Not So Moral After All 

The “Oppenheimer” film has reignited debates surrounding the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We sought to examine in-depth one crucial element of this framing: casualty estimations of the invasion of Japan. As the archival data demonstrates, post-war discussions by Truman, Stimson, and others sustained a campaign to inflate the casualty estimates of a US invasion of Japan. 

The military leaders advising Truman after Trinity placed the total casualty numbers in the tens of thousands, not 500,000 or millions. Furthermore, Truman cemented his narrative that he made the fateful “decision” to drop the bombs rather than one of noninterference. While it is impossible to know how many may have actually died, the myth of millions of lives saved continues to shape discussions of the justifications of atomic use. What is the cultural production of the framing of the debates as hundreds of thousands of Americans saved?

The PR campaign by Truman and Stimson of the casualty myth served to cement the United States as a responsible and moral power post-World War II. While having mastered weaponized atomic technology, we only deployed it against our enemies out of a utilitarian calculation of least harm, with deep moral regret. This solidifies the US identity as the moral leader for the world throughout the Cold War and beyond. Claiming to have saved millions of American lives is a linguistic trick to put those both at the time and today arguing against the necessity of the atomic bombings to end the war at an instantaneous disadvantage. Framing the debate in this way makes the answer of “we had to drop the atomic bombs” a foregone conclusion. 

War is always uncertain; but at the time, those that authored Truman’s Strategic Bombing survey deemed the atomic bombings unnecessary. The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated only tens of thousands of casualties and emphasized the necessity of the Soviet invasion to force Japan’s surrender. Nonetheless, discussing these numbers does not take away from the fact that — by some estimates — more than 25 million soldiers and civilians were killed in the Pacific theater alone. Arguments for and against the use of the atomic bombs should continue to recognize the devastation of war on human lives. Indeed, Truman’s post-war inflation of estimated casualties continues to shape debates today, and we hope that this excavation of the existing archival evidence will shift the narrative.