The Bombing of Hiroshima

Jeffrey Lewis 0:08

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Aaron Stein 0:23

And my name is Aaron Stein. I'm an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East in Washington, D.C.,

Jeffrey 0:43

Hey, Jeffrey, I think you just got back from dinner. Yeah, we went and had okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.

Aaron 0:52

That means you're not coming to us from your usual locale, which is your office overlooking the Pacific, but you're rather somewhere else on the world? Yeah, I'm in my hotel room overlooking the Pacific. But in Japan, in Hiroshima, not in Monterey, California.

Jeffrey 1:07

Yeah, that's right. I'm here for the governor of Hiroshima Prefecture has a roundtable on disarmament. And I am one of three purportedly distinguished American academics who are invited to participate. It's weird. It's Scott Sagan and John Eikenberry and me. So one of these things is not like the other. Right.

Aaron 1:29

I think you posted a picture on Twitter. I don't think they gave you a microphone.

Jeffrey 1:34

No, John's microphone was out of the picture. But yeah, I mean, it's a little strange. I mean, it's a nice company to be in. I certainly can't complain. But it's a little weird.

Aaron 1:47

Yeah, yeah. But before we jump into it, I think the most important question was how was dinner? Yeah.

Jeffrey 1:51

Dinner was pretty spectacular. Scott Sagan and I don't know if you know Nobu Akiyama, he's a professor here in Japan. we went to Nobu's favorite okonomiyaki joint and A little beer and a little sake and all manner of Japanese dishes from sea urchin to beef tendon all culminating in a giant thing of okonomiyaki, which is like a – I don't know if you've ever had it.

People say it's like a Japanese pancake, but it's actually like batter and noodles and an egg and octopus and God knows what else just all put together and fried on a table in front of you.

Aaron 2:34

I mean, that sounds really good. And I have never had that. And I've never been to Hiroshima either. I've never actually been to Japan. The farthest east I've been is Thailand. So it's on my bucket list. But I don't get invited to these types of events like you do.

Jeffrey 2:49

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, Japan is a really cool place. I think it's one of my – I think like Paris and Tokyo are my two favorite cities to visit. And certainly I think France and Japan are my two favorite countries. So I'm really, really psyched to be here. I mean, the thing is the Japanese love food. And you love food.

And I love food. And so – Yeah, just coming and eating Japanese food for a couple of days is always just spectacular.

Aaron 3:21

Right. Well, I mean, and also, I mean, this trip, I mean, had certain special significance. I mean, obviously, I think you go every year, don't you, for this roundtable and Hiroshima being in our world, the nonproliferation world, sort of where it all began.

Jeffrey 3:38

Yeah, I go every August. So, you know, there are all of the commemorations on the anniversary of the bombing. And then for the next few days, there are meetings. So it's great. You know, the governor comes and he's a Stanford MBA. He's a really smart guy. He speaks better English than I do. And he comes and he sits through like two days of really wonky talk about nuclear weapons.

So it's an interesting thing to do. It's a really interesting place to come and have that conversation. I think in my column for foreign policy, one of the things I noted is, you know, it's really easy when you're sitting in a conference room in D.C. to talk about nuclear weapons in this kind of distant and abstract way so that you're not thinking about the human beings who would be affected by these decisions.

But that's a lot harder to get away from here.

Aaron 4:38

Well, I mean as somebody who's never been there, I mean beyond just the food-related things that I've never tried, it's just sort of the atmosphere that you talked about in your foreign policy column and you sort of just touched on right there. It's about talking about nuclear weapons in a place where nuclear weapons have actually been used, one of the only two places where they've actually only been used as an instrument of war.

And maybe just talk about the vibe a little bit, what it's like. And just for me, I'm always wondering why the focus on Hiroshima and not also Nagasaki. You catch my drift, like there seems to be an inordinate amount on Hiroshima. I do.

Jeffrey 5:13

Well, it was first, right? Yeah. And I think related to that, not only was it first, but John Hersey's great book, Hiroshima – Is about this place. And I suppose if he had gone to Nagasaki after the bombing and told all of the moving stories about the people who struggled in the aftermath of Nagasaki to survive, maybe we might think about that as kind of the canonical place.

But just between being first and being the subject of the Hersey book, it's pretty unavoidable. One thing I would say is it's not a sad place. It's a happy place. It's like a big Cleveland. It's a big industrial city. That's a little nicer than Cleveland. I've never been to Cleveland either. Yeah, it's not kind of as run down as Cleveland.

I don't know. I got to think about an American industrial city that's kind of booming. Yeah. But it's really – it's a lively place. I like to go watch the carp, the local baseball team play. But that has this kind of, I think, really centering effect when you think about nuclear weapons. Because, you know, when you're here and it's a nice place and it's a lively place and people are really likable, you know, and then you stop and you think that, you know, like, oh, wait, we're talking about incinerating these people, right?

Not random abstract people, but like, you know, oh, that couple pushing their stroller down that street or whatever. You know, that family at that baseball game. It's really pretty jarring to have such a kind of nice, vibrant city and then think about it in the context of what happened in August 1945.

Aaron 7:05

Right. And I think that that's what this meeting every year is geared around. Is it like putting a human face to sort of the wonky technical aspects that go around nuclear weapons that we just debate to death, deterrence, how to fight a nuclear war on nuclear weapons relevant, et cetera, et cetera? Does it sort of bring it home, particularly with the peace monument in the middle of the city?

Jeffrey 7:29

Yeah, you know, the meeting itself is pretty interesting. So the governor is a really practical guy. You know, I think he's very young, but he's a very successful Japanese politician. So on the one hand, I think half of his personality is this very pragmatic, mainstream political figure. On the other hand, his father was a famous sociologist whose life work was – Collecting the names of everybody who died in the bombing.

So he kind of balances that very pragmatic side with this real streak of idealism. So the meeting is pretty much like any other meeting. You know, we have Gareth Evans and Yuriko Kawaguchi are both members, and they were co-chairs of a previous effort. And they basically just, you know, argue with one another the whole time. So it's a pretty average meeting in that sense.

But at least for me, every now and again, it's just the sense of place. Like today on Twitter, Alex Wellerstein said, Tweeted an aerial image of Hiroshima the day after the bombing, right? Which would have been today. And, you know, like it's a battle damage shot. And, you know, I was looking at it and I was like, oh, look, I see the hotel we're sitting in, right?

Like it's right here. I mean, the hotel wasn't here then, but like I could see the spot in the geography where our hotel is. So little things like that really like, At least for me, they reduce the distance between the conversation we're having and the reality of the people we're talking about.

Aaron 9:23

Right. And I guess it just brings it home. And when you see the battle damage assessment, I actually just pulled up on Twitter the image that you're talking about. You can put a map and the geography doesn't change. Even if the building is doing so, this sense of this is where the first bomb exploded is And this is where you saw the devastating effects of 70,000 people dead, you know, but at least, at least.

And so that's sort of like leading me into like the next part of this. I mean, that sort of aspect of it, like the actual use of the bomb, like every year when this comes up, the anniversary comes up, you know, you get these endless op-eds that sort of. Go on a similar trajectory. We had to use it.

We shouldn't have used it. Japan was defeated. I'm curious if that comes up in the meeting, or is that sort of a sideshow to what is a push to a different type of discussion about nuclear weapons and what it is that they should be used for in the 21st century?

Jeffrey 10:18

Yeah, we generally don't discuss the history because the roundtable really is focused on trying to generate practical recommendations to reduce the role that nuclear weapons play, a phrase I don't actually like, but whatever, I can live with it. But actually today it did come up, and it came up because Scott Sagan – Had a very interesting slide that he shared, which showed two poles.

One pole was something called the Roper Pole, and it was taken right after the bombing, I think in 1945. Respondents were asked, oh, I forget now, should we have not dropped the bomb? Should we have dropped only one and waited to see if the Japanese would surrender? Should we have done what we did? Or I think the fourth category is should we have dropped as many bombs as possible before the Japanese had a chance to surrender?

And Scott commissioned that same poll to be done today. And what's interesting is while – The first two options, right, don't drop it at all or just drop it once, nearly command the majority. And the number of people who think we should have done it exactly like we did has shrunk from like 55% in 1945 to I think like, Maybe a quarter of people today.

What's really stunning is that in 1945, you know, something like 20% of the respondents said that we should have, you know, dropped as many bombs as possible before the Japanese had a chance to surrender. And that number is down to like, you know, 3%, which I guess correspond to like Trump voters or something.

Aaron 12:15

Well, I think he's getting 20% in the Republican poll. So maybe only some of the Trump voters. Right.

Jeffrey 12:22

So it came up today and it was really stunning because the attitudinal shift was pretty interesting.

Aaron 12:28

Right. I mean, I know you teach this at the Monterey Institute. You teach sort of the bureaucratic-ness of the decision to drop the bomb, sort of as a case study about how governments make decisions. Because when I look at this, and I have written a few books on this, I'm by no means a historian on this, but I often attribute this to, you have to put yourself in 1945 United States, right?

And beyond that, you have to have the whole bureaucratic might of the Manhattan Project, the Defense Department or the War Department at that time about this is a useful weapon of war. Why wouldn't we use it? Does that make sense to you? I mean, sort of like the justification for why you would use the bomb. So it gets beyond whether it was going to end the war, whether this was a warning sign to the Soviets.

I find that all to be a historical ex post facto rationalization, either for or against your argument.

