In his 1981 essay ‘Hiroshima’, John Berger uses the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to argue against the use of nuclear weapons. He explains that the bombing of Hiroshima “was not a miscalculation, an error What happened was consciously and precisely planned.” (Berger 4). The Allied forces who planned the bombings deliberately intended for “hundreds of thousands of dead, how many injured, how many deformed children” (Berger 4). Civilians were targeted by design. The deaths of Japanese civilians through the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not an accident or coincidence. It happened by design. Furthermore, the horrific aftermath and intention of the bombing was suppressed by Western media and omitted from history books (Berger 3).
Berger employs heavy use of pathos in his rhetoric. His essays include vivid descriptions of the physical aftermath of victims of the Hiroshima bombing, where “the skin of their arms was peeled off” and a man is “stark naked” and “burned black all over”. In a particularly striking description, he includes a passage about a girl whose skin is hanging off her hip. He juxtaposes the victims, who are innocent Japanese civilians going about their daily lives, with the harm that is done to them by the Americans’ bomb. He describes the suffering of Japanese civilians in painstaking detail to gain the audience’s sympathy (Berger 2). He invites the reader to imagine the pain of the Japanese civilians, such that they may identify and sympathise with Berger’s own argument. He then uses the metaphor of Christian hell to describe the scene of the aftermath. He draws an ironic contrast here: Christian hell is reserved for sinners, wrongdoers and evil people. Yet in this scenario, those who are subjected to hell are innocent by all means, merely going about their daily lives. It is ironic, then, that they are subject to the “horror of Dante’s verses about the Inferno” (Berger 2).
There is also a false equivalency, when he equates the Allied forces with terrorists for targeting Japanese civilians. Terrorists often target innocent civilians, “chosen indiscriminately in the hope of producing a shock effect on political decision-making by their government.” (Berger 4). Hence, as the Allied forces similarly targeted civilians, the atomic bombings “were terrorist actions.” (Berger 4). Berger fails to mention that the Japanese had similarly targeted Chinese and American civilians earlier in the war, which would cause them to be considered as terrorists too. Finally, Berger uses a binalistic opposition to reduce the debate on nuclear weapons as evil versus not evil (Berger 6). This creates a false dichotomy, where there is no grey area. In Berger’s essay, any use of nuclear weapons is considered as evil and immoral.
Berger’s essay, while biased with rhetoric, raises many interesting questions. His ultimate goal is to convince the reader that any use of nuclear weapons is evil, by reference to the only historical event where nuclear weapons were used. Is Berger’s claim true, or can the use of nuclear weapons ever be justified?
While it is true that the Allied forces targeted civilians at Hiroshima, it is necessary to examine the intention behind the bombing. It could be morally justified if the atomic bombs were dropped with the intention of saving both American and Japanese lives. According to many American leaders and historians, the atomic bombs were required to end the war (Pyle 6). The Japanese had retreated to their island, surrounded by Allied forces. The Allied forces were forced to either invade Japan by land (causing both American and Japanese casualties) or continue firebombing Japanese cities (causing Japanese casualties) in order to force Japan into surrendering. Some military historians argue that the Japanese was not close to surrender. They intended “make the battle of the homeland so bloody and protracted that the Americans would be compelled to negotiate a peace” (Pyle 8). They argue that the Americans’ use of an atomic bomb brought the war to a quick end, preventing the need for a land invasion. This quick end to the war avoided greater casualties that would result from an invasion, both to the Americans and the Japanese, justifying the use of the bombs to prevent further loss of human life.
However, historian Barton J. Bernstein suggests otherwise. In an essay titled ‘Reconsidering Truman’s claim of ‘half a million American lives’ saved by the atomic bomb: The construction and deconstruction of a myth’, Bernstein finds that ‘there is no reliable pre-Hiroshima evidence that Truman ever received from any trusted subordinate an estimate of a half a million US dead for the land operation on Japan, or that he or Marshall believed such a number before Hiroshima’ (Bernstein 6). This undermines the argument that many lives, both Americans and Japanese were saved by the atomic bombing. President Truman, who was Commander-In-Chief of the United States during World War 2, exaggerated the number of lives who would be saved in order to justify the use of the atomic bombs (Bernstein 25). His primary concern was not the preservation of human lives either, it was the preservation of American lives (Bernstein 23). For Truman, “the issue was simpler: preventing American battle deaths American lives and purposes were very important, and Japanese lives were not” (Bernstein 17). In other words, the specific bombing of Hiroshima was never to prevent further casualties, but to prevent only American soldiers from dying in battle. Japanese civilians were expendable, seen as a hated enemy (Bernstein 23) and carefully targeted to demoralise the Japanese for the Allied force’s benefit. While the use of nuclear weapons could be justified to save human lives by preventing further war, it was never Truman’s intention.
Bernstein’s findings certainly fall in line with Berger’s. Berger speaks of an evil where the Americans deliberately targeted Japanese civilians in full knowledge of the radioactive aftermath. Truman never had to weigh “American lives likely to be saved against the number of Japanese lives likely to be ended” (Bernstein 23). There had been no consideration for the saving of Japanese lives. The American leaders were concerned chiefly with their own benefits. Berger describes a “mask of innocence” which Americans wear to justify their country’s massacre of a civilian population (Berger 5), whereas Bernstein presents an even starker reality, where “Many Americans were in fact eager to kill more Japanese” (Bernstein 23). There was in fact no consideration for Japanese lives. Civilians or not, they were seen as enemies of the America.
