Hiroshima Nagasaki (Paul Ham)

Judging by the two extremes ratings that this book received in Amazon, one can tell that this is a rather controversial book. The author did not think that the atomic bombs made Japan surrender which in turn avoided the loss of lives of many Americans who would otherwise have to invade the main islands of Japan. But his position was not just that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary, he went further to obliquely imply that the reason for dropping the atomic bombs were for the pure purpose of killing civilians.

The author argued that the atomic bombs were unnecessary by showing that:

Fire bombing was not an effective strategy to make an enemy surrender
In support of this argument the author spent a chapter on the fire bombing of cities in Germany. Meant originally to bring Germany to its knees, the effectiveness was questionable and eventually Germany capitulated not because of the destruction of any of the cities or even all of them, but because of the land forces of the allies that reached Berlin.

The Japanese cabinet was not swayed by the atomic bombs
The author argued strenuously that the Japanese cabinet, especially the three (of six) representing the military, the War Minister Korechika Anami, the admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy Soemu Toyoda and general in the Imperial Army Yoshijiro Umezu. They did not change their minds after the two bombs were dropped. It was actually the entry of Soviet Union into the war that convinced the Japanese cabinet that all was lost and surrender was inevitable.

The Japanese were going to surrender anyway
Citing the futile and delusional efforts at getting Russia to play the role of the intermediary for an end to the war, the author showed that the Japanese were already seriously contemplating an end of the war (in contrast to unconditional surrender). It would be a matter of time, given Japan’s lack of ability to deploy air or naval power, that they would collapse.

These would have made for a persuasive case but Ham went further and opined that despite all these, the US bombed Japan anyway and it was not really because the decision makers (short of President Truman) wanted to save American lives, but because “total war had debased everyone involved…” (pg 158) and made it easy to contemplate the destruction of properties and lives on a grand scale, not helped by many who were spoiling to demonstrate the new power of the US.

The President wanted it for political reasons; saving American lives was one reason, but more likely to use it as a chip to get concessions from the Russians, if not to get them to be more agreeable. Major General Leslie Groves, the one in charge of the Manhattan Project wanted deliverance of his project. The Foreign Secretary, James Byrnes, just wanted it. The sole conscience of the administration, the War Secretary, Henry Stimson, was brushed aside because he did not say things that the President wanted to hear, and the stance of the scientists involved in the creation of the bombs was ambiguous. Therefore despite the fact that the bombs were going to kill many thousands, not to mention destroying many properties, no one would check the momentum of the project. Worse still, the desire to check Russian territorial ambitions with the bombs was not successful because they would shortly have their own atomic weapons and all that was achieved was a prolonged and sometimes perilously dangerous Cold War.

The author then went further to imply that putting the blame on the Japanese for not surrendering despite the warnings was wrong because the Allies kept insisting on ‘unconditional surrender’, a term which at first confused the Japanese and later became the only stumbling block to their agreement to surrender because they were afraid that the Americans would try the Emperor as a war-criminal. In the end unconditional or not, was this not what the Japanese got? Knowing this the Americans should have just relented earlier, let the Japanese know, let them surrender and the bombs and the resulting carnage would have been spared. And if the Americans had really wanted to drop the bombs, the morally right thing to do was to give warning by demonstrating the power of the bombs given that it was so much more destructive than anything anyone knew then. Finally, even if one argues that Hiroshima was necessary and effective, there was no need for Nagasaki.

And since the bombs were used despite all reasons against their use, the author brought us through the aftermath of the bombs, how many civilian targets were destroyed and how many civilians were killed, maimed or suffered the radioactivity for years while the military targets were somehow missed (pg 410). To add insult to the injury, the victims were denied medical help and were in some cases treated as exhibits for research into the effects of radiation. Finally in the years following the end of the war, the main players could only manage incoherent narratives as to the reasons and effects of the bombs, further attesting to the difficulty in justifying their use.

The author was indeed persuasive. However as I read the book, I could not help wondering if the problem is one of hindsight. Take for example the case of area bombing. Its limits in persuading the enemy to surrender are recognised now because it was used then. Given that prior to the Second World War there was no precedence for one to learn from, it was reasonable that, looking at how much fear it could instil in the enemies, this could be an effective way to get the enemy to surrender. Similarly while it is increasingly recognised that the Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria greatly accelerated Japan’s capitulation, how could one know then what we know now? And it fact it was many years after the end of the war that the Russian archives were opened that allowed scholars to piece things together coherently. Also, peace feelers were probably abundant then and by design they were purposely vague and came from unlikely sources. It would be hard to verify the authenticity of each of them to conclude that the Japanese were seriously considering surrender and the only stumbling block was the term “unconditional surrender”. If only we knew then.

How then, given the confluence of factors, should the US respond? Not having the benefit of all these facts the author has now, it was certainly not easy to make the right decision (not that dropping the bombs was a wrong decision), the US probably made the “best” decision and considering everything, this looked like a good option. To accuse the President of not being a character of “unearthly will, vast authority and transcendent moral vision” (pg 475) and therefore not resisting the “fatal momentum of the atomic project” was to expect him to remove one option the outcome of which few if anyone, knew then.

The author also did not give complete consideration to the whole context of the situation, for example it was not that the Japanese military had retreated from island to island and finally were confined to their main islands. They were still in Manchuria and also countries in South East Asia. To blockade them to starvation would mean a more prolonged occupation of these places. If I were my parents and were living under the Japanese then, I would wish for the bomb.

One important question was whether Nagasaki was necessary. There was a sense in the book that people realised the devastation the first bomb did to Hiroshima and were no longer that elated about Nagasaki, seeding some doubts in the readers’ minds about the correctness of its use. How should one decide whether or not to drop the second bomb given that the first one did not seem to get the Japanese to surrender? Did they need more time or did it just didn’t move them enough, in which case perhaps another bomb was in order? Or should all these considerations be superseded by the by then known effects of an atomic bomb?

The “if we knew then” argument that I used here is supported by the results of the Gallup poll did in the immediate aftermath of the bombs and written about by the author in the book (pg 459). It showed that most Americans supported the use of the bombs while much fewer supported the use of other forms of weapons such as poison gas possibly because of “the ghastly memory of mustard gas used in World War I and the emerging horror of the Nazi death camps and gas chambers.” In other words, they were not bent on killing Japanese in the most grotesque manner. Once they knew of the effects they would no longer be so supportive of the weapon, and it did play out in the Cold War.

Questions aside, there were a few chapters in the book that I like very much. The first one being the chapter on the science and scientists behind the atomic bomb which brought back good (and not so good) memories of my school years. The second one was the chapter discussing the Japanese’ deliberations over how to end the war, it was a very nuanced discussion about the Japanese psyche (which I cross-examined with Kazutoshi Handō’s Show Shi). There was this element of (pardon me) “smoking their own dope” where they would know clearly the undesirable outcome if the Russians were to invade Manchuria. And since it was undesirable, it should not happen, and if it should not happen, then it would not happen. Therefore it was conceivable to get the Russians to mediate an end to the war.

The author also gave a very vivid description of the condition of the victims in the two cities immediately after the bombs were dropped. These represented the two times so far that atomic weapons were used on cities. Alas as tragic as they were, it failed to arouse in me the feeling of sympathy and I even felt that the descriptions were slightly over done, especially when he gave some statistics on civilian versus military casualties. I could not help wondering if he was steering readers to the conclusion that the bomb was selective by itself, dropped on a city with both civilian and military targets, the civilian targets would be obliterated while the military ones intact. The indifference I felt towards the victims was curious to me given that I bear no hatred towards the Japanese today. This has made me re-examine my attitude towards Japan today. While I am not going to discuss it here, I have to give the author credit for doing this for me.

The other thing that I was made to re-examine was this: how does one rate a book? A one-star in Goodreads represents “I did not like it”, but what did one not like about it if he/she had given a book a one-star rating? Was it a disagreement with the position of the author or was it because the content was poorly researched and inaccurate, or was it the writing style? The singular metric used to rate a book cannot take into account the different dimensions that one evaluates a book with. In the end one might take an average of the ratings given for the different dimensions. I decided not to give this rather ambiguous rating to this book. I think this book was well researched (although I would really appreciate proper citations, minus one star for that), well argued, and well written. While I could not help feeling a little manipulated, I urge potential readers not to dismiss the book too quickly just because of the possible difference in positions they may have from the author.

A reviewer in Amazon said that this book is only for people who can think for themselves. I would not say that, I would encourage people to read this book but temper it with other books to put things in a better context.

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Pan-Asianism and Japan's War (Eri Hotta)

In this book the author, Eri Hotta, explored the notion of Pan-Asianism and its relation to Japan’s wars in Asia between 1931 and 1945. First of all, it is important to understand what Pan-Asiansim stands for and the author did a very good job of dissecting the term, not semantically, but really explaining how Japanese of that era looked at Japan in relation to the rest of Asia, particularly China. It turns out that Pan-Asianism in Japan was not just an ideology about the unity of Asians, in fact there were three major strands of Pan-Asianism: the Teaist strand, the Sinic strand and finally the Meishuron strand which eventually became the most dominant strand. The Meishuron strand believed that Asia was weak and should stand together to counter Western imperialism with Japan as the leader of the movement.

