Immediately following the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a poll was conducted to gauge the approval of the American people. The poll “showed that 85 percent of the respondents endorsed the atomic attacks” (Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction, 99). Today it is a topic of some debate, and J. Samuel Walker writes about how the bomb was always an option, how Truman never truly shied away from it, and how there were more than two choices. In Prompt and Utter Description, Walker expresses the complexity of the choices that Truman had to consider to keep the deaths of Americans to a minimum as well as ending the war soon.
Walker’s thesis in Prompt and Utter Destruction is a simple one. He argues that there were so many more options that Truman could have made regarding ending the War in the Pacific, rather than the assumed options of an invasion or an atomic bomb. Walker’s argument on the necessity of the bomb addresses two questions: “(1) was the use of the bomb necessary at all, and (2) if so, what exactly did it accomplish?”(Walker, 6). Walker argues that we can only hope to answer these questions if we take into consideration the conditions and the decisions made in the United States and Japan during 1945 “and by recognizing that the considerations that led to Hiroshima were much more complex and much less clear-cut than the conventional view suggests” (Waker, 6).
In addition to answering these questions, Walker also suggests that we should manage our expectations about getting a clear cut answer on the morality of the bomb. His disclaimer on page six discloses that certain important questions about the dropping of the bomb will not be answered in a way that is void of speculation and assumption and based on historical evidence. These secondary arguments are very important to add in this piece because it asks us to control our expectations about getting a definitive answer. This important disclosure that Walker adds in the first chapter is a very useful reminder that this argument is not cut and dry and that there is a lot of room for discussion and debate on this particularly sensitive piece of history. This remains a sensitive issue in history because there are constant and fierce debates between avid supporters and critics for this purveyor of death.
Walker brings in some very important sources into his argument. In the very first chapter, Walker starts with what seems to be a narrative from a secondary source. Then, Walker admits that the conversation never happened. Walker admits that “The quotations are authentic, but the context is not...the statements quoted were made after the war to explain why the bomb was dropped” (Walker, 5). Right away, Walker surprises his audience and undermines the myth of Truman having only two options: An invasion of Japan’s mainland, or the atom bomb.
In addition to secondary sources that Walker includes to provide more context, he also frequently employs the use of primary sources to put his audience in the discussions during the summer of 1945. He uses letters sent to Truman’s wife that describes his thoughts on the Potsdam Conference to add very human feelings and thoughts, rather than thoughts of the leader of the United States. Walker understands that Truman is rightly anxious about meeting Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Walker describes Truman as “a novice at his job and still learning the complexities of the many problems he faced. He was traveling to meet...with two crusty and renowned leaders who must have seemed larger than life” (Walker, 53). To portray Truman’s feelings of inadequacy, Walker adds a letter written from Truman to his wife Elizabeth. Truman writes “‘I sure dread this trip, worse than anything I’ve had to face’” (Walker, 53).
At the beginning of chapter one, Walker includes a statement that was only a small part of “creating a widely held myth about the decision to use the atomic bombs against Japan”(Walker, 5). The statement describes Truman walking into a meeting with his advisors at the Potsdam Conference. He wants his advisor’s guidance on what to do with the new atomic bomb. It also describes a conversation between Henry Stimson and Truman about using the bomb against Japan to prevent mass amounts of American casualties, “an assault on the Japanese islands, he told the president, ‘might be expected to cost over a million casualties to American forces alone’”(Walker, 2).
Walker admits to us that this statement was released after the bomb was dropped to justify it. The myth about the bombs has engrained itself in Americans’ minds and has sparked debates about the options Truman had. Statements like the one Walker includes create a myth about the bombing of Hiroshima and they run the risk of being associated with fact. That is why this book is important to the “What is History?” course because of its breaking of the firmly held myth of only two choices.
Walker’s estimates on the American death tole are speculation but are also based on the available figures. He estimates that the 3,233 Army death of July of 1945 was to be the norm, “the continuation of the war for, say, another three months until the invasion was scheduled to begin would have resulted in approximately 9,700 American deaths in the Army alone” (Walker, 93). This is well short of the “over a million” projected causalities in the released statement.
The biggest challenge that I had with Walker’s Prompt and Utter Destruction was the number of possibilities and outcomes that could have happened, but we have no way of knowing. It became frustrating to the point of wondering what the point was of thinking about what could have happened in the Summer of 1945. But it is very important to discuss what could have happened to avoid a collective forgetfulness of the choices and their outcomes. It’s also important to keep in mind the amount of suffering that went hand in hand with the outcome that did happen. The bomb that landed on Hiroshima caused the deaths of “about 130,000 by the beginning of November 1945 including deaths from acute exposure to radiation”(Walker, 77).
Walker’s amount of description and research into the choices that Harry Truman could have made is extraordinary and should be commended, but he has described experiences where he has been called a “revisionist”(Walker, xii), which is likely because even today, the topic of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are particularly sensitive topics, sparking debates between those who believe that the bomb was necessary and those who are more critical. Walker presents all of the facts with historical context and has done incredible research on how hard it truly is to decide both the morality and the necessity of the bombs.
Works Cited
Walker, Samuel J. Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. The University of North Carolina Press, original 1997, revised 2004
Comments