Jeffrey 13:25

I think that's true. I mean, it's, it's absolutely a historical, one of the things I talked about in the column and it's, it'll be fun to talk about this because there are some nuances to it that I, I wasn't I'm not a good enough writer to convey all of the nuances that, that I wanted to and still write something that was understandable to, you know, like a human being.

But yeah, it's absolutely ahistorical. And the way I always say it is both of these debates, the idea that the bomb ends the war and the idea that the war is already over and the bomb is really intended to frighten the Soviets, both of those start from the assumption that nuclear weapons are really different. And that the dropping of them fundamentally changes people's calculations.

And what I think is so interesting about August 1945 is Oppenheimer and Groves, they don't know any of that. They have no idea. And one of the things that I think really comes through in the documents is that the scientists are as worried – That the bomb won't impress anyone and that people won't even see that it's a different kind of bomb.

Then they are, all this other stuff is going to happen, right? And so I think I mentioned in the column, Oppenheimer's first question to Groves after the bombing is, did you drop it at night? Because they wanted to do it at night because it would show the bomb to its best effect, right? And Groves has to tell him that, no, that wasn't feasible.

But, you know, like the locals noticed, right? Yeah, they nursed. And so the idea that nuclear weapons are really different, and I say this in the column, comes later. It's an idea that we construct. We decide that the firebombing of Tokyo, as horrific as it was – You know, belongs in this category of conventional war and didn't have the power to compel the Japanese, you know, but the bombing of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb belongs in some other category.

And I just I think that that's, you know, like that's a nice story. But I just don't think that it maps to how uncertain people were before they dropped it about what the reaction would be.

Aaron 16:09

Right, because I backdate sort of – I think what you called in the piece is this norm creation that nuclear weapons are special. Wouldn't you say it was after 1949 and the first Soviet test and between 45 and 49, nobody actually kind of knew what to do with nuclear weapons?

Jeffrey 16:27

Yeah, you know, I think like a lot of things with human beings, it's a process. And so one of the comments I got in the draft from Alex Wellerstein, which was a really great comment, was pointing out that there were – even though I say they're worried that people aren't going to be able to tell the difference – They have a sense that it is different and they are starting to wrestle however incompletely with these questions.

And so On the one hand, the way that I say it in the column is absolutely true. They're worried people aren't going to notice. But part of the reason they want people to notice is they're coming around to the idea that this is really different and that even if the bomb per se isn't different, then thermonuclear weapons will be and they can kind of see those looming off in the distance.

And so – When you say like, well, when does the norm really kick in? I think it probably – it doesn't really start to kick in until 1950s, maybe the early 1960s. One of the things I say in the column is Eisenhower and Dulles were very critical of the taboo against nuclear weapons because they thought this is the winning weapon and all you're doing is – Is, you know, creating political constraints that prevent us from using the winning weapon.

Aaron 17:59

That's true. Yeah. I mean, especially for the European allies, you know, for idea of collective defense on the cheap in quotes.

Jeffrey 18:06

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's impossible to get my head around the multilateral force today. You know, the idea that we were going to take like a ship and, you know, fill it with a multinational European crew and, Put nuclear weapons on it. It reminds me of that little poster you sometimes see where it's – oh, I'm going to get it all wrong now.

But it's like heaven is where – Oh, I forget. It's like heaven is where the Italians do the cooking. And I forget what they assign the Germans. And you're like, the Swiss run everything. Right. And hell is where the Germans do the cooking and the Italians run everything. Right, right. Yeah. So I imagine the multilateral force is like that.

It's like, oh, the Italians handle the nuclear weapons and the Germans are cooking. And it's crazy.

Aaron 19:01

Yeah. No, I mean... Well, I guess I should back up a little bit. There was debates amongst the Manhattan Project scientists, sort of like the early inklings of what we now call deterrence theory came out relatively soon. But I always feel like they didn't have the bureaucratic oomph behind them to sort of really affect US war planning.

Yeah. And this sort of gets to the ahistorical debate. It's like there may have been talk that nuclear weapons were a special weapon, and the scientists may have been grappling with that because of the destructive power in one weapon. And there were concerns by Oppenheimer about the development of the hydrogen bomb down the road. But they were not able to influence policy in the way that they were during wartime to actually build the bomb.

You think that's a good sort of brief description of sort of the bureaucratic stuff behind it?

Jeffrey 19:50

Yeah, it's actually one of the – it's the first module or the first case study in the course that I teach on U.S. decision-making regarding nuclear weapons in Asia. It's a great story because there's this thing called the Interim Committee. Which is chaired by Colonel Stimson, who's the Secretary of War. And it's charged with making policy as regards, I guess they would have said, atomic weapons.

It's called the Interim Committee because they don't want to prejudge whatever Congress is going to do once they get told about the existence of atomic weapons. But at the moment, Congress doesn't know. And, and this committee really insulates Truman from all of the decision-making because, you know, they and it's a very prestigious group of men and, you know, they were all men back in the day.

