of bombers being shot down by anti-aircraft guns, so the previous daylight bombing was abandoned and replaced by night bombing. Thus began the “low-level night bombing” or “night-time carpet bombing” by countless bombers from early March until mid-August when the war ended.⁹

In order to justify this indiscriminate bombing, LeMay asserted that the bombing of civilians was a crucial tactic in disrupting Japanese morale and accelerating the process of their surrender. Concurrently, it was the most effective method of reducing the number of casualties among their own troops. In this sense, LeMay and other U.S. military leaders inherited the concept of “strategic bombing,” which was originally advocated by the RAF leaders, in particular Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, in World War I. According to this concept, the killing of enemy civilians is justifiable, regardless of the method used, and is an indispensable tactic for hastening surrender.

The Great Tokyo Raid, carried out by 300 B-29 bombers on 10 March 1945, was the first “low-level night bombing” that LeMay adopted. It provides a case study in the indiscriminate nature of such “strategic bombing.” In this raid, 237,000 napalm bombs, equivalent to 1,665 tons, were used, resulting in an estimated 97,000 deaths and 125,000 injuries over a six-hour period. One-fiftieth of Tokyo’s population was wiped out in one night. Tokyo was then the world’s largest open-air crematorium.¹⁰

Beginning with the air raid on Tokyo on 10 March, a series of low-level, night-time, incendiary carpet-bombing raids were carried out on Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Nagoya was bombed three times on 12, 19 and 25 March, killing some 3,500 people, injuring 5,500 and burning almost 70,000 houses. In Osaka, 70,000 incendiary bombs were dropped in a three-hour period from midnight on 13 March to 14 March. The death toll exceeded 3,000, and 510,000 people, more than 20% of Osaka’s total population at the time, were affected. In Kobe, 36,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on 17 March, killing 2,600 people, injuring more than 8,500 and destroying 65,000 homes.¹¹

Although air raids with conventional bombs continued on Nagoya and Osaka until the end of the war, from mid-June Lemay selected a number of small and medium-sized cities throughout Japan as targets for a thorough destruction of the whole of Japan, bombing most of them indiscriminately at night with incendiary bombs. Cities such as Kure and Iwakuni near Hiroshima were badly damaged, and Toyama, bombed on the night of 2 August, was 98% burnt to the ground by flames fanned by strong winds.¹²

Rhetorically, U.S. leaders continued to make public statements indicating that their bombs were aimed at strategic targets and that they remained committed to the strategy of “precision bombing.” However, actually these were all indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. During the war, numerous small Japanese houses in major cities were also identified as military targets. To justify such indiscriminate attacks, the U.S. argued that many small family-run factories operated in those houses, producing a vast array of weapon components for large arsenals.

3. The Air Defense System of Japan’s Emperor-Fascism State

Nevertheless, the extent of the U.S. responsibility for mass killings by aerial bombing can only be determined when the intricate interrelationship between the perpetrator and the victim is elucidated. In other words, a full understanding of responsibility can only be achieved by considering the criminal acts of the U.S. forces in conjunction with the fact that Japan’s so-called air defense system was deeply embedded in the prevailing Japanese philosophy of justifying the victimization of one’s own nation for the sake of “national defense.”

In April 1937, the Air Defense Law was enacted for the first time in Japan. In point of fact, the law in question constituted an air defense drill law, as it set forth the obligations of Japanese citizens in the event of aerial bombardment. The objective of this legislation was not to protect the lives and property of the Japanese people; rather, it was designed to exert control over them by mobilizing them for so-called air defense exercises. In 1941, two additional amendments were introduced to the existing law: the prohibition of escaping and the emergency firefighting duty. In essence, these amendments stipulated that, with the exception of infants, the elderly, and the infirm, no ordinary citizen was permitted to flee from aerial bombardment. Furthermore, they prohibited residents from relocating to an alternative residence without official authorization, even in the period preceding the bombing.¹³

In other words, nobody was permitted to evade incendiary attacks; all were compelled to fight, and to resist. In the context of the emperor-military state system, the distinction between the front line of battle and the home front was effectively erased. All Japanese combatants and civilians were compelled to sacrifice their lives in order to defend the Gyokutai (sacred body) of the emperor, which symbolized Kokutai (the state polity). This can be described as a form of forced gyokusai (suicide to defend the emperor).

Tonarigumi-seido (the neighborhood association system) was established as a vital wartime social unit for Taisei Yokusan Kai, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, an organization intended to establish a totalitarian political regime in wartime Japan. This was set up on 12 October 1940. Tonariigumi-seido was originally set up as an organization to collaborate with the police for maintaining security of the community. In this system, each group of approximately ten neighboring households constituted a fundamental social unit. This was also used for the purpose of air defense. It was their responsibility to work together to maintain public order, providing faithful assistance to the local police force and civil defense units. Members of each group were required to cooperate closely with one another in the event of an aerial bombing as well.