There was a reason why this strand displaced the other two as the dominant strand. India, incorporated by the Teaists as a partner in the enterprise was unclear in their position vis-à-vis anti-imperialism. There were surely those who fought for independence from Great Britain (e.g., Subhas Chandra Bose) but many more Indians appeared to be fine with the status quo. China, an obvious partner in the enterprise and even treated as equals by the Teaists and the Sinics, was suffering greatly under the Western powers, especially after the Boxer Rebellion. But she was a torn and fragmented country with no unifying government. One can hardly expect China to play a significant role in the rise of Asia. It is therefore left to the most developed and stable country then, Japan, to take the lead.

An obvious question that one would ask would be whether Pan-Asianism, especially the Meishuron strand, caused Japan’s war. The author made no such claims but demonstrated how the adoption of Meishuron affected how the war and post-battle treatment of the conquered were carried out, both at the macro and the micro levels. At the macro level, in the early stages it led Japan to feel that they could not count on China to act as an effective partner, if not to check the Soviet Union’s likely southern expansion then at least as a buffer for a while. Japan therefore had to do it herself, and coupled with the need for room to house its expanding population and need for resources, found the occupation of Manchuria to be a perfect solution.

At the micro level, it explained the behaviours of the Japanese soldiers and commanders towards the peoples under their occupation. Firstly there must be a pent-up frustration amongst the Japanese soldiers towards the people they conquered because Japan was trying to bring respect to Asia, liberating these countries from the Western Imperialists, paying the price with blood, and yet facing a perplexingly hostile reception from fellow Asians. Secondly in the view of this strand, Japan and Japanese are superior, as seen by their ability to ‘liberate’ the other Asians, and these ‘sub-humans’ can be treated as such.

However in assigning herself this responsibility, the author demonstrated clearly the paradoxical Japanese psyche that was prevalent at that time where on one hand Japan felt a sense of superiority and mission in relation to her other Asian neighbours, but on the other felt inferior and victimised by the West, described by the author as a “curious blend of arrogance and self-consciousness” (pg. 207). The perceived sense of victimisation can be traced to their humiliation by the West in the wake of the Treaty of Portsmouth and the Washington Conference when they realised the ‘Hobbesian nature’ (pg. 53) of world affairs. The sense of superiority on the other hand was a result of their realisation of their advancement in comparison to their neighbours as mentioned above. This psyche became a justification in many Japanese’ minds resulting in a sense of righteousness in their subsequent behaviours in the occupied territories.

While this book is centred around the theme of Pan-Asianism, the author also touched on the other factors that played equally important roles in the war including the role that the Soviet Union played (albeit briefly), the losing of control of the military, the internal fighting within the factions of the military, and most important of all, the dead ends that Japan eventually found herself in after attacking Pearl Harbor. Despite these, the author never let Pan-Asianism out of sight and in the end led one to ask whether it also had a role in Japan’s defeat. To this the author showed that there were perhaps two pitfalls that eventually led to Japan’s failure.

The first was their surprise that China would actually resist. Japan might have expected China not to either because the Chinese were thought to be too impotent to do so or because they might really buy into the ideology of Pan-Asianism. The reality was although China could not mount a successful defence against Japan, the vast expanse of China meant the tying down of a big number of Japanese troops.

The second was while the decision makers in the military might be under no delusions of eventual defeat and were only carrying on because they had promised an East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and were therefore unable to dismount, there were actually others who “saw reforming implications in what they were doing” (pg. 136). The machine therefore grinded on until it was utterly destroyed by the US.

This book must be read carefully because readers from countries that suffered under Japanese occupation might be quick to dismiss it as a revisionist effort to re-present history. The reader may accuse the writer of trying to justify Japanese soldiers’ brutality by pleading that the intention was good, and the brutal ways that were used on the occupied peoples were exactly the same ones used on Japanese themselves. The author did not have the intention of excusing Japan for her treatment of the people in the occupied territories, rather, she wanted to take an open-minded look at the Pan-Asianism ideology and how it influenced Japanese attitudes and decisions during the war. That the outcome of the ideology was bad for Asia in general and Japan in particular serves as a lesson for us in not examining our own reactions to the ideology, it does not imply that any attempt to understand it is an attempt to excuse the perpetrators of a brutal and ultimately tragic war.

This book is not an easy read; the fact that I am the first reviewer since the book was published in 2007 attests to it. It was not written in a “popular history” style where the author tried to inject life into characters by describing for example “he was tossing and turning in his bed”. What this author did instead was to adopt the academic writing style, citing references where they were due, describing events as they were, and making no effort to add colour to the characters. However for those who would make the effort, they can be sure of being richly rewarded with not just knowledge of events and people, but an expanded vocabulary (of which Hotta’s range was huge) and an insight into how an expert does critical analysis. It is well worth the effort.


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