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A Reexamination of the “Shock of Hiroshima”: The Japanese Bomb Projects and the Surrender Decision
Abstract
On 6 August 1945, at exactly 8:15 a.m., the first atomic bomb in history was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Along with the Soviet entrance into the war on 8 August, the atomic bomb was one of the “twin shocks” that finally compelled Emperor Hirohito to make the decision to surrender. The real “shock” of Hiroshima, however, was not the introduction of a “new and most cruel bomb,” as Hirohito described the atomic bomb in his 15 August radio broadcast announcing the decision to surrender. Rather, it was the capability of the United States to produce the rumored .super weapon. that Japan's own top atomic scientists had repeatedly deemed impossible, the latest instance of such denial coming only several weeks earlier on 21 July 1945—five days after the Manhattan Project's successful Trinity atomic test at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Can strategists reduce the adversary’s capability or will to fight through militarily inspired awe? While strategic and emotion theories suggest an affirmative answer, evidence from strategic history indicates awe does not work well in practice. Historically, military power has only inspired awe on a limited scale, unreliably, disparately and not repeatedly. Furthermore, the emotion does not translate into favourable strategic effects because of the fluid emotional landscape which characterizes combat and politics. These findings question the wisdom of relying on awe in strategic practice but also hold implications for the extant and future strategic thought, particularly the emotion centric one.
Abstract Japan is often seen as pacifist and as a defender of nuclear disarmament. This article, though, sustains that Japan is basing its security on extended nuclear deterrence, and on the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons. In the first part of the article, the role of extended deterrence in the relationship with the U.S. is analyzed, and in the second, the history of the Japanese nuclear option since the end of the Second World War is reassessed.
This paper deploys the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and consent in order to explore the process whereby nuclear power was brought to Japan. The core argument is that nuclear power was brought to Japan as a consequence of US hegemony. Rather than a simple manifestation of one state exerting material ‘power over' another, bringing nuclear power to Japan involved a series of compromises worked out within and between state and civil society in both Japan and the USA. Ideologies of nationalism, imperialism and modernity underpinned the process, coalescing in post-war debates about the future trajectory of Japanese society, Japan's Cold War alliance with the USA and the role of nuclear power in both. Consent to nuclear power was secured through the generation of a psychological state in the public mind combining the fear of nuclear attack and the hope of unlimited consumption in a nuclear-fuelled post-modern world.
Since 1946, journalists in the US have alleged that Japanese scientists successfully built and tested an atomic bomb hear the city of Hungnam, Korea, during the closing days of World War II. Based upon reports from US military intelligence investigations conducted after the war, as well as from Japanese corporate histories and memoirs, the present essay attempts to dispel the myth of Japans atomic bomb by providing a detailed examination of the events that occurred in Hungnam in the final days of the war. Reasons for the endurance of the myth in the historiography of modern Japan are also considered.
This paper questions claims that the Japanese may have succeeded in testing an atomic weapon shortly before the end of World War II. Historical and empirical evidence is examined which suggests that the lack of scientific expertise in nuclear physics hampered the development of an atomic bomb, the most qualified scientists generally being unwilling to become actively involved in the Japanese project. The paper looks at the wartime mobilization of Japanese scientists; outlines the Japanese atomic bomb project; examines claims that Japan succeeded in completing an atomic weapon; and concludes with a look at the ramifications of the historiography.
Ichigaya-dai, 255. 65. Asada, "The Shock
- Kawabe
Kawabe, Ichigaya-dai, 255.
65. Asada, "The Shock," 506.
Maboroshi no Genbaku Kaihatsu
- Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun, "Maboroshi no Genbaku Kaihatsu," 21 Aug. 1995, 11; Hosaka,
Genshi Bakudan Kansei, 89.
The officer's statements are compiled from both sources
- Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun, "Maboroshi no Genbaku Kaihatsu," 21 Aug. 1995, 11. The
officer's statements are compiled from both sources.
506, 508; Yomiuri, Sho\ wa-shi
- Asada
Asada, "The Shock," 506, 508; Yomiuri, Sho\ wa-shi, 310.