Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945: The Bomb That Was Not Needed

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and of Nagasaki on 9 August, was the most terrible crime against a civilian population in history. American schools still explain it in one phrase: the bomb “saved a million American lives”. I say this is a myth. Let us go point by point, without emotion, though emotion is appropriate here.

The first question: was it needed at all?

Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima: What American Commanders Themselves Thought

The most senior American commanders considered the bombs superfluous. Eisenhower, by his own recollection, told Stimson that Japan was already defeated. Admiral Leahy, the president’s chief military adviser, wrote that using the bomb against Japan gave no “material assistance” in the war. Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur, by accounts, held the same opinion.

By summer 1945 Japan was blockaded from the sea and burned from the air. American aircraft had already destroyed dozens of Japanese cities with conventional and incendiary bombs, and in a single night in March 1945 about a hundred thousand people died in Tokyo. The country was on the edge.

Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Japanese Feelers: Harsh Terms

The US read Japanese diplomatic ciphers. So Washington knew that Tokyo was looking for mediation through the USSR and was ready to surrender if the emperor was kept. That, by the way, is how it all ended. But the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945 gave the emperor no clear guarantees. The terms of “unconditional surrender” were deliberately left harsh.

Besides, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, when the Japanese leadership had not yet had time to assess what had happened in the first city. Thus the Japanese were simply not left time to decide. Note that on 8 August the USSR entered the war and began its offensive in Manchuria.

What Historians Say

Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa believes that the decisive role was played by the Soviet entry, not the bombs: it deprived Tokyo of hope of mediation. People argue with him, and the argument goes on. But even those who defend Truman’s decision admit that alternatives existed: continuing the blockade, demonstrating the bomb in an uninhabited area, waiting for the Soviet blow.

Truman himself later inflated the figures. He spoke of hundreds of thousands of American lives saved, and in 1947 Stimson named a million. The wartime planning documents speak of substantially smaller losses.

Kyoto, Nagasaki and the “Clean Experiment” for the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

The first candidate for the bomb was Kyoto: large, untouched, a cultural centre. Secretary of War Stimson personally struck it from the list. Partly because of the city’s cultural significance, partly out of geopolitics: destroying Kyoto might push the Japanese towards the USSR after the war. Nagasaki was added to the list in its place.

One more detail that makes me shudder. The candidate cities were deliberately not bombed with conventional bombs beforehand, in order to measure the effect of an atomic strike “cleanly”. People lived in those cities as test subjects.

Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima: How Many People Died

By the end of 1945 the bombs had killed roughly 210,000 people: about 140,000 in Hiroshima and about 70,000–74,000 in Nagasaki. These are estimates: they include those killed in the explosions and those who died in the first months from burns and radiation sickness. How many died later, nobody knows exactly. Among 86,572 survivors observed from 1950 to 1997, 9,335 deaths from solid tumours were recorded, but only part of them were caused by radiation.

It was a deliberate strike on civilian cities with a weapon of mass destruction. I cannot call it anything else. That Truman knew of Japan’s attempts to leave the war while keeping the surrender terms harsh I wrote about also in the article on the US entry into the Second World War, and about the background in the piece on the oil embargo against Japan. What the Americans did with Japan after the bombs is in the article on the occupation of Japan. A reference: Wikipedia.

The Myth of a Million Lives Saved

The version that the bombs “saved millions” was built after the war, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was presented as inevitable. Stimson popularised it in a 1947 article, and then Truman and school textbooks repeated it. But in June 1945 US military planners estimated losses in a landing on Kyushu at tens of thousands of people, not hundreds of thousands. The figure grew as the need to justify the decision grew.

Note something else: victory over Japan, in the view of many historians, did not require a landing. The blockade, hunger and the Soviet offensive in Manchuria made capitulation a matter of weeks. So the atomic bombing of Hiroshima looked not like a last argument but like a show of force. The addressee, in the view of some historians, was not only Japan but Moscow: Truman wanted to show the USSR who was master of the postwar world.

That is how many read these events: for them the bombs are the first act of the Cold War. Besides, Nagasaki was bombed not because anything was changing at the front. By then the US had prepared a bomb of a second type and used both. I put it this way: people were test subjects. More on how the US entered this war is in my article on the US in the Second World War.

What Norms Did the US Break

First, the 1907 Hague Regulations. Article 25 forbids attacking undefended towns by any means, and Article 23 forbids weapons that cause unnecessary suffering. Hiroshima was not a fortress, and radiation sickness is precisely unnecessary suffering.

Second, Washington’s own promise. On 1 September 1939 Roosevelt appealed to all warring countries not to bomb civilians. The US itself declared this principle a rule, and then broke it.

Third, the courts. In 1963 the Tokyo District Court in the Shimoda case held that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki violated international law, because the strike was indiscriminate and caused excessive suffering. And in 1996 the UN International Court of Justice concluded that the use of nuclear weapons is contrary to humanitarian law in almost all cases. Finally, the Nuremberg Charter classed “inhumane acts against a civilian population” as crimes against humanity, and others were tried for them. See the reference on the Shimoda case.

Nothing Has Changed: Bombs Fall on Those Who Cannot Answer

The bombs were dropped 80 years ago, and the logic is the same: first a strike on civilians, then an explanation that “it was necessary”. Here are examples from the last twenty years.

Iraq, 2003. The “Shock and Awe” campaign: missile and air strikes on Baghdad in which thousands of civilians died. The justification was weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

Afghanistan, 2015. An American aircraft fired on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, and 42 people died. It was then called a “tragic mistake”.

Iraq and Syria, 2017. In the assaults on Mosul and Raqqa the American-led coalition destroyed whole neighbourhoods. Amnesty International called Raqqa a “war of annihilation” and reported hundreds of civilians killed.

Iran, 22 June 2025. The US struck the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites with super-heavy bombs without congressional authorisation and without a declaration of war. Later, in October 2025, Trump ordered the resumption of nuclear testing.

Thus the atomic bombing of Hiroshima became not an exception but a school. Washington has never apologised for it. Instead it spent decades making the world think it was a necessity.