Bernstein’s findings lend legitimacy to Berger’s claims about the Western world attempting to suppress the reality of the bombing as well. President Truman had exaggerated the number of American lives saved by the atomic bombings in order to justify the atomic bombings. He denied targeting Japanese civilians and cities with the bombs to shift responsibility away from the American leaders for the indiscriminate slaughter of Japanese civilians. (Bernstein 80). In reality, the atomic bombing was deliberate and planned as Berger claims, with no attempt. The downplaying of the bombing, in retrospect, adds weight to Berger’s argument that the Allied powers have tried to mask the massive loss of life caused by their actions. Hence, we find that Truman and his advisors’ main concern in dropping the atomic bomb was not in the saving of human lives, but only American ones, and the deliberate targeting of civilians could not be justified.
Kenneth B. Pyle, in his essay ‘Hiroshima and the Historians: History as Relative Truth’ then complicates the issue further. He claims that Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs was caused by his stubborn adherence to an unconditional surrender policy. By continually pursuing this outcome, Truman prolonged the war by not giving Japan space to surrender (Pyle 9).
Truman’s predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, fought the Second World War with the intention of creating a new world order. Roosevelt’s ultimate goal in the war was “to use American power to build a liberal, democratic world order, based on American values, which he believed would require total victory“ (Berger 9). He adopted the unconditional surrender policy as a response to the Axis powers to achieve this goal. Roosevelt saw the war as a moral “crusade”. His unconditional surrender policy reflects his attempt to “rid the world once and for all of militarism”, with the following tenets:
“(1) unconditional surrender of Japanese sovereignty and allied occupation of the entire country, (2) dissolution of the Japanese empire, (3) war crimes trials of the Japanese leaders, (4) permanent disarmament of Japan, (5) democratization of Japan’s political structure, its economic system, and its society, and (6) reeducation of the Japanese people” (Berger 9)
In order to build his democratic new world, it would be necessary for the current political and social structure in the Axis powers to be changed. The unconditional surrender policy hence acts as an eraser for Japanese society. The goals in the policy were sweeping and antithetical to Japanese culture. The slate of Japanese identity and culture would have to be wiped clean to make way for the instalment of American liberal democratic values. After Truman became the President, he continued to pursue Roosevelt’s unconditional surrender policy. This conflicts with his stated goal of saving lives (Bernstein 7).
The truth was that the eventual use of nuclear weapons was caused by the American leaders’ desire to reform the world into a new world order defined by American supremacy. The goal of creating a new world order necessitated the use of nuclear weapons to bring Japan into submission. Truman’s ultimate decision was clearly influenced by the “crusade” led by his predecessor Truman.
The continued pursual of unconditional surrender by Truman after Roosevelt’s death had prolonged the war instead of shortening it. It “provoked unconditional resistance” (Pyle 9) from the Japanese. Truman and Roosevelt’s demands were “so antithetical to their values and self-identity, the Japanese military leaders determined on all-out resistance”. The Americans’ uncompromising position gave the Japanese no choice but to continue fighting the war. Ironically, it was the Americans on the winning side of the war who were unwilling to compromise, continuing to bomb the Japanese into submission. After the surrender of the Japanese, the American leaders made many compromises with the Japanese, including the retaining of the Japanese Emperor (Berger 10). Had they been willing to make the same compromises earlier, Truman would have been able to achieve his stated goal of saving American lives. Yet they had not done so, as the true goal of the Americans was to establish a new world order.
Truman’s justification for the bombings recall Berger’s words about government justification of the use of nuclear weapons. Berger writes that “the political and military arguments have concerned such issues as so-called civil defence” (Berger 3). He discards the arguments as irrelevant in the face of the physical terror brought about by nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Berger finds them insincere, obscuring an ulterior motive. We find a similar strain of logic in Truman’s actions. He justifies the atomic bombing by claiming that it was done to save “half a million American lives” (Bernstein 2), yet Pyle finds that it was only the result of an American ego and agenda to create a new world with themselves at the center.
In conclusion, we find that the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima could not be justified. Berger’s argument, while overly absolutist and biased, teaches us that we must consider the intentions behind the use of nuclear weapons in order to justify their use. In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two victims of a nuclear attack, we find that the Americans masked their intentions of saving lives with the dropping of bombs. They deliberately targeted civilians and covered up the facts by claiming that it was done to save lives. There was no respect for the sanctity of life. We also find that the dropping of the atomic bomb was merely the last of a long-running chain of events set off by Roosevelt’s adoption of an unconditional surrender policy. The goal of the bomb was not to save lives, but to subjugate Japan completely so that it could be replaced with a new social order. Knowing the true intention behind the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima, we cannot justify the Hiroshima bombing. Yet it is hasty to jump to the conclusion that they should not be used in any context as Berger recommends. Should the goal of the use of nuclear weapons be the saving of human lives as Truman claimed, the use of nuclear weapons could be justified.
Works Cited
Berger, John. “Hiroshima.” Advance College Essay. Boston: Pearson, 1981.
Bernstein, Barton. “Reconsidering Truman’s claim of ‘half a million American lives’ saved by the atomic bomb: The construction and deconstruction of a myth.” The Journal of Strategic Studies, 22:1, 54-95, DOI: 10.1080/01402399908437744
Pyle, Kenneth. “Hiroshima and the Historians: History as Relative Truth.” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 104, No. 3, University of Washington, 2013.