And one of the interesting things is some of the scientists at the University of Chicago led by James Frank Start to get some qualms. And the qualms, by the way, are, you know, they're not, nobody's actually worried about bombing the Japanese. People don't care. I mean, the qualms are, if you drop the bomb and you don't cooperate with the Soviets, you know, aren't you going to start an arms race?

And so they propose a Where they push for the idea of a demonstration basically on the grounds that dropping the bomb would be more shocking and terrifying to the Soviets. And what's so interesting is this report gets written and it gets given to Arthur Compton, who runs the Met Lab in Chicago and who's on – I guess he is on the interim committee.

I don't think he is. No, he's probably just a scientific advisor to the interim committee. Yeah, I actually have to look it up, right? It's Carl Compton who's actually on the committee. So he's a scientific – he's running the Met Lab. Arthur Compton is running the Met Lab. He's an advisor to the interim committee. And he gets this document and it's so interesting.

So he gives it to Simpson's assistant, a guy named George Harrison, right? Not the Beatle.

Aaron 22:18

Not the Beatle.

Jeffrey 22:19

Yeah. And they do this really interesting thing, which is they don't give the report to the interim committee to discuss, right? I think they know very well that maybe some of the members might get a little wobbly and might think like, oh, this demonstration idea, that's a good idea. Instead, they give it to the scientific panel of the interim committee, which is Compton, Enrico Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer.

Oh, and Lawrence, Lawrence of soon to be Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. It's such a brilliant bureaucratic move because if you think that the idea is like this political idea that we can't drop it on a city, we have to give the Japanese a chance to surrender because our long-term interest is ultimately in controlling these weapons. Asking the scientists if a demonstration would cause the Japanese to surrender, like they're totally not qualified to answer that question, right?

Right. But what works is Harrison and Compton give it to the scientific panel and the scientific panel says, well, we can come up with no demonstration, right? And that to me just bureaucratically is perfect because it ends the debate because once the – Once that report goes to the interim committee, like how do you argue with Fermi and Oppenheimer and Lawrence and Compton if they say they can't come up with a demonstration, right?

So it's this interesting shifting of ground. And I think that's kind of the only chance, right? That's the only – Moment where the policy apparatus is given a chance to look at this decision that just everybody assumes they, when they built them, they're going to drop them. and you know, the baby gets strangled in the cradle, right? I mean, exactly. I mean, and even in there was an instance where you know

Aaron 24:26

It got up to – I think it was still Roosevelt at that time. It got up to Roosevelt that you shouldn't inform the Soviets about that. And even that was sort of a diplomatic – a bureaucratic and diplomatic compromise where he sort of half-warned Stalin about what was coming even though Stalin had had the program penetrated and knew it was coming.

Both men went in this dance about, well, we're going to introduce this new special weapon. And then the Russians just pretended like they didn't know what anybody was talking about. We all just moved on our merry way. I always just find that a fascinating –

Jeffrey 24:55

Yeah, it was Truman. It was Truman at Potsdam, and that actually comes out of this memo. So if you look at the report that Oppenheimer and Fermi and Lawrence and Compton write, I think you can see the natural compromise. So they get asked about the demonstration, and their first recommendation is you should tell the Soviets. And it's later on that they say, oh, and by the way, no demonstration would work.

And I actually think that that's probably Oppenheimer being persuaded that we ought to tell the Soviets and we ought to share this information with them. And so the kind of price, I think, of him going along with the bombing – Is that he then gets the interim committee behind this push to inform the Soviets and share the information with them.

But of course, as you say, it ends up being this bureaucratic compromise, right? So Truman doesn't take the actual recommendation to heart Right? It's crazy. Like we're not going to, we're not going to show Stalin the blueprints, right? We're not going to give him all this stuff. And so, yeah, as you say, he kinda sorta tells Stalin and Stalin already knows because the program's penetrated, but he doesn't let on.

He acts like he didn't even, acts like he, he had no idea what Truman was talking about. Yeah, it's a funny thing. Nobody ever talks about this, right? Because the whole revisionist argument is that We do – we drop the bomb just to scare the Soviets, which I think is – But that's not true. Yeah, I think it's silly.

But on top of that, the reason people make that argument is it kind of makes the Cold War our fault, right? Like, oh, we developed the super weapon and went ahead and dropped it. And so Joe Stalin had no choice but to be as awful as Joe Stalin is. But come on. They were spying on the Manhattan Project.

They had their own nuclear weapons program. Before the war ended, they had started their own. Yes. So if we had like not dropped the bomb, Stalin almost certainly would have been like, oh, I know they're keeping their super weapon secret, but we're going to build one of those too, right? So the arms race, the idea that dropping the bomb starts the arms race I think is just as silly as the idea that the bomb ended the war.

