Nuclear weapons have cast a shadow on the Earth and humanity, since their first and only use in 1945.
In the summer of 1945, the three prime Allied powers met at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, the former capital of the defeated Nazi Germany. They met to discuss post-war matters, specifically the state of Europe and the wider world, as well how Japan was to be dealt with.
The United Kingdom, United States, and USSR were committed to Japan’s unconditional surrender, as they were with Germany and Italy. Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt on his death in Jan 1945, disclosed that the USA was working on an atomic weapon, which could be used to force a surrender if needed. This was done in part by British research, led by the Tizard Mission. Churchill lost the 1945 UK general election to Clement Attlee of the Labour Party, and Attlee took his place as UK Prime Minister midway through the conference accordingly.
Japan may have been on its knees - but it still would take a huge effort to fully subdue it.
In the late summer of 1945, the situation was thus:
Japan could be blockaded indefinitely, with its armies in China and Southeast Asia slowly whittled down.
An invasion of Japan would be highly costly, due to the Japanese Bushido-inspired concept of no surrender at any cost.
It was estimated that causality figures on the Allied side would rank in the millions. Many more Japanese would die also.
The Allies united as they saw the Axis as an existential geopolitical threat. The British were imperialist capitalists, the Americans were republican capitalists, and the Soviets were Marxist authoritarians. It was in some ways an unnatural alliance, and it was apparent that conflict would arise after the war ended.
With the atomic weapon, the USA had an advantage over all other countries on Earth. It can be said that the use of the weapons symbolised the USA being the world’s superpower. A position that remains until the current day. It also was a way to show the USSR who was boss, given the emergent Cold War that would result after WW2.
All of the Allies were tired of war. Japan was clearly on its knees, though there was a desire to end the fighting quickly and not to let war drag on with many more deaths resulting.
The Japanese government, even when the bombs were used, were divided on whether to surrender or not. However, with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito ordered a surrender. A coup led by disgruntled officers resulted, though this soon was quelled, with the surrender signed on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbour.
Cruelty…but genocide?
It’s undeniable that the bombings were cruel and harsh.
The injuries seen on survivors were unprecedented.
There were even shadows of vapourised people visible after the attack.
Clearly, the world had entered a new and dark era, with the presence of such reprehensible weapons.
WW2 overall can be characterised by the phrase homo homini lupus - man is a wolf to man. Whilst all wars have had carnage and death, the level of such was unparalleled in the Second World War.
And this was not contained to the Axis alone, or even at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The British bombed Hamburg and Dresden to dramatic effect - they suffered immense firestorms laying waste to both cities.
Japanese war crimes were staggering - from the Nanjing Massacre to the treatment of Allied POWs.
The Americans also interned Japanese-American citizens, many of whom had no direct ties to the Japanese state.
Soviet troops committed mass rape against German women as they were entering the Third Reich at the war’s end.
And the Holocaust remains a prime grave event, at the hands of the Nazi regime.
We can see that no side of the conflict was free from inhumanity. The atomic bombings were the final culmination of such.
But were the atomic bombings genocide?
Genocide
What is genocide? The OED says:
“…the murder of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group…”
If we take the Holocaust, Tutsi massacre, and the Bosnian attacks, as examples, then this definition fits perfectly. The Nazis, Hutus, and Serbs wanted to exterminate Jews, Tutsi, and Bosniaks accordingly. This was all clearly stated and specified prior to and during the killings.
The United Nations (UN) Genocide Convention of 1948 defined it as thus:
“...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Again, the Holocaust and Tutsi/Bosniak genocides aligned in this capacity.
All of the stated acts were done, to bring extermination to their enemies.
So would the atomic bombings fit?
Retrospective analyses
I’m not an international lawyer.
However, if we could retrospectively cite the bombings as genocide, would it fit?
People were killed.
Many were harmed.
The conditions of life were negatively impacted.
Though there were no forcible child transfers, or measures taken to prevent births.
There also was no intent.
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, who oversaw the Manhattan Project as the US commanders in chief, never openly called for the outright killing of Japanese people. Yes, both endorsed internment policies, but this too cannot be cited as genocide, as there was no intent to kill Japanese-Americans. The intent was to “punish” them out of a tenuous racial association. But it wasn’t to kill them.
The Manhattan Project relied on the Tizard Mission and input from British scientists who had successfully split the atom in the pre and early-war period. The Quebec Agreement between both countries specified that mutual agreement was needed for any new weapon to be used. President Truman accordingly did this, before the weapons’ deployment.
Churchill was noted for his war leadership, charisma, and rousing speeches. Like Hitler, he stands as an all-time great public speaker. Whilst he spoke about “The Few” “Fighting them on the beaches” or “The Iron Curtain from the Baltic to Trieste”, he never publicly stated that Japanese annihilation was a prime war goal. Neither did his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, nor his successor Clement Attlee. Whilst Axis surrender, unconditionally, was the stated goal, Japanese genocide would have been an anathema. Even localised non-genicidal attacks such as Mers-El-Kabir or the Hamburg and Dresden bombings caused some angst in the British top brass and government. So a full-on genocide would have been beyond the pale.
Stalin was hardly the most benevolent of leaders. He abused his people, for sure, via gulags as an example. And whilst he was nonchalant when told about the mass rape of German women by his troops in the latter war period, he never called for German genocide. He also never called for Japanese genocide either. Like the Americans and British, he agreed with them concerning the Axis’s unconditional surrender.
So where was the genocide?
A mass killing alone isn’t a genocide.
For there to be genocide, there has to be a stated goal concerning the eradication of a people.
The Nazis had a plan to kill all Jews. Details of this can be seen in the video above.
There was no Allied plan to kill all Japanese.
Unless there is some secret document out there, in some British, American or Russian filing system, the atomic bombings were an unprecedentedly damaging occurrence within the stated terms of the war.
Brutal
Whether the bombings were genocidal or not, one cannot dismiss their impact and barbarity.
This article isn’t intended to do such.
But we should be careful when labelled any act as genocide.
Genocide is rightly condemned as a monstrosity.
This is why the UN definition, which many UN members have signed up to, is this specific.
Most people who die in wars are military combatants or civilians caught in the crossfire. Sometimes, civilians were and are deliberately targeted. But most military deaths are done to defeat an enemy. And not due to genocide or a desire to kill an entire people.
By labelling any large-scale isolated attack as genocide unnecessarily muddies the waters.
Given the gravity of what genocide is, we need to patently describe genocide as it is.