An allied correspondent standing in rubble before the shell of a building that once was a movie theatre in Hiroshima, Japan in September 1945.
PAUL Ham is ready for a fight. He arrives for our meeting armed with a copy of his new book, Hiroshima Nagasaki, which is bristling with yellow post-it notes. Fearing he might start bombarding me with passages from the book, I quickly run up the white flag and tell him I agree with everything he has written.
But what would I know? When it comes to World War II and the surrender of Japan I’ve always believed what we’ve all been told over the past 65 years: that the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, ended the war and saved a million American lives that would have been lost if the US had invaded Japan.
This, says Ham, is a lie. The US didn’t need to use the nuclear weapons. Japan would have surrendered without them. There was not going to be an invasion. There are, he believes, people who will take exception to his claims. These are the people he is ready to fight and he seems to be relishing the prospect. “I’m expecting to get hammered but I have a whole battery of evidence to rebut,” he says.
Ham’s argument is that the war was going to end soon without an American invasion or the atom bombs. Japan had lost the air and sea war, and the US blockade was depriving it of raw materials and food. But it was Russia’s invasion of Manchuria that sealed the Rising Sun’s fate. The Japanese feared the Russians more. Intercepted cables between the Japanese leaders and their ambassador to Moscow, Naotake Sato, show that they were already putting out peace feelers. And documents Ham found in the Japanese archives show that when its leaders were discussing surrender after the bombs were dropped, they did not consider the nuclear threat.
Ham did not set out to rewrite history. He intended just to write about the bombs and their aftermath, his interest piqued by conversations he had with Japanese while researching his first book, Kokoda. But as he delved into the subject the shape of the book began to change. “It was like being on a ship going one way then it slowly starts to turn around,” he says. “When I started I shared the sentiment that the A-bombs were the ‘least abhorrent choice’. But I felt there was something missing.”
In any case, the argument that the use of the atomic bombs was unnecessary is not new. It is fairer to say that Ham has revived it. Barely before the mushroom clouds had cleared there was condemnation of the bombings, particularly from church groups. In 1946 the US Strategic Bombing Survey found that the bombings were unnecessary, saying that Japan would have surrendered before the end of 1945 without them.
Even the scientists involved in developing the bomb were appalled. Ham says South Australian Sir Mark Oliphant forever after classified himself as a war criminal. In the face of this growing condemnation, the White House orchestrated a spin campaign. An article in Harpers Magazine in February 1947 put the case that dropping the bombs was the “least abhorrent choice” and that doing so had ended the war and saved a million American lives. This became the accepted truth.
During his research Ham spent time at the Harry S. Truman library, where the Americans were happy to let him roam free through the archives, even giving him a grant so he could do so. He describes the thrill of finding a document previously unused in any history, such as one from then Secretary of State Joe Byrnes from the Potsdam Declaration in which the US, Britain and China call on Japan to surrender. Russia should have been included but its name had been crossed out by Byrnes on a draft of the agreement, and he had then written in the margin an order for the document to be destroyed. Someone, possibly with one eye on history, disobeyed.
In reading Hiroshima Nagasaki, Ham’s distaste for the use of the bomb is obvious. In an early chapter he writes of the Interim Committee convened by war secretary Stimson to advise the President on the future use of nuclear weapons: “Not one of the committee men raised the ethical moral or religious case against the use of an atomic bomb without warning on an undefended city. Total war had debased everyone involved.” But while talking to him it becomes clear he finds just as repugnant the policy used by all sides in World War II of targeting civilians by bombing cities. It was a strategy proposed by Italian general Giulio Douhet and first used by the Germans in the Spanish Civil War, then continued in the Blitz of London. The Allies responded, culminating in the firebombing of Dresden. In Japan, 66 cities had already been firebombed by the time the A-bombs were dropped. “This wasn’t collateral damage,” Ham says. “Of course in war you get atrocities, but this was a deliberate policy from the top.”
His moral stand does not segue into sympathy for the Japanese. He feels compassion for survivors, some of whom he met and interviewed which adds another, more human, dimension to the story. But he is dismissive of Japan’s claims to victimhood. Its barbaric treatment of Allied prisoners of war and the people of conquered lands do not allow it to claim that status.
Ham never set out to be a military historian. After completing school in Sydney he did a degree in English literature then worked as a journalist in Australia and England, where he completed a masters degree in economic history. “I was interested in how economic factors had a role in the starting of wars,” he says.
But he was not unfamiliar with the military. While at school in Sydney he was a member of the cadets, which held an annual visit to the Kokoda Track. Ham never made the trip, only completing it later while researching his book, Kokoda, but the seed of curiosity was sown. The rest is history.
Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham, HarperCollins, $55. Special reader offer $35.95 from The News Shop, 31 Waymouth St, city.
Hiroshima Poetry, Prose and Art
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Hiroshima