Aaron 27:25

I mean by that logic, I mean you could go all the way back to the British involvement in this. They were really the trigger that got us involved in the war. It really triggered our interest in the nuclear weapons program. So if we wouldn't have done it, the Brits would have done it, which would have kicked the Soviets down the road.

I mean if you want to go into that revisionist argument. But I think we're trying to get away from the revisionist argument and talk about sort of A, how A, historical it is and just how – When you built this thing, the expectation was that it was going to be used even though there was qualms about its destructive power and its inordinate sort of toll it would take on civilians.

Although at that time, that really wasn't entering into war plans by the firebombing of Tokyo a few months before. And I would even add the way that they selected targets. I mean, they specifically chose targets to go back to what you were saying in the beginning, not necessarily for military value, but more to show off what the bomb can do to force the Japanese to capitulate.

Jeffrey 28:28

Yeah, there's a very interesting document from one of the meetings of the target committee where the Air Force more or less gets, I mean, it's hard to read between the lines, but it sounds like they get frustrated and they basically tell the scientists, you know, like, we're not going to hold off. And avoid bombing a city just so you can have a pretty target to show off your new bomb.

There may be targets we don't get around to, and if you want to hit one of those, that's fine, but we're not going to slow the war effort so that you can have a nice, pretty target. The thing I would say about qualms, though, which I think is a little bit what Alex was getting at and what I maybe didn't very articulately say, Yes, I think there were qualms about the implication of nuclear weapons.

I think the scientists could see that these bombs were bigger, not just – not bigger in the sense that a bomb wouldn't do more damage than the firebombing of Tokyo. But it was one bomb carried by one bomber that could do that much damage. And I think they could see thermonuclear weapons coming. And so I don't – the qualms weren't about incinerating Japanese people.

There were none of those qualms. The qualms were more abstract about pondering the fate of humanity – Given the power inherent in these weapons. I don't know if that distinction makes sense. No, it makes perfect sense. They didn't care about Japanese kids. They cared about abstractly what this meant for the future of the human race.

Aaron 30:14

Exactly. Yes, it wasn't so much Japanese civilians. It was so much that we now have the capacity in our hands – But if another country were to develop this or if we were to develop enough of them – and this is the debate about the super, about the hydrogen, is that you've now given mankind the capacity to destroy itself.

Which is like a really heavy thought. Right. And they're the ones who built it. Yeah. Yeah. And so they start to grapple with this. One thing I always find in the documents, in all the histories of the Manhattan Project, is how prescient these guys are. A, they're brilliant. I mean, it just comes out in all of the discussions that these guys have.

But they're very prescient about all of these ancillary issues that go along with nuclear weapons, even before the bomb is dropped. And then outside analysts like Brody or somebody like that instantly grasps what it is that this means. And then in a way that also creates the bureaucratic infrastructure or the norm that governs the way that we think about nuclear weapons to this day.

And even about non-proliferation, right? You know, like the basic theoretical realist underpinning to the drivers of proliferation stem from the debates about what nuclear weapons mean for war fighting and why countries would want them. And I find that really interesting.

Jeffrey 31:36

Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting... I don't know, how would I say this? You know, there is this almost shift. Early on, there are these incredibly powerful munitions, and so it's... Everybody's really excited because they're really powerful. And yet they are in some way the ultimate manifestation of the type of war that World War II was, right?

This total war in which civilians living in cities were legitimate targets because they were the workers who went to the factories to sustain the war effort. And so one of the things that I – Like to think about is, you know, I think that first generation, they were pretty prescient because I think in many ways they had thought about the kind of moral and ethical implications of total war and what that meant for human society as a whole.

And they could see these weapons as the kind of endpoint of that idea. But where I think they weren't so prescient is that I think they couldn't see how we would muddle along and adapt. One of the things that really comes out of a lot of those debates is you hear people saying, we need a world government.

Human beings just can't continue to manage their affairs this way. It's this incredibly utopian solution. And I guess they couldn't get their heads around how we were going to muddle through the Cold War for 50 years and not kill one another. And I guess I can't blame them too much for that, right? Because even looking back out of hindsight, I kind of wonder how we muddled through for 50 years.

Aaron 33:46

Right. Yeah. I mean... I mean, there's just so much around this. And I think the Manhattan Project in general and the use of these bombs is just historically fascinating for many people. I mean, even though it's 70 years after, I mean, I think it governs the way that we think about nuclear weapons. But the debates, you know, about their use, and particularly in this context, you know, there's still big questions about whether the bomb really did end the war.

And, you know... If it says magical, I think is the word you use in your column as it, as sort of these norms that we're talking about constructed around their use, make them out to be. So yes, they are really big and they, they make really big booms, you know, but are they fundamentally different? Yeah.

