By Mark W. Fowler

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” —Matt. 7:1 (KJV)

Seventy-nine years ago, the Second World War, the bloodiest conflagration in human history, ended when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Armchair moralists protest this act of war as immoral inasmuch as many thousands of Japanese civilians were killed.

It is easy to adopt this moral perch from a distance of decades, safe from the fear of seeing a loved one off to war, much less losing him. Easier still now that the outcome is known. Soren Kierkegard, philosopher and theologian, observed, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” In August 1945, President Harry Truman, new in the presidency, was faced with a decision to deploy the bomb or not. By that time, American deaths were over 290,000 and wounded were over 670,000.

Looking forward, Truman saw thousands of Americans in peril. Looking backward at the conduct of the war by the Japanese, Truman knew that the Japanese would fight ferociously, foolishly, and manically. Kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed planes into U.S. Navy ships. Soldiers charged U.S. Marine positions by the hundreds to the last man, inflicting unnecessary death and injury to Americans when defeat for the Japanese was inevitable. In Saipan, of 30,000 Japanese defenders, only 1,000 were left alive when the U.S. declared victory. Thirty-four hundred Americans died. At Leyte in the Philippines, 15,000 Americans lost their lives. Sixty-five thousand Japanese soldiers died. In Okinawa, after weeks of battle, 70,000 Japanese died, taking the lives of 12,000 Americans with them. In Iwo Jima, 21,000 Japanese died versus 7,000 Americans. The Pacific Theater was a bloodbath.

The decision to pursue the development of the atomic bomb, originally made by Roosevelt, gathered bureaucratic momentum. Thousands were engaged in making the components. Workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, enriched uranium under strictest secrecy. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, some of the best minds in physics worked furiously to develop the bomb. The Germans and Soviets were doing the same thing, but the wealth and power of the United States far exceeded the resources of both Germany and Russia.

As it turned out, Germany capitulated before the bomb was ready. Otherwise, it might have been dropped on them. It is posited that racial animus played a role. The Japanese were “yellow hordes,” often featured as nearsighted subhuman fanatics. But Pearl Harbor had been a real insult, occurring while peace negotiations were underway. The Japanese had exhibited monstrous brutality in Nan King, China. Women were raped by the thousands. Japanese soldiers were photographed bayonetting Chinese babies. American prisoners died by the hundreds due to starvation and overexertion on the Bataan Death March. Empathy for the Japanese was in short supply.

The argument has been made that America should have warned the Japanese or set up a demonstration for them to display the bomb’s lethality. But this required a degree of cooperation between governments that did not exist. The Japanese would have to be told where to stand, what they were seeing, and how to measure it — impossible at the time. Compounding the dilemma was a shortage of bombs.

Ultimately, the decision boiled down to this: The Japanese would be even more fanatical in defending the homeland. Inasmuch as the Allied aim was unconditional surrender, only capitulation or defeat would untie the knot of war. Anything less might possibly leave in power the same fanatics who initiated the war. Many thousands of American men would be killed, and thousands more wounded. If deploying the bomb would spare those American lives, Truman felt it was an acceptable, albeit unpalatable, bargain.

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was bombed. Estimated Japanese deaths were between 80,000 and 160,000 including 10,000 soldiers The rest were civilians.

On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was bombed; 60,000 to 80,000 civilians were killed.

Japanese fanatics in the War Cabinet surrendered on August 15, having realized they could not enlist civilians in armed resistance to an invasion.

General Douglas MacArthur estimated it might have cost 50,000 American lives to invade Japan and taken a million soldiers a decade to subdue the population.

Many of those spared Americans became fathers. We are better off for it.

Mark Fowler is a board-certified physician and former attorney. He can be reached at [email protected].