This page contains some random information to serve as a kind of “raw material” for online discussions. My initial motivation for creating a page like this is related to The History Channel programs and online forums.

Make sure you visit "The Myths of Pearl Harbor" site.

The Pacific War Toll. (data not on all participants)

Japanese Total Military Dead: -----------1, 740, 955 (in all wars 1937-41)
Of which Imperial Army against US Forces: 485, 717
Imperial Navy : -----------------------------414, 879
(official Japanese Government data; all causes of death are included in the numbers.)

Japanese civilian deaths came mainly since March 1945 because of American saturation bombing with incendiaries.
Tokyo: ---------97, 031
Hiroshima: ----140, 000
Nagasaki: ------70, 000
63 other cities: -86, 336
Total: ---------400, 000+ (conservative estimates)

Total US Military Casualties in the Pacific Theater.
Total deaths (all causes): 100, 997
Total casualties: ---------291, 543

Over a half of all US losses occurred between July 1944 and July 1945.
Source: p. 297-299, John W. Dower, War Without Mercy. 1987.

Soviet losses in the Manchurian Strategic Offensive, August 9 to September 2 1945.
Total deaths (all causes): 12, 031
Total wounded: ---------24, 425

Source: G. F. Krivosheev, 2001. Available online at www.soldat.ru

All the following excerpts are taken from the following book:
The following is an article from a book called "Hiroshima: In History and Memory" edited by Michael J. Hogan. 1996.

Excerpts from “Hiroshima in History and Memory: An Introduction,” by Michael J. Hogan.

“The study of memory, as a form of scholarship, emerged in the 1980's as part of the new cultural history. The emphasis was often on the social construction of memory, particularly on efforts by the state and powerful political groups to forge historical traditions that could serve their interests. According to Michel Foucault, historical memories are constantly refashioned to suit present purposes. They are also socially acquired and collective. Individual memories gradually fold together into a collective memory of the group. Embedded in the social fabric, they become idealized memories and their ability to survive in the face of alternative memories, or countermemories, depends on the power of the group that holds them. Seen in this light, history and memory are in a fundamental state of tension. History is ‘an intellectual and secular production’ that subjects the past to critical scrutiny, whereas memory, as Pierre Nora explains, “installs remembrance with the sacred.” Whereas history is objective, memory is subjective, selective, and present minded.”
(Hogan 4)

“Initially, at least, most scholars agreed with former president Harry S. Truman and other policymakers, who explained the decision to use the bomb as the best way to end the war quickly, avoid an invasion of Japan, and save thousands of American and Japanese lives. Gar Alperovitz challenged this view in Atomic Diplomacy, a brilliantly provocative book published in 1965. According to Alperovitz, American decision makers were aware of alternative strategies for ending the war without dropping the atomic bombs or launching a bloody invasion. They ruled out these alternatives, however, relied instead on the atomic bomb, and did so less for military than political reasons - namely, to preclude Soviet entry into the war against Japan and to give the Truman administration the military leverage it needed to deal successfully with the Soviet Union on postwar issues. The bomb, Alperovitz concluded, made Truman and other American leaders more aggressive negotiators. It gave them the confidence to reverse earlier understandings with the Soviet Union and contributed to the origins of the Cold War.
With Alperovitz’s book, scholarship on the atomic bombing of Japan would never be the same again. Although a later generation of historians would not go as far as Alperovitz, they were ready to concede that political considerations played an important part in the way American leaders thought about the bomb. They raised doubts about the number of lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan and about whether the atomic bombing was the only other way to end the war.”
(Hogan 5)

Excerpts from “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update” by J. Samuel Walker.

“One such question was whether the bomb was necessary to save large numbers of American lives. Although several writers had addressed this matter by suggesting that the war could have ended and the loss of life been averted without the bomb, new sources indicated that even in the worse case U.S. casualties would have been far fewer than former policymakers asserted after the war. In explaining why the United States had dropped the bomb, Truman, Stimson, and others argued that an invasion of the Japanese islands could have caused half a million American deaths, one million American casualties, or some other appalling figure (the number varied from person to person and time to time). But Rufus E. Miles, Jr., pointed out in an article published in 1985 that during the war, military planners never projected casualty figures that were even close to those cited by Truman and his advisers after the war. Even in the unlikely even than an invasion had been necessary, the pre-surrender estimates did not exceed twenty thousand. Barton J. Bernstein, drawing on newly opened records, found the worst-case prediction to be a loss of forty-six thousand lives, still far short of the policymakers’ claims. ‘The myth of the 500,000 American lives saved,’ he concluded, ‘thus seems to have no basis in fact. More recently, John Ray Skates, writing on plans for the invasion of Japan, offered the same view. ‘The record,’ he observed, ‘does not support the postwar claims of huge Allied casualties to be suffered in the invasion of Japan.”
(Walker 22)

“The sparing of forty-six thousand or twenty thousand or many fewer lives might well have provided ample justification for using the bomb, but Truman and other high-level officials did not choose to make a case on those grounds. Indeed, as James G. Hershberg and Bernstein demonstrated, former government authorities consciously and artfully constructed the history of the decision to discourage questions about it. The leader in this efforts was James B. Conant, of of key scientific administrators of the Manhattan Project, who persuaded Stimson to write an article explaining and justifying the use of the bomb as a way of heading off criticism of Truman’s action. Stimson’s articles, which appeared in Harper’s in 1947, suggested that the atomic attacks had prevented one million American casualties - a number that formed the basis of others’ claims of U.S. lives saved by the bomb.”
(Walker 23-24)

Original Notes/Sources:
Rufus E. Miles, Jr., “Hiroshima: The Strange Myth of Half a Million American Lives Saved,” International Security 10 (Fall 1985): 121-40; Barton J. Bernstein, “A Post-war Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42 (June/July) 1986): 38-40; John Ray Skates, “The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb” (Columbia, SC, 1994) In brief discussions of the same issue, Martin J. Sherwin, and Michael S. Sherry offered support for the view set forth by Miles, Bernstein, and Skