American Heritage Magazine (August 2023) – This World War II issue features ‘Was the Bomb Necessary?’; Struggling to End the War; What were the Japanese Thinking?; Hersey Uncovers the Horror, The Bomb’s Toxic Legacy, and more…

Cities Reduced to Ashes

Tokyo firebomb — *American bombings in Japan, such as the firebombing of Tokyo during Operation Meetinghouse on March 10, 1945, left approximately 84,000 civilians dead. Photo by Ishikawa Koyo*

In the spring of 1945, American bombing raids destroyed much of Tokyo and dozens of other Japanese cities, killing at least 200,000 people, without forcing a surrender.

David Dean Barrett

After the bloody battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, planners feared as many as two million American deaths if the US invaded the Japanese homeland.

By the summer of 1944, U.S. military power in the Pacific Theater had grown spectacularly. Beginning days after the D-Day invasion in France, American forces launched their largest attacks yet against the Japanese-held islands of Saipan on June 15, Guam on July 21, and Tinian on July 24. Situated 1,200 to 1,500 miles south of Japan in the crescent-shaped archipelago known as the Marianas, they were strategically important, defending the empire’s vital shipping lanes from Asia and preventing increased aerial attacks on the homeland.

Struggling to End the War

*Much of the debate over ending the war centered on the role of Emperor Hirohito, the “living deity,” after the conflict. Library of Congress*

As defeat became inevitable in the summer of 1945, Japan’s government and the Allies could not agree on surrender terms, especially regarding the future of Emperor Hirohito and his throne.

Richard Overy

As the Allied armies closed in on the German capital in 1945, the complications for ending the war in Europe paled, in comparison with the difficulty of forcing a Japanese surrender. For the Japanese military, the concept was unthinkable, a state of mind confirmed by the hundreds of thousands of Japanese servicemen who had already been killed, rather than giving up a hopeless contest.

For the Japanese leadership, the whole strategy of the Pacific war had been predicated on the idea that, after initial victories, a compromise would be reached with the Western enemies to avoid having to fight to a surrender. Switzerland was thought of as a possible neutral intermediary; so, too, the Vatican, for which reason a Japanese diplomatic mission was established there early in the war.

The Japanese government watched the situation in Italy closely, when General Pietro Badoglio became prime minister after the fall of Mussolini’s fascist regime, and remained in power after the Italian surrender in 1943. If Badoglio could modify unconditional surrender by retaining the government and Victor Emmanuel as king, then a “Badoglio” solution in Japan might ensure the survival of its imperial system.