By 1943, 1.2 million neighborhood association groups had been established throughout Japan, and the family-state ideology was applied to Tonarigumi, stating that Tonarigumi must be a “family,” and that this was ‘the basic unit of the imperial family state’ and the first step towards the realization of Hako-Ichiu, unifying and controlling the whole world as a single house under the emperor’s authority. The practical drills that the military authorities emphasized were firefighting drills based on the primitive methods such as a bucket brigade utilizing barrels, bath buckets, pails, and similar vessels. In the event of an incendiary bomb attack, the prevailing method of defusing the device was to pour sand or soil over it and beat it with a broom. As the entire population of Japan was strictly controlled and governed by the Tonarigumi system, and especially towards the end of the war, food rations were also distributed through this system, it was virtually impossible to lead a daily life without being a member of Tonarigumi.¹⁴

From mid-1943, when the state of war in many parts of the Pacific became less favorable for Japan, the construction of air raid shelters was promoted all over the nation. Basically, two types of air raid shelters were built: one for a group of people and the other for a family. The group shelter was usually built in a cave form on public land such as on a street, a piazza, at a railway station, or in a park, while the family shelter was made in pit form in the family garden or under the floor of a private house. Neither were solid air raid structures to securely protect civilians from an avalanche of bombs and incendiaries, since they were more like dugouts or trenches. This was because the Japanese military decided that the shel­ters would be places where people could temporarily escape when the bombing started, and as soon as the risk of being attacked diminished, the people should come out and engage in firefighting as members of the neighborhood associa­tion. Consequently, the depth of the dugouts was only about three feet, and they were useless and futile once surrounded by raging flames caused by incendiaries.¹⁵

In short, Japan’s Air Defense Law and the strict control exercised over the wartime social organization for air defense played a decisive role in increasing the number of casualties caused by the United States’ aerial bombing. In fact, it was a result of the complete failure of Japan’s efforts to establish its own “total war system.”

A total war system is the rational and efficient use, as far as possible, of the material and human resources available to the state in a manner systematically adapted to the war effort. This requires the logical and orderly allocation of material resources to production objectives and the methodical mobilization and deployment of human resources to the right places.

To this end, Japan’s traditional family-oriented occupational distribution, employment patterns, and old-fashioned master/apprentice relationships in the workplace at the time were totally unsuited to a system of total warfare that required thorough and purposeful mobilization and deployment of human resources.

Indeed, Japan passed its first National General Mobilization Law in 1938 during the Asia-Pacific War. However, for the National Mobilizations Law to fundamentally change this distribution of traditional family-oriented occupations, employment patterns and labor relations, it would have to lead to the collapse of the imperial state itself, which was based on patriarchal familism. Therefore, despite the National Mobilizations Act, in reality it did not lead to any social reorganization for a total war system, as the Ministry of Trade and Industry bureaucracy of the time had planned, since the main priority was to maintain the existing traditional systems of production activities and enterprises as long as possible.¹⁶

Consequently, the endeavors to institute a total war system within imperial fascism ultimately engendered an extreme contradiction to such a system, namely “gyokusai,” signifying the compulsory self-destruction of the most valuable human resources, namely soldiers and civilians. As the war approached its conclusion, over 6,300 young pilots, many of them university students, were deployed to the front lines of air defense as kamikaze suicidal pilots.¹⁷ It is evident that housewives, members of the Tonarigumi system on the home front, were obliged to engage in armed conflict against the invading US troops using bamboo spears and to commit “gyokusai (mass suicide).” The Emperor’s War, in which both soldiers and civilians of Japan were not allowed to surrender or become prisoners of war, was a product of this tremendous madness and irrationality that the failure to establish a rational system of total warfare produced.

The U.S. military regarded the entire Japanese population as a “quasi-military force” which cooperated fully with the Emperor and the Japanese Imperial Army. The result was the indiscriminate bombing of numerous cities, towns and villages from Hokkaido to Okinawa, including the Tokyo Air Raid, which killed almost 100,000 people, as well as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was a total of nearly 800,000 dead, 300,000 injured and more than 2.34 million homes lost.

It is therefore unsurprising that not only USAAF Commanding General, Henry Arnold and Curtis LeMay, but also Carl Spaatz, Commander of the U.S. strategic air force in the Pacific and other USAAF leaders, experienced scarcely any moral dilemma about their intention to commit mass murder of the Japanese with a new weapon of mass destruction — the atomic bomb. After all, the atomic bomb was the result of an increasingly rapid expansion and intensification of indiscriminate bombing in World War II. It can also be said that the escalation of indiscriminate bombing with conventional and firebombs quickly paralyzed the U.S. forces’ sense of mor­als, justice and responsibility, making them unable to comprehend the magni­tude of inhumanity of this new bomb.

