Stimson’s role was to “silence the chatterers” – the scientists, journalists, and clerics whose shrill denunciations of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had put the White House in the witness box. Their case gathered momentum in 1946: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, for example, published on May 1 the Franck Committee’s report opposing the bomb, which the influential radio broadcaster Raymond Swing gave national airplay.
Albert Einstein, in a front-page article in the New York Times, “deplored” the use of the weapon. John Hersey’s article Hiroshima – which occupied an entire issue of The New Yorker (on August 31) – showed Americans what it meant to experience a nuclear attack through the lives of six survivors, and had a huge impact on perceptions of the nuclear weapons (notwithstanding the reporter Mary McCarthy’s demolition of Hersey’s article as a “human interest story” that treated the bomb as an earthquake or other natural disaster and failed to consider why it was used, who was responsible, and whether it had been necessary).
Prominent official voices joined the backlash. In 1945, Truman extended the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) to the Pacific, in order to record the effectiveness of the air war over Japan. Its findings, which appeared in July 1946, diametrically opposed Truman’s case for the bombs. The USSBS argued that the weapons were unnecessary and that Japan had been effectively defeated long before their use.
That much the military commanders already knew. But the study went further, speculating that Japan would have surrendered “certainly prior to December 1, 1945, and in all probability, prior to November 1, 1945 ... even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” This seems unlikely. Tokyo refused to yield, and the Russian invasion played a decisive role in Japan’s surrender. The USSBS’s conclusions have been heavily criticized. At the time, however, the report certainly added to the growing unease over nuclear weapons.
Washington insiders, chiefly Conant, were concerned about the cumulative effect of these voices, and he proposed a reply. The result was a long article, in Stimson’s name, sourced to a memorandum from his assistant, Harvey Bundy, and written largely by Bundy’s precociously clever son, McGeorge. Groves, Conant, and several senior officials edited the draft.
The article first appeared in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s Magazine, then reappeared in major newspapers and magazines, and was aired on mainstream radio. It purported to be a straight statement of the facts, and quickly gained legitimacy as the official case for the weapon.
The Harper’s article reinforced in the American mind the idea that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands of American lives by preventing an invasion of Japan. The article’s central plank was that America had had no choice. There was no other way to force the Japanese to surrender than to drop atomic weapons on them. By this argument, the atomic bombings were not only a patriotic duty, but also a moral expedient: