Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan, Third Edition

This book gives a good overview but just that - an overview. The events and circumstances surrounding the use of the A-bomb simply must be addressed in greater depth for one who wishes to become truly knowledgable on the subject. However, its brevity is also a strength in that for one just getting into the subject it serves as a fabulous introduction and for those already familiar with the subject, it sums things up into a nice recap. Contrary to some reviews of the book, the author doesn't ever say or even imply that the bomb should not have been dropped. Quite the opposite, he provides compelling reasons why the decision to use the bomb was sound and wise militarily, politically, diplomatically, and morally. Granted, the idea of morally justifying such terrible force in any context seems paradoxical and borders on philosophical absurdity, but the author does an admirable job at least providing relatively sound coherent reasons. So while not the final say, this book would be a good addition due to its brevity, credible research, and arguments which, as a whole, are very sound.

Ideology defined: The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.If you have already made up your mind that the atomic bombings of Japan were wrong, you have two choices: (1) Don't buy the book and participate in the next demonstration against the bombings which will, again, make you feel morally superior; (2)buy the book and realize that it was not as simple a decision as you thought it was. Then ask yourself, what would I have done in 1945? Very challenging book. It certainly provides a very good understanding of the choices Truman had to deal with and the feelings in the US at that time.One final point for the anti-bombing crowd: Check the stats on the casualties in the conventional bombings of German and Japanese cities.And educate yourself about Japanese atrocities in China: 350,000 slaughtered in Sungchiang, and between 260,000-350,000 civilians murdered in Nanking. That's for starters.

Samuel L. Walker has written a half-way decent introduction to the subject at hand, but it is not as good as many of the other reviewers think.Walker presents strong evidence that the use of the atomic bomb was necessary if the war was to be ended "as quickly as possible." So far, so good. When it comes to the question of whether the bomb was necessary to end the war 'reasonably quickly,' that is, within three or four more months, he uncritically accepts the claims of Paul Nitze that the Japanese would probably have surrendered by Nov. 1st, 1945, and certainly by Dec. 1st. This is rather odd, because, Walker cites Robert P. Newman's  Truman and the Hiroshima Cult . Newman read through the interrogations of Japan's surviving wartime leadership conducted by the Strategic Bombing Survey, and found that they only one Japanese leader agreed with Nitze's estimated surrender date, and that one only when prompted (earlier in the same interview, he expected Japan to hold out rather longer).Newman further reviewed the intelligence data available to the U.S. through July of 1945, and showed that the Japanese were making strenuous efforts to resist the expected amphibious invasion, while specifically rejecting the terms they finally accepted in August. (The U.S., British, and Chinese governments were convinced that a surrender on terms, a la the Versailles treaty, would likely lead to World War III in the 1960s or 1970s). Thus, even if Nitze's conclusion was correct, there was no reason for Truman or anyone else in Washington to believe it.Finally, Nitze's conclusion of a surrender by December 1st at the latest, Newman showed, was formed around June of 1945, and was based on his assessment of the damage conventional bombing would inflict on Japan, and how he thought the Japanese leaders would react to that damage. Nitze had persuaded the Air Force to schedule an air campaign targeting Japanese transportation facilities, which would have disrupted both war production and food distribution, leading to a threat of widespread starvation. While this might have caused the Japanese government to fold, it might also have resulted in widespread relocation of civilians to rural areas, where they would have had ready access to food. Thus, the estimated surrender date was little more than a guess, unsupported by evidence.Robert C. Butow interviewed those same Japanese leaders at much greater length for his book  Japan's Decision to Surrender , which I highly recommend. His conclusion, as related by Freeman Dyson in  From Eros to Gaia , was that there was no way to know when the Japan would have given up, because the Japanese leaders themselves didn't know when they would have surrendered.When it comes the question of how many casualties the U.S. would have suffered if the U.S. had invaded Japan, Walker accurately summarizes the estimates presented to Truman in mid-1945, when there were only 350,000 Japanese troops present on Kyushu. Based on experience on Luzon, casualties might have been "only" about 17,000 killed, 53,000 wounded. As Walker says, preventing such casualties was itself enough reason for Truman to order the bomb dropped. But by August 1st, the number of Japanese defenders on Kyushu had grown to 900,000, as Richard B. Frank notes in  Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire , another of the works Walker cites. Thus, 'Luzon percentage' casualties would have grown to around 43,000 killed, 137,000 wounded. And, as Frank further notes, Luzon's casualties levels were among the lowest of the Pacific War, when measured by casualties inflicted per Japanese defender. The experience of Okinawa or Saipan would have suggested at least double those figures, and casualties per Japanese defender on the scale of Iwo Jima would have led one to expect around 300,000 dead, 800,000 wounded among the Kyushu invasion force. The medical corps was expecting around 400,000 to 500,000 total casualties, about one-fourth of them dead. In fact, it was the position of the Japanese military that they would inflict such heavy casualties on any invasion force that the Allies would agree to precisely the surrender on terms the Allied governments wished to avoid, and there was substantial evidence of war weariness among the U.S. and British populations.Further, D. M. Giangreco has since shown that higher estimates were circulating in Washington at the time, and that former President Hoover had written Truman that as many as half a million U.S. troops might die in an invasion of Japan. (See e.g.  Harry S. Truman And the Cold War Revisionists  by Robert H. Ferrell). Thus Walker's confident predictions of relatively low casualties in an invasion have little value, and his statement that Truman's postwar estimates of hundreds of thousands of deaths among the invasion force were not believed in 1945 is questionable, to say the least.In addition, Walker completely neglects to mention deaths among Allied POWs and civilian internees held by the Japanese (tens of thousands had already died, and hundreds of thousands probably would have died if the war had continued much longer), Asian civilians who died in areas under Japanese control (perhaps 200,000 per month on the average, for the entire 97 months starting with Japan's invasion of China in 1937), Japanese civilians killed in air conventional air attacks (around 20,000 per month, excluding the Tokyo raid of March 9-10), expected Japanese civilian casualties in an invasion of Japan (over one million), expected British Commonwealth and Japanese casualties in the invasion of Malaya (scheduled to begin September 1st, 1945), and Japanese military and civilian deaths as a result of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (scheduled to begin August 15th, 1945, but moved up a week after the Hiroshima bombing). When contemplating a war extending another two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half months, these figures lead to a conclusion that many more people would certainly have died than the atom bombs killed, probably have led to more Japanese casualties than occurred, and possibly have led to more Japanese civilian casualties than occurred in the atomic bombings.And when it comes to the perception of the Japanese as "beasts," Walker completely neglects to mention the deliberate Japanese murders of POWs and civilians, or the documented Japanese biological warfare experimentation and use in China. If the description of Japanese conduct as "beastial" is to be objected to, it can only be on the grounds that the adjective is unfair to wild beasts.As a short introduction to a vast and complicated subject, this book isn't too bad. But it is highly limited, definitely biased against Truman and the U.S., and can not be taken as a last word on the subject by any means. It should definitely be supplemented by some of the works mentioned above for an accurate view.20120418: added product link, corrected typo.

My opinion about this book is it joins a long list of similar books that pick out parts of the decisions that were made in 1945 about use of the atomic bomb and criticize U.S. leaders who made decisions under the press of time and circumstance and in dealing with a Japanese military, which totally ran the country. In such a situation, someone like the author of this book (and there are many others like him) can go back and question the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan from the safe distance of more than 50 years. In my review of the handling of the atomic bomb in August, 1945, with very minor exceptions, the leaders of the United States made the correct decision based on all the facts.uwcharlie

Arrived exactly when I needed it in order to finish a project. Great quality book and interesting! Thank you very much!

Very insightful and interesting read on this subject. The research seems very thorough and has led to some new information on the strategy behind the bomb. Must read for WWII or military enthusiasts.

アメリカ原子力統制委員会付きの歴史家、J・サミュエル・ウォーカーの手になる、原爆投下決定についての歴史概説書。複雑多岐にわたるその政策決定を、できるだけ平易な言葉で簡潔に伝えているいくつかのコンセンサスが形成されながら、歴史家の間ではまだ論争が継続中のこの問題。ウォーカー自身は、論争が継続中ということを意識しつつ、原爆投下という歴史的な決定について、非道徳的であったとか、必要なかったという判断を下すことはしていないむしろ、見方によっては、原爆投下決定を正当化していると受け止めることができる書き方でもある。というのも、あくまで彼は当時の政策決定者がどのような情報を知っていて、それをどのように判断していたかを重視しているからであるつまり、その判断が「後から見て」正しかったか正しくなかったかは、本書における問題関心ではない、ということだ（この考え方は、バートン・J・バーンスタインという歴史家の考え方に大きく依拠している）あくまで、決定がいかにして下されたのか、という再構成。深く知りたい読者には物足りないかもしれないが、本書はあくまで入門書。ここから、トルーマンの決定についてどのような判断・評価を下すかは、読者次第だ。