Nikole Hannah-Jones Mangles World War II Atomic History

W e’ve now been greeted with yet another rendition of fake history. This time, it is purveyed by two of the most prominent and persistent fakers: Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn, author of the most popular (and misleading) history textbook, A People’s History of the United States.

The misrepresentations, distortions, and outright falsifications of history contained in the 1619 Project have been carefully exposed elsewhere. Nonetheless, Ms. Hannah-Jones recently decided to extend her streak from the history of slavery to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. She posted this tweet, which has since been deleted:

They [the federal government] dropped the bomb when they knew surrender was coming because they’d spent all this money developing it and to prove it was worth it. Propaganda is not history, my friend.

It’s not hard to identify where she got this counterfactual account of Hiroshima; indeed, it comes from Howard Zinn, who wrote in his People’s History that “the Japanese had begun talking of surrender a year before this” but the Americans insisted on unconditional surrender, which made peace impossible. “Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it?,” Zinn pondered.

So much for propaganda versus history. It’s now generally accepted by everyone who knows anything about the subject — including Japanese historians — that the key reason for using the atomic bomb was not racist bloodlust (as the Smithsonian’s abortive Enola Gay exhibit tried to insinuate a few years ago), or (as in another leftist tract, Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy) a cynical desire to impress Stalin and the Soviet Union with our newfound nuclear prowess, but rather an overwhelming concern about the staggering cost in casualties a U.S. invasion of Japan would incur — not to mention Japanese deaths. At a White House meeting on June 18, 1945, a very worried President Truman learned that the man who was to head the invasion of the island of Kyushu, General Douglas MacArthur, estimated that U.S. casualties would approach 120,000 in the first 90 days. The navy’s overall estimate ran to a quarter-million casualties overall — with the battle for Honshu and Tokyo, the capital, still to come.

It was in order to forestall an apocalyptic fight to the death between American soldiers and Japanese soldiers and civilians that would drag on for months or even years that Truman on July 28 authorized the dropping of one of the two available atomic bombs on the city of Hiroshima, and then, if Japan still refused to surrender, dropping the second on Nagasaki.

These facts are well-known — well-known, it seems, to everyone except Hannah-Jones, Zinn, and their fans. What isn’t so well known is that American decrypts of Japanese military ciphers on the eve of Hiroshima had established that, far from being close to surrender, or even discouraged by one major defeat after another — from Iwo Jima and the Philippines to Okinawa — Japan’s military leadership was determined to fight on to the finish.

Historian Junichiro Shoji has recently revealed how intransigent the Japanese military had become in defending the decision to prosecute the war irrespective of any human cost. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the military remained unwavering. The generals even called for the “honorable death of 100 million” in a “battle for the Japanese Home Islands.” At a meeting with the Emperor on August 14, almost a week after the second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, both Army Marshal Sugiyama and Admiral Nagano insisted that “the military still has strength remaining and its morale is strong. Based on these [factors], it should be able to resist and resolutely repel the invading U.S. forces.”

The use of atomic weapons, however, did tip the hand of the one person who had the power to overrule Japan’s military elite — namely, Hirohito himself. The shocking devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only confirmed his private belief that Japan had nothing to gain by fighting on. On August 12, he told the imperial family the circumstances, “Do not lead me to believe that the military would be victorious in the Battle for the Home Islands.” The only option was to accept the conditions laid out the declaration made by the Big Three at their meeting at Potsdam, Germany, on July 26, that called for the surrender of Japan but left the issue of preserving Japan’s national polity, including the status of the Emperor, open.

The Japanese government had already rejected the Potsdam offer on July 28. But on August 10, two days after Nagasaki, the Japanese cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki, issued an emergency telegram stating that it would accept the Potsdam declaration with the understanding that this did not compromise the Emperor’s future status. Secretary of State James Byrnes then issued a reply stating that the Emperor’s status and that of the Japanese government would be “subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers,” who would be Douglas MacArthur.

That assurance gave Hirohito the courage to overrule his military leaders and to tell the Japanese people in a nationwide broadcast on August 15 that they would have “to endure the unendurable” and accept surrender. Any remaining anxiety about the Emperor’s status was dispelled when a Japanese delegation arrived in Manila on August 19 to negotiate the final terms of surrender, and MacArthur made it clear that he had no intention of overturning Emperor Hirohito’s authority. “Through him it will be possible to maintain a completely orderly government” for rebuilding post-war Japan, the general explained.

In the end, Japan’s final surrender in World War II was due to three people: Secretary of State James Byrnes, General Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Hirohito. If atomic bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, Hirohito and his civilian leadership might never have had the courage to override a Japanese military that had largely taken over the government and was determined to fight to the last Japanese man, woman, and child. (A hardcore group of officers even tried unsuccessfully to kidnap the Emperor before his broadcast to the Japanese people.)

Indeed, the atomic bombs’ real contribution to peace was the implicit threat that the United States had more bombs ready to drop, which it did not. Intentional or not, the bluff worked, and prevented an invasion that would have led to American and Japanese deaths running into the millions. Australian historian Tom Lewis has recently estimated that worldwide it may have saved more than 32 million lives.

None of this, of course, makes any difference to Ms. Hannah-Jones or her intellectual guide Howard Zinn. The only remaining mystery is why she bothered to delete her tweet. Thus far the public and popular media have allowed her to get away with one counterfactual historical claim after another with impunity. Surely one more wouldn’t mar their record.