Racial Influences on the Atomic Bombs

Did race play a part in the deaths of nearly 250,0001 people in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Did The United States of America make the decision based on a prejudice against Asians?  Or, were the bombings simply a tactic to end the war as soon as possible and save thousands of American troops?  Or, could both be true at the same time?

To find the answer I think we must start with the president of the United States, Harry Truman.  Truman’s diary and some of his speeches suggest, that he was very troubled by the decision to drop the atomic bombs.  Truman was aware of the destruction that the atomic bomb was able to cause, and hesitated to use it.  In his diary he wrote, “ We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”2

Truman never wanted to cause civilian casualties; he wanted to make a stand against Japan to end the war.  To accomplish this he wanted to use the new weapon on cities with great military importance.  Truman wrote,  “I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.”3  Unfortunately, this is not how the dropping of the bombs would be executed.  An estimated 95%4 of the casualties suffered by the atomic bombs were civilian.  The total number of deaths is nearly impossible to calculate due to the deaths caused by radiation, and eventually cancer.  It is estimated that a total of 135,000 were killed in Hiroshima, and a total of 64,000 killed in Nagasaki.

Yet, Truman becomes less convincing when one reads his speech on August 9, 1945, just after the second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki.  Truman stated:

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.5

This would have been great for him to say before the dropping of the bombs, but the fact that the statement was made after both bombs had been dropped is appalling.  Either Truman had been misinformed about the first bombing and didn’t yet know of the second, or he lied to the country.  Truman should have known the devastation that the first bomb caused the civilians of Hiroshima, and what the second bomb was currently doing to the people in Nagasaki. 

Truman does not seem to be the only American who possibly lied, or denied the facts about the use of the atomic bombs. In 1990, Major Myron L.Hampton, United States Marine Corp, wrote Racism and the Atomic Bomb6.  In Hampton’s report he continually admits that while the United States had racist feelings towards the Japanese, the dropping of the bombs was not racially motivated.  Hampton writes, “There is no doubt that the Japanese and everything that reminded the American public of Japan was greatly despised.  Japanese were considered to be less than human.”  This quote says it all.  Race is a factor; the only way one could cause this much destruction is if they see the enemy as being sub-human.

Hampton also makes the contention that if the bomb had been ready before the war was over in Europe it would have been used there too: “if the atomic bomb had been available prior to the defeat of Germany, the bomb would have been used in Europe.” What is interesting is the way Hampton then justifies why the United States didn’t, or wouldn’t, have dropped an atomic bomb in Europe, “many Americans still had relatives and friends in Germany and Italy, and it was inconceivable that these people could be wicked.”  If Hampton was so adamant that the United States would have bombed Germany, why does he make any mention of why it didn’t happen?  It is also true that many Americans still had friends and relatives in Japan too, granted not as many as the Germans and Italians.  In fact, there were at least 120,000 Japanese-Americans that were currently in the United States, but they were placed in Internment camps.  Other Japanese-Americans were being drafted into the United States army.

Hampton goes on to contradict his main argument of the Atomic bombs being non racial by bringing up racist influences that Americans had.  Hampton mentions one of the most influential war correspondents of World War II, Ernie Pyle, and what he told his millions of readers about the Japanese, “In Europe, we felt that our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people, but out here, I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked upon as something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches and mice.”  If Pyle reached as many readers as Hampton suggests, this kind of language would have an enormous impact on the views of Japanese by the American public.  This is also an American public that had already been looking down upon the Japanese since they arrived to the U.S.

Many Japanese immigrated to America in the late 19th century.  They took jobs on the railroad and in agriculture.  Whites on the west coast felt that it was the Asian population taking their jobs and lowering their wages.  In 1905 the Japanese exclusion league was formed in San Francisco.  In just three years the league had over 100,000 members, a large number of them had affiliations with labor unions7.  The league promoted propaganda against the Japanese trying to exclude children from schools and adults from getting jobs.  The anti-Asian attitude was nothing new; they had been dealing with it since they first came to the United States.  This is another reason why the Americans had such a dislike for the Japanese during World War II.

The fear that Americans had for the Japanese at the time is apparent, particularly on the west coast, where the majority of Japanese-Americans were living.  There were reports of Japanese enrolling to learn German and help the Nazi's at the University of California Los Angeles.  Regulations started out as curfews for the Japanese-Americans and ended with barbed wire and the loss of virtually everything. 

A fact that cannot be left out is the attack on Pearl Harbor.  This is how the U.S. was brought into the war and was a major cause for the feelings of Americans towards the Japanese.  At least 2,400 Americans died that day; the average age of the soldiers who passed was 23. 

The decision to drop two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two may not have been entirely racist, but there is not doubt that racism did play a part.  The American people had a definite hatred for the Japanese and that had a role in the decision to drop the bombs.  The Japanese had been despised since they had come to the country, now that the U.S. was at war with them they needed to pay, and pay they did..

1 Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

2 Robert H. Ferrell, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) pp. 55-56. URL: http://www.dannen.com/decision/hst-jl25.html

3 Robert H. Ferrell, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) pp. 55-56. URL: http://www.dannen.com/decision/hst-jl25.html

4 Wikipeidia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

5 New York Times, August 10, 1945, page 12, http://www.dannen.com/decision/hst-ag09.html

6 Major Myron L. Hampton, Racism and the Atomic Bomb, 1990, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/1990/HML.htm

7 1997-2005, http://www.densho.org/causes/1racism/1antijapanesegroups.asp