Jeffrey 34:36

You know, I mean, I think one of the, I think one of the interesting things is if you imagined world war two as a story, right. And you have this, you know, You know, years long narrative of this conflict. And then, you know, you opened up like chapter 25 or something and it said, Oh, and then the Americans developed a super bomb and they dropped two of them.

And then the war was over. You know, you would find that a really unsatisfying ending, right? Somebody called it a deus ex atomica, right? You know, like the idea of a deus ex machina where there's just this, you know, hand from God that comes down and just ends the story of, I think the reason it's really unsatisfying is because it doesn't – that version of events doesn't really explain what's happening in Japan.

It doesn't explain what the politics are. The Japanese know the war is lost, but they aren't surrendering, right? And that's – Because of their own internal debates and disagreements and worldviews. It's interesting. I both think that the bombing doesn't change those things, that it's probably Soviet entry that's the decisive factor because it ends their last hope for negotiating a settlement.

I also think it lets Truman off the hook, because people are like, Truman should have known the war was over. It's like, well, everybody knew the war was over, but the Japanese were refusing to surrender. Yes, even the Japanese knew they had lost the war, but they wouldn't surrender. I don't know what Truman was supposed to do.

Aaron 36:24

Well, I never understood why the choice had to be binary. So a lot of people are saying it wasn't the bomb that ended the war. It was the Soviets that entered the war, that ended it. And other people say, no, no, no, it was the bomb. It scared them. Why can't it be both? You know what I mean?

Like why can't it be – and then the mixture of multitudes of bureaucratic factors inside of Japan ultimately resulted in the emperor at the time making the decision to say, OK – We can't win this. I'm going to save my people from destruction.

Jeffrey 36:54

Because he wasn't trying to save his people from destruction. He was trying to save himself. Okay. Well, that's even better. That's the human instinct at its finest. But what happens is – so the Japanese know the war is lost and their hope is that the Soviets will mediate a settlement so that they will not have to surrender unconditionally and that the emperor will not be deposed.

And, of course, these things all happen at once, and so it's hard to disentangle them. But simply destroying two more cities, given the level of damage that they had sustained, doesn't provide any reason. There's no reason for the people who didn't want to surrender, even though the war was lost and cities were being destroyed. There's no reason for them to respond differently anymore.

To the atomic bombings than they did to every other bombing. What I think is compelling about Soviet entry is that suddenly their plan to get mediation was over, right? That they, they, they now literally had no plan because Right. The off-ramp was gone. And then the United States issues the Burns Note, which provides a new off-ramp. And so even though we said we insist on unconditional surrender, the Burns Note is this kind of marvel of diplomatic language.

And it's written by Jimmy Burns, who's the Secretary of State, but it's really a Southern politician. And he's very close to To Truman. At least I think he's close to Truman. The Burns note basically says, we insist you surrender unconditionally. I'm really paraphrasing, but it says, but we are going to need the emperor to sign the surrender documents, so think about that.

The emperor sort of argues that they should read between the lines. They should read between the lines and, and read that as a promise that the emperor could stay. And it turns out he's right. Right. So we like roll in and we're like, Oh, it'd be very nice if, you know, if you would give the order to the troops to stand down and, and and we'll keep you around.

So, you know, to my mind, the Soviets entering and our softening on the position of the status of the emperor, however vaguely That that's a, that's a, that's an explanation that corresponds to why they wouldn't surrender in the past. And Oh, by the way, right. It's still a near run thing. There's a, there's an, an aborted coup after the emperor intervenes and suggests they surrender.

Aaron 39:46

Right. Exactly.

Jeffrey 39:47

And some of the documents, I don't know if you've seen racing the enemy, the Hasegawa book. Oh, it's very good. But some of the Historical materials that have come out suggest that the big argument between the hawks and the doves is the doves thought that if they didn't surrender, that before the allies got there, that they'd be toppled in a pro-communist coup.

People were so unhappy and so miserable that they thought that they might be successfully holding off the United States, but that they would lose control of their domestic situation.

Aaron 40:30

Interesting. So in a way, it's the mixture of dual-pronged coercion with sort of Let's say a renewed off-ramp similar to the role that they wanted the Soviets to play, which is to keep the power structure in place, albeit while giving them the opportunity to bow out at least somewhat gracefully.

Jeffrey 40:52

Right, right, right.

Aaron 40:54

I don't think you can separate this from the threat of continued bombing, both conventional and nuclear. Continuing and just wreaking havoc on the Japanese people, the destruction of the state.

Jeffrey 41:07

Right. Yeah. No, I definitely think that they were under enormous pressure. It's just that they had been under enormous pressure. And so I just think to assign – The pressure is the backdrop against which the bureaucratic argument plays out. And so to assign any particular bombing in that campaign of pressure, whether it's the firebombing of Tokyo or the atomic bombings or any of the conventional bombing raids, to assign that any of those bombing raids pride of place just because they were the last raid that happened before they surrendered, strikes me as a...