When he was briefed about the power of the atomic bomb before it was actually used against Japan, LeMay expressed his feelings with the exclama­tion: “That’s great!” For him, the atomic bomb was fundamentally the same as the napalm bomb; the only difference between the two was the degree of the effect. The atomic bomb would simply have a far more devastating result than the napalm bomb did.¹⁸

General Arnold was the only person among the military advisors of President Harry Truman who was opposed to the use of the atomic bomb. His difference of opinion was not for moral reasons, but because he believed that the continu­ation of carpet bombing with incendiaries would soon force Japan to surrender. Indeed, he knew far better than anyone else how extensively Japan had been destroyed by firebombing.¹⁹

4. Political process in the run-up to the U.S. decision on the atomic bombing of Japan

The Battle of Okinawa, which began in late March 1945, was a tactical maneuver designed to delay surrender. Emperor Hirohito’s strategic objective was to win the Battle of Okinawa, with the ultimate aim of entering into peace negotiations with the US. However, this strategy resulted in significant loss of life among Okinawan civilians (94,000), Japanese soldiers (94,000 including 28,000 Okinawans) and American troops (12,500). By mid-May, it became evident that the prospects of success for the Japanese forces in Okinawa were negligible.

Consequently, in early May, Hirohito approached the Soviet Government, a signatory to the Treaty of Neutrality, which had not yet expired, and requested their mediation. Among the numerous conditions that Japan stipulated as a prerequisite to the establishment of peace, the two most salient were the preservation of the emperor system and the preservation of the Meiji Constitution. Of these, the former was of particular significance.²⁰ Yet, the Soviet government had been intending to initiate hostilities with Japan by August of that year. Consequently, it did not respond appropriately to the Japanese government’s request for a mediation operation, effectively ignoring it.

On the other hand, when Germany capitulated in early May, the U.S. government immediately began drafting the “surrender demand to Japan,” which was to become the Potsdam Declaration in late July. In the initial draft prepared by Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, a clause promising the retention of the emperor system was included, clearly stating that “this [the new Japanese government] may include a constitutional monarchy under the present dynasty.” This particular clause was included as a result of a strong recommendation by Joseph Grew, former ambassador to Japan. Truman also expressed support for the inclusion of this clause in the draft.²¹ In other words, the U.S. decided to use the emperor’s authority as much as possible in order to quickly place Japan under U.S. control after the war and to make Japan a vanguard base against the Communist bloc in Northeast Asia.

On 15 July, Truman, Stimson and James Byrnes, the U.S. Secretary of State, arrived in Potsdam for the Potsdam Conference, which was scheduled to commence on 17 July. At 7:30 pm on July 16 (Potsdam time), Stimson received a telegram from Washington, DC, informing him of the success of the world’s first atomic bomb experiment, “Trinity.” He immediately conveyed this information to Truman and Byrnes. The significance of this revelation was immediately acknowledged by all three men, evoking a profound sense of elation and astonishment.²²

At the Potsdam Conference, which started on July 17, Stalin told Truman his intention to declare war against Japan on 15 August. Truman believed that if he used the atomic bomb before that day, Japan would surrender and prevent the Soviets from declaring war. Truman had been informed that the A-bomb would be ready after August 5.²³

Truman therefore ensured that Japan would not surrender before 5 August, the date on which the atomic bomb became available, so that the United States could use it. This was achieved by deliberately deleting the clause on the emperor issue, as well as any reference to the newly developed atomic bomb, from the draft of the Potsdam Declaration. The plan was then to use the atomic bombs to destroy Japanese cities and force Japan to surrender during the 10-day period after 5 August and just before 15 August, when the Soviet Union was scheduled to start war against Japan.²⁴

The Potsdam Declaration was a key element of the United States’ strategy to delay Japan’s surrender, a course of action that Japan was unlikely to accept. The primary objective of the atomic bomb was to demonstrate the immense potency of nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union, which had not yet acquired such weapons, and to bring an end to the war without providing the Soviet Union with the opportunity to engage in hostilities against Japan or to participate in the occupation of Japan in the post-war era. This approach was driven by purely political considerations and not by strategic necessity.

In fact, the use of atomic bombs was not at all necessary to end the war, as Truman and members of his administration were well aware of Japan’s imminent surrender.

On 27 July, the Potsdam Declaration was issued. On the following day, in a press conference, Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō formally rejected the Potsdam Declaration, claiming that ‘it has no value at all. Therefore, we simply ignore it. We are determined to continue the war until [we] accomplish our aim.’ This was exactly what Truman and his State Secretary Byrnes wanted to hear.²⁵

On 6 August at 8:15 am (Japan Standard Time), a B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, reached the skies over Hiroshima and dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Two days later, on August 8, at 5:00pm Moscow time (11:00pm JST), the Soviet Union unilaterally abrogated the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and declared war on Japan. In the early hours of the following day, August 9, Soviet troops invaded Manchuria and launched a surprise attack.

On August 9, Truman followed up with another attack, this time on Nagasaki, in an attempt to force Japan to surrender before the Soviet invasion could escalate. Nevertheless, Hirohito and the Japanese government still insisted on accepting the Potsdam Declaration with only one condition: maintaining the emperor system. In other words, by insisting on maintaining the emperor system the war was prolonged, ultimately leading to the indiscriminate killing of people with the two atomic bombs by the U.S.

In the many meetings of Japanese war leaders, cabinet meetings and Imperial Council meetings held in the period leading up to the Potsdam Declaration’s acceptance between 6 and 14 August, the issue of the damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was rarely addressed. The sole topic of discussion was how to persuade the US side to accept only one condition for surrender – the preservation of Kokutai (national polity) and the emperor system. This discussion went on endlessly.²⁶

In response to the Japanese conditional acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, the U.S. side promised, in a very ambiguous manner, to maintain the emperor system under the U.S. occupation forces, and accepted Japan’s “unconditional surrender” in form, although in reality it was a “conditional surrender.” This decision was communicated by the U.S. military broadcaster in San Francisco at 0:45 am on August 12. By 14 August, Hirohito, having been convinced of the certainty of the “preservation of the Emperor System,” came to the decision to accept the Potsdam Declaration, and made the final decision to “end the war” (not “surrender”) at the Imperial Conference.²⁷

5. Different justifications in Japan and the U.S.A for the use of the atomic bombs

In the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, the U.S. justified their actions, arguing that the use of the bombs was absolutely necessary to bring the war to an end. Once the war was over, the U.S. further justified its use of the atomic bombs by creating the myth that the bombs not only ended the war but also saved a million lives that would have been lost if the war had continued. This myth has become firmly embedded in the American population and continues to be widely accepted. However, the diaries of Truman and Stimson make it clear that the true intention behind the Americans’ justification for the atomic bombing was to conceal their conspiracy to persuade Japan to be bombed.

The Imperial Rescript of the End of War, issued by Hirohito on 15 August, was designed to make people think Japan had surrendered because it had gravely suffered the indiscriminate massacre of the atomic bombing. The atomic bombs were used to hide the fact that, for Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s military leaders, the main concern was not the damage caused by the bombs, but the possibility of Japan being invaded by Soviet forces. This would result in Hirohito being tried as a war criminal and the emperor system being abolished.

Indeed, the initial version of the Imperial Rescript of the End of War made no reference to the atomic bomb. However, the suggestion to amend this was made by two eminent scholars, Kawada Mizuho and Yasuoka Masa’atsu, or alternatively by one of them. The following words were added: ‘The enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb with incalculable power to damage and destroy many innocent lives. If we continue to fight, it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.’²⁸

In this way, Both the U.S. and Japan deceitfully exploited the extraordinary destructive power of the atom bomb and propagated the myth that this terrifying new weapon played a pivotal role in ending the long-lasting bloody war and bringing peace to the world. Consequently, the U.S. covered up its responsibility for plotting to make Japan induce the atomic bombing, as well as the crime of the indiscriminate massacre of more than 210,000 civilians including 40,000 Koreans. For its part, Japan concealed Hirohito’s responsibility for inspiring the U.S. atomic bombing.

Hirohito also utilized the atomic bomb as a means of evading his own accountability for Japan’s war of aggression, the numerous atrocities committed by his army and navy, and the exploitation of the Korean and Taiwanese people by the Japanese colonial powers. He made this evasion by claiming that “I cannot but express my deepest regret to our allied nations of East Asia who have consistently cooperated with the Empire for the emancipation of East Asia.” This apology of Hirohito is extremely deceptive in giving the impression that the war of aggression he conducted in East Asia was a just war. Hirohito unashamedly lied to imply that many nations in East Asia had voluntarily and actively cooperated with Japan’s war efforts. Accordingly, he concealed the frequent brutal and inhumane treatment of the local people in the Japanese-occupied ter­ritories in this region.

There was also a tacit acceptance of each other’s duplicity, meaning that the post-war era for Japan and the U.S. began on the basis of mutual acceptance of each other’s denial of wartime responsibility. As Hannah Arendt said, “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible.”²⁹ It is imperative that we initiate a comprehensive campaign to disseminate this historical fact to the global community as part of the anti-nuclear citizens’ movement.

At the same time, the Japanese people became trapped in a strange victim mentality without identifying the perpetrator, which neither sought to hold the U.S. Government’s responsibility for the atrocities committed against the Japanese, nor did it hold the Japanese responsible for the atrocities that the Japanese committed against many people in the Asia-Pacific during the war. In fact, there is no indication in the Hiroshima Peace Park that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was perpetrated by the United States. This is illustrated by the fact that neither the City Atomic Bomb Museum nor the National Peace Memorial Hall even mention the United States as the perpetrator. The prevailing sentiment in the Peace Park is one of destruction, with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its subsequent impact on the city and its inhabitants being the primary and only focus. It goes without saying that nowhere in the Peace Park is there any reference to the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Forces during the Asia-Pacific War either.

6. Political exploitation of Hiroshima from the end of the war to the present day

On 7 December 1947, Hirohito, the man partly responsible for creating the nuclear disaster, visited to Hiroshima. The local newspaper, Chugoku Simbun reported: “Some 50,000 citizens gathered in the Civic Plaza at the A-bomb hypocenter. The national anthem of the 50,000 people rang out from the crucible of emotion and excitement. His Majesty also expressed his emotion on his face and together they sang Kimigayo. Tears… tears… tears of excitement enveloped the audience.” To the thrilled crowd, Hirohito spoke as if he were an outlander, saying, “We must build a peaceful Japan and contribute to world peace without wasting our sacrifices.”³⁰ Thus, the Japanese people came to regard the emperor as a symbol of their very own experience as victims of war, and the “100-million-victim mentality,” in which only Japanese people were victims, thus completely excluded other Asian victims of Japanese military atrocities, and even Korean hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) were not regarded as “hibakusha” for many years. Such discrimination continues to this day.

On the initiative of Hirohito himself, he toured all over the country for eight and a half years, from February 1946 to August 1954. Indeed, Hirohito’s extensive travels throughout Japan were intended to serve as a personal symbolic representation of the war dead, and he was met with overwhelming enthusiasm in every locale he visited, as evidenced by the receptions in Hiroshima. It is reasonable to assume that he was aware that, in Okinawa, the utilization of his symbolic position as a political ploy would be ineffectual. Consequently, he abstained from travelling to Okinawa ever again after the war. Nevertheless, with the exception of Okinawa, the prevailing concept of the “illusion of a war-victim state” was firmly established in the collective consciousness of the Japanese people as a result of his nationwide tour.

At the same time, the Japanese people became trapped in a strange “victim mentality without identifying the perpetrator,” which neither sought to hold the U.S. Government’s responsibility for the atrocities committed against the Japanese, nor did it hold the Japanese responsible for the atrocities that the Japanese committed against many people in the Asia-Pacific and POWs during the war.

On 27 May 2016, Barack Obama, visited the Hiroshima Peace Park. He was the first serving United States president to visit Hiroshima Peace Park with the stated intention of commemorating the victims of the atomic bombing. Yet, Obama’s characterization of the atomic bomb attack was that of a natural disaster, with “death falling from the sky … and a wall of flash and flame destroying this city.” In his Hiroshima Peace Park speech, he advanced the notion of “pseudo universal principles,” invoking expressions such as “all men are equal” and “humanity is one family.”³¹ In this way, he incorporated the issue of the genocide by the atomic bombing into that pseudo universal principle, thereby rendering the “nuclear weapons problem a common problem for all humanity” and effectively rendering the responsibility of the U.S. a moot point by also making it the “collective responsibility of humanity.”

In a manner similar to Hirohito, who visited Hiroshima for the first time after the war and incorporated the “damage of Hiroshima” into the “national damage” he symbolized, creating a powerful illusion of a war victim nation, Obama of the perpetrating country stayed in the Peace Park for less than 30 minutes and, by hugging the representatives of the Hibakusha who did not ask for an apology, created the illusion of total damage to humanity.

He then proceeded to emphasize the significance of the U.S.-Japan military alliance, characterizing it as “to keep the peace,” and ensured that the fundamental principle of the U.S. as a nuclear-weapon state was not in any way undermined. The fact that Obama made the round trip from the largest U.S. military base in the Far East, Iwakuni, to come to Hiroshima symbolizes the true meaning of his visit.

In the post-war period, particularly following the departure of the occupation forces from Japan, the indiscriminate massacre perpetrated by the atomic bombing became increasingly politicized as a symbol of Japan’s war damage. The atomic bomb was employed to inculcate a sense of victimhood in the entire population. However, while the hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) have been marginalized, the “illusion of a war-victim state” has been steadily reinforced, and the Japanese government has repeatedly employed the slogan “the only country to have suffered an atomic bomb,” without holding the perpetrating state responsible.

Concurrently, the government of Japan has adopted a stance of unwavering support for the U.S. nuclear strategy, particularly with regard to its policy of Pax Americana, which heavily relies on nuclear deterrence. In this manner, the anguish experienced by individual victims is politicized not only by Japan’s state principles of a war-victim nation, but also by the state principles of the perpetrating nuclear state of the U.S. The critical power inherent in the individual pain of victims to reject the state principles, namely the state principle of forcing citizens to “kill others and be killed themselves” for state interests, is thus castrated and trampled down. The symbolic visits of Hirohito and Obama to Hiroshima classically exemplify this politicization of victims’ pain.

The formal invocation of the pseudo universal humanitarian principle renders the message devoid of meaning and invalid for the abolition of nuclear weapons. However, by presenting it as emanating from the Ground Zero of Hiroshima, it creates the impression that it embodies the universal principle. The fact that it originates from Ground Zero facilitates the holding of grand political addresses and conferences, such as the G8 Speakers’ Meeting (September 2008), the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference (April 2014), the G8 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (April 2016) and the G7 Summit in Hiroshima (May, 2023).

Thus, in May 2023, the G7 summit even sent a message to the world from Hiroshima that nuclear deterrence must be maintained until the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is possible, a message that in fact endorsed the permanent maintenance of nuclear weapons by the U.S., U.K. and France of the G7.³²

7. How to confront the state principle – Sharing pain

The question therefore arises as to how the personal painful experience of war victims can be used to challenge the prevailing state-sanctioned narratives surrounding the atomic bombings of Japan, both within the United States and Japan itself. In this regard, Oda Makoto, a prominent figure in Japan’s civil movements against the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s, has proposed an approach that merits attention. He asserted ‘the way to truly gain the universal principle for ourselves is to denounce the perpetrator’s acts of others at the same time as one’s own,’ and to develop anti-nuclear, anti-war and peace movements based on this firm foundation. His idea was also based on his own experience of surviving a U.S. incendiary bombing raid on Osaka in August 1945.³³

The suggestion put forward by Oda is fundamentally accurate. Nevertheless, it is challenging to establish a profound sense of solidarity with others by merely criticizing the actions of those responsible for harm, whilst simultaneously acknowledging one’s own actions that have resulted in similar harm. To achieve what Oda intended with his idea, it would be better to share the pain together.

The degree of personal agony is unchanged regardless of the type of weapon which inflicted the casualty – whether atomic bomb, firebomb or cluster bomb. In order to make others understand one’s own physical and psychological pain as a war victim, one must try to understand a similar grief of others, in particular of the victims of the atrocities committed by the people of one’s own nation, through re-experiencing and internalizing their pain as one’s own. In other words, it is important to go through the psychological process of remembering it as if it were one’s own experience.

In order to challenge the dominant state-sanctioned narratives surrounding the atomic bombings of Japan, both in the United States and in Japan itself, it is not enough for the Japanese to simply unilaterally address the damage done to us by the atomic bombings. We should also try to understand the pain of people in the U.S., other Allied nations and Asia who have been affected by the war. This includes individuals such as POWs and civilians who have been subjected to abuse, torture and murder at the hands of the Japanese military. We should try to imagine how they and their families must feel, as if it were our own. This will help them to understand the pain of our own experience of indiscriminate and genocidal atomic and firebombing. The universal principle of “human pain,” which is embedded in our shared personal experience, should be utilized to counter the “state principle” of both the U.S. and Japan and thereby facilitate the construction of a peaceful future. There seems to be no other effective way to destroy the “myths of the atomic bomb.”

In this way, a tormenting memory of a particular group of victims can be truly shared and consequently passed on to a different group, through mutual internalization of their counterpart’s unforgettable experiences. Harrowing mem­ories of war can be shared and preserved only through such interactions between different groups of different nations, using moral imagination to build a better society together.³⁴

The sharing of memories by people of different nations seems to be one of the most effective ways to invalidate the official historical memory, which always justifies the war conduct of the state power. In other words, relating one’s own painful experience only as a victim does not generate hope for the future. Such one-sided recollection cannot be widely shared and passed on to others beyond a certain time and space, and so it fades away sooner or later. As George Bernard Shaw stated, “we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future.”³⁵

8. Conclusion

Since the head of state was presented as a victim of the war, it was not surprising that the majority of the nation also saw themselves as victims of the war. The Japanese victims of the American firebombing and atomic bombing, as well as some anti-nuclear organizations, have therefore focused exclusively on the damage done to themselves, paying little attention to the various atrocities committed by Japan in its wars of aggression in the Asia-Pacific region (including the first Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, as well as the 15-year war) and its colonial rule in Korea and Taiwan, to which Japan has turned a blind eye.

Because they have failed to consistently hold the U.S. accountable for the crime of indiscriminate mass murder by fire and atomic bombing of which they themselves were victims, they have also failed to hold the Japanese people accountable for the various heinous war crimes they committed against the peoples of the Asia-Pacific region. This has created a vicious circle of double irresponsibility, in which we Japanese have failed to take seriously our own responsibility for the atrocities committed by our ancestors and therefore have failed to consistently seek responsibility for the heinous war crimes committed by the U.S. against us. Because of such a vicious circle of Japan’s double irresponsibility, Japan is always unable to gain the trust of other nations, particularly those in Asia, and thus unable to establish peaceful relations with them.

Accepting responsibility for war requires not only learning about our history of brutal acts committed by our fathers and grandfathers against other Asians and Allied prisoners of war. We need to cultivate a humane moral imagination that will enable us to extend our compassion to others who are suffering. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to make full use of our moral imagination to understand the pain of the victims. In particular, the use of symbolic representations of war memories through various forms of culture, such as drama, the performing arts, film, literature, artwork and the like, seems to be an effective way of generating such a positive and constructive imagination.

Symbolic representations of painful war memories can vividly and impressively show the essence of tragic historical events and thus convey a universal message of humanism for the future without extensive explanations. This is because a symbolic representation of the essence of a particular memory with a profound humanitarian message goes straight to people’s hearts and leaves a strong and lasting impression. It needs no intellectual explanation. To pass on the memory, it is not necessary to express it in comprehensive words. What is important is that it impresses and moves people and makes them want to pass the message on to others. Such symbolic representations of war memory are particularly important after all the survivors of a particular war atrocity have died, making it impossible for us to hear the living testimony of the survivors.

To achieve this, we need to change our culture as a whole – a kind of cultural revolution. Until the end of the Asia-Pacific War, Japan had been under the emperor system and emperor ideology for 77 years from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. During these 77 years, Japan went through a series of wars: the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and then the long and bloody 15 Years’ War. During this period, the emperor’s ideology, which had been profoundly and extensively instilled in the Japanese mind, basically disregarded basic human rights, not only for the Japanese themselves, but also for foreigners, especially Asians. In addition, the prolonged wars had a deleterious effect on Japan, engendering a societal dehumanization that impacted the entire population and various facets of Japanese culture. In particular, it created strong and malicious racism among the entire population against Koreans, Chinese and other Asians. Thus, we failed to develop the culture of humane moral imagination as a national culture. The “democratization of Japan,” facilitated by the United States in the post-war period, likewise proved unsuccessful in cultivating a humane culture, due to a multitude of factors, including the persistent impact of the emperor ideology on day-to-day life, and the manifold social and political domains. Racism against Koreans, Chinese and other Asians among us is still rampant. In addition, we have been virtually under the military control of the United States, which is truly contradictory to our peace constitution. We have been living in this inhuman and contradictory culture for 80 years and are still incapable of taking responsibility for war.

It is imperative that American citizens acknowledge and address the country’s long history of indiscriminate and, in principle, genocidal bombing in various parts of the world, which the U.S. has committed since World War II. It is imperative that the nation’s citizens acknowledge the fact that their country has committed heinous crimes against humanity in the form of indiscriminate aerial bombing, resulting in the deaths of millions of civilians around the world over the past several decades. It is imperative that the U.S. government take action to stop this egregious violation of human rights in the name of “protecting democracy and freedom.” Furthermore, it is crucial for the government to dissuade other nations, such as Israel, from undertaking comparable actions. In the absence of such concerted efforts, the prospect of the United States attaining true democratic credentials appears highly improbable. In order to achieve this objective, it is imperative that the American culture undergoes a comprehensive transformation towards a more compassionate and humane disposition. This cultural shift necessitates the cultivation of a more compassionate moral imagination, which is fundamental for the development of a more humane society.

Notes:

1. Yuki Tanaka, “The Asia-Pacific War” in Laura Hein, ed. The New Cambridge History of Japan Volume III (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023), pp. 138-167.
2. Otabe Yuji, Hayashi Hirofumi, Yamada Akira, ed., Key Word Nippon no Sensō Hanzai (Yūzankaku, Tokyo, 1995) p. 220.
3. For detailed statistical data of victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the data compiled by the Ministry of Health of the Japanese government, which is available at the following website: <https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/list/88-1.html>. Concerning the statistical data of Korean victims of the atomic bombing, see Ichiba Junko, Hiroshima wo Mochikaetta Hitobito: Kankoku no Hibakusha wa Naze Umaretanoka (Gaifū-sha, Tokyo, 2005), pp. 118–119.
4. On 3 November 1930, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Imperial Army stationed in Taiwan requested permission from the Minister of War in Tokyo to use poison gas aerial bombs. As a result, the Japanese forces are reported to have used three prototypes of special bombs (cyanide and tear gas bombs) on 8 November and hundreds of tear gas shells for mountain artillery on 18 November. See Haruyama Meitetsu, “Musha-Jiken to dokugasu sakusen” in Sekai Sensō Hanzai Jiten (Bungei Shunjyu, Tokyo, 2002), p.64.
5. Eguchi Kei’ichi, Jugonen Sensō Showa-shi (Aoki Shoten, Tokyo, 1991), p. 43; Matsuura Shozo, Tennō Hirohito to Tōkyō Daikūshū (Otsuki Shoten, Tokyo 1994), p. 21.
6. For details of the bombing of Nanjing by the Japanese Imperial Navy forces, see Yuki Tanaka, “The Nanjing Massacre” in Ben Kiernan, ed., The Cambridge World History of Genocide Vol. III (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023), pp. 380-381.
7. Maeda Akira, Chapter 6 “Strategic Bombing of Chongqing by Japanese Imperial Army and Navy Forces” in Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, ed., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (The New Press, New York, 2010).
8. For details, see Mann, Robert A. Mann, The B-29 Superfortress Chronology, 1934-1960 (McFarland & Company, North Carolina, 2009).
9. Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 126-127.
10. Yuki Tanaka, Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the U.S.-Japan Alliance (Peter Lang, New York, 2023), pp. 32-34.
11. Mark Selden, “The United States, Japan and the Atomic Bomb,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 3:1 (1991), p. 5.
12. NHK Special Shuzai-han, ed., Hondo Kūshū Zenkiroku (Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo 2018), pp. 82-83, 98-110.
13. Yuki Tanaka, Entwined Atrocities, p. 5.
14. Ibid., p. 13.
15. Ibid., p. 14.
16. In considering the reasons for Japan’s failure to construct a total war system during the Asia-Pacific War, Fujita Shozo’s book, Tennō-sei Kokka no Shihai Genri (Misuzu Shobō, Tokyo, 2012), offers deeply thought-provoking points of reference.
17. Yuki Tanaka, “Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots and Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War and Terror,”Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 3:7 (July 6, 2005). https://apjjf.org/yuki-tanaka/1606/article
18. Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (Yale University Press, 1989), p. 320.
19. Ibid., p. 320.
20. Kido Kōichi, Kido Kōichi Nikki (Tokyo University Press, 1966), pp. 1208–1213.
21. Hiroshima: The Henry Stimson Diary and Papers (part 5) ＜http://www.doug-long.com/stimson5.htm＞ 6 June and 26 June 1945.
22. Hiroshima: The Henry Stimson Diary and Papers (part 7) <http://www.doug-long.com/stimson7.htm> 17 July 1945.
23. Harry Truman Diary, July 18,1945, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum Collection.
24. This possibility is also suggested by Gar Alperovitz in his book, The Decision to Use Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of An American Myth (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, 1995), pp. 305–307.
25. Kido, op. cit., p.1221; Sakomizu Hisatsune, Kikanjū-ka no Shushō Kantei: 2/26 Jiken kara Shūsen made (Chikuma Shobō, Tokyo, 2011), p. 251.
26. Kido, op. cit., p. 1223; Sakomizu, op. cit., pp. 278–280; Shimomura Kainan, Shūsen-ki (Kamakura Bunko, Kamakura, 1948), pp. 118–121; Chimoto Hideki, Tennō-sei no Shinryaku Sekinin to Sengo Sekinin (Aoki Shoten, Tokyo, 1990), pp. 95–97.
27. Kido, op. cit., p.1225; Sakomizu, op. cit., pp. 291–300; Chimoto, op. cit., pp. 106–111.
28. Oikawa Shōichi, Shūsen Chokugo to Nippon Seiji: Gimei to Jiun no Sōkoku (Chuō Kōron-sha, Tokyo, 2015), pp. 142–147; Sakomizu, op. cit., p. 316.
29. Hannah Arendt, “Lying Politics” in her book Crises of the Republic (Harvest Book, New York, 1972). Kindle version.
30. Chugoku Shimbun, 8 December 1947.
31. Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, May 27, 2016). https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/27/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-hiroshima-peace
32. For details of the G7 Hiroshima Summit, see the official website: https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/summit/hiroshima23/en/
33. Yuki Tanaka, “Oda Makoto, Beheiren and 14 August 1945: Humanitarian Wrath against Indiscriminate Bombing,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5:9 (September 3, 2007). https://apjjf.org/yuki-tanaka/2532/article
34. This idea of sharing pain in order to build peaceful human relationships was indeed tenaciously practiced and powerfully demonstrated by the late Numata Suzuko (1923-2011), hibakusha in Hiroshima. For details of her life, philosophy and practice, see Yuki Tanaka, Entwined Atrocities, pp. 326-337.
35. George Bernard Shaw, “Back to Methuselah.”