Exercise in heroically turning correlation into causation.

Aaron 41:53

Yeah, I agree. But it also raises sort of the question that also gets debated around this year, every year, and it's a constant in the talks and the academic literature is about nuclear weapons in general. I mean, you bring it up in the piece. I mean, are these things really usable? And I think you use the example of the chair in your piece about destroying the chair.

Jeffrey 42:18

That's one of my favorite stories. I have to protect the individual involved, but I just – it was a bizarre conversation to ask. I thought it was a very simple question, right? Are there any targets that you can't hold at risk with conventional weapons, right? Are there any targets that you need nuclear weapons to destroy? I actually think the answer to that is – or I expected the answer to that would be that there were a few.

And then I got this homily about destroying chairs.

Aaron 42:47

Well, let me ask you about that. I mean, so do you think that's new with precision? So like, let's not even put ourselves back in the 1950s, you know, when Eisenhower was looking at the bombing maps. Let's put ourselves in 1985. You know, is that same question answered differently? For targets because sort of the advent and precision, the word I can't pronounce, has changed the calculus a little bit in terms of how we can put warheads on target in ways that we couldn't before, therefore requiring a larger blast, therefore leading to the, well, we need a nuke to do this.

Jeffrey 43:27

Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, when... When we talk about strategic bombing, I think the idea that you're going to flatten worker housing arises from the fact that you can't be confident that you're going to knock down a factory building. Right. And so the idea that you're going to just do this massive macro level damage to the fabric of society in order to break its ability to sustain the war is I think emerges from the fact that you can't actually distinguish and hit individual targets.

This kind of persists. One of the case studies I teach is whether to respond to North Korea's shoot down of the EC-121, a US reconnaissance aircraft that the North Koreans shot down in, I guess it was April 1969. And one of the things Nixon administration – probably their lead option was they were considering bombing an airfield near Wansan.

And the students all really liked this idea. And I sort of explained to them that the administration doesn't want to do it because they're going to have to destroy the entirety of the city of Wansan. And the students are like, but you just want to blow up the airfield. And so I show them a B-52 doing a bombing run, right?

Where it just unloads. And they're all like, well, can't you just drop one bomb? It's like, no, it's an unguided bomb. Like if I just drop one bomb out of a B-52, you have no idea where it's going to land. Like if I want to destroy this airfield, I have to do this bombing campaign. And that bombing campaign is not only going to destroy the airfield, it's going to destroy everything that's near it.

And so I think, to go back to your question, that – At some point in the late 80s, early 1990s, precision got to the point where we could really credibly generate target lists of things that could be destroyed with small numbers of conventional munitions. And so suddenly the whole strategic bombing – well, I guess not suddenly, but the whole strategic bombing approach – Finally was just demonstrably more trouble than it was worth.

Aaron 45:49

Exactly. And also this brings it up. I mean, Where do we go from here? I mean, so you guys talk about this at the, at the round table in Hiroshima and, you know, what, what are some of the recommendations, I mean, to decrease the role of nuclear weapons? I mean, I already think the role of nuclear weapons in the U S security posture is very low, but the numbers are relatively high corresponding to their, to their, their stated angle and use.

Well, what do we make of that?

Jeffrey 46:17

Well, so we, we have this big fight every, every year. And, and, and I guess I'm the problem. I think many members of the roundtable want to take a pretty traditional view, which is to say we should reduce the role that nuclear weapons play. And so as a consequence, we should think about no first use or sole purpose.

We should have a sort of standard laundry list of good things to do, things actually that I happen to agree with. But my concern, and this is my general complaint about the way that we approach disarmament, Is we're so focused on banning the possession of nuclear weapons. And all of the other stuff we do, I think we talk about it's a step toward banning the possession of nuclear weapons.

And I think what's so moving about Hiroshima is that it focuses us on this other objective, which is preventing their use. And so it's little things like people say, oh, we want to reduce the role that nuclear weapons play. I don't like that formulation because it implies that nuclear weapons play this amazing role and we're going to give it up.

I actually think what's happened is that as we've thought about the casualties associated with the nuclear weapons use and as we now have better options, it's not that we've reduced the role. It's that they just don't play a role anymore because they're not credible. It's not credible that we're going to nuke the Iraqis that we want to liberate from Saddam Hussein.

And so it's not that we're reducing the role. It's the role that they play is dropping dramatically because we have better options and we have changing moral judgments. And as a consequence of that, what we really ought to do is align our policies to reflect the reduced role that they play. So every year we have this big argument where I try to push this in that direction and other people push in another direction.

And in the end, we sort of say, ah, you should ratify the CTPT.

Aaron 48:16

I'm going to ask one final question here, and it's slightly off topic. But what about countries who still assign a very large role to nuclear weapons because they don't have the capabilities of the United States? Wow. And you know which one country I'm talking about.

Jeffrey 48:32

Are we talking about our friends in Russia? There are two. I mean, yes.

Aaron 48:37

The old bear, right? I'm going to push a little bit. Is that not a very American-specific argument because we are the U.S. and we have what we have?

Jeffrey 48:50

It is an American-specific argument if you emphasize our increasing conventional capabilities. But I actually think that The bigger change is the growing norm against killing civilians in large numbers. I know that the Russians are far more willing to do that than we. But even so, they have Sputnik and all their ridiculous propaganda efforts. I mean I think they feel those constraints too.

The big argument we actually have in the group – I shouldn't say it like that. That makes it sound like we don't get along. We actually do get along and our recommendations every year I think are pretty reasonable. But one of the discussions we have is really like how much to push our Chinese colleagues. Right. Okay. And so last year, I pushed really hard that all nuclear weapon states should agree not to increase the number of nuclear weapons that they have, right?

Which many people saw quite rightly as a backdoor way to single out the Chinese since they're the only ones increasing the number. So those are the kinds of discussions we have. It's a pretty friendly group. But I do think, as you say, certainly my American accent comes through.

Aaron 50:23

Look, you have to start someplace, right? And nothing that's coming out. I mean, we've come here. I don't think that you wouldn't even have buy-in from the military. We've talked about this another thing, particularly with – Where they would like to emphasize the dollars that they spend for future combat missions. And so perhaps maybe that's the way forward.

You know, the military procurement budget will reflect... This decreased role for nuclear weapons in favor of more flexibility for conventional missions? Or maybe I'm just missing the point here.

Jeffrey 51:02

No, no. I think that's right. I mean, when you look at the way our modernization program is playing out, the Air Force seems to be doing everything they possibly can to get out of spending money on nuclear weapons. And it wasn't that long ago that the Navy was pushing the conventional Trident modification where they were going to put conventional warheads on D5 missiles and ballistic missile submarines.

And so I think – and it's one of these reasons I don't like the reduced role language. I think if left to their own devices, the United States military would dramatically scale back the nuclear mission. And it's because of these – It's because of these almost metaphysical or mystical, magical properties that we imbue nuclear weapons with that we have a pretty politicized effort at retaining nuclear weapons capabilities that, as best I can tell, the Air Force and the Navy don't find all that interesting.

Aaron 52:13

Well, you know— I mean, so I guess there's hope if you want to see a reduced role for nuclear weapons, but sort of like the early debates about how to use the bomb, there's bureaucratic forces at play that get in the way of proper decision-making or sort of what we assign to normal rational choice theory about how easy decisions are made.

And so we'd have to include those in any sort of scenario about the – The decreasing saliency of nuclear weapons, at least for certain politicians who make the policy. I think that was a roundabout diplomatic way of trying to put across a point that – That we've been touching on for the past like 45 minutes here.

Jeffrey 53:00

Yeah.

Aaron 53:01

But I think sort of in closing, you're on the ground. I mean you're in Hiroshima. Again, as I said earlier, I've never been there. Any closing thoughts on what it is that should be the big takeaway for the 70th anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons that we haven't touched on?

Jeffrey 53:15

Well, no, not anything that we haven't touched on. But I mean I think I would again emphasize that there is something – There's something really interesting about how we normally discuss nuclear weapons and how much distance that puts us – how much distance that puts between us and the actual human beings who we are discussing, who have these consequences happen to them.

It's – It's very easy to talk about collateral damage or it's very easy to talk about casualties abstractly. It's a lot harder to talk about those things when you think about the actual human beings. Who end up on the receiving end of that. And I think the museum here especially does a very powerful job of humanizing the victims.

And so the good thing about being here is it reduces that distance. And I think that makes some of these abstract discussions more real. And even if that may push us into, you know, Politically unpopular opinions. I think those unpopular opinions better reflect the reality that nuclear weapons just really are a terrible thing to use.

Aaron 54:35

Yeah. Well, perhaps that's just the best way to end it. Like nuclear weapons are a terrible thing to use. Perhaps the services are reflecting this in their procurement dollars in recent years and sort of debates about the bomb are far more nuanced and complicated than sort of the binary way that they're put out, at least the popular understanding about these things that are so prominent each year when this issue comes up around the anniversary of the weapons use.

It's later.

Jeffrey 55:06

I think I'm going to knock off, go to bed before the next day of meetings. All right.

Aaron 55:12

So I think this is our first podcast, hopefully of an annual series of you from Hiroshima giving us food tips and discussions about nuclear weapons. So thank you, everybody, for listening. And, you know, Jeffrey, thanks for joining us late in the evening on Japan time. Yeah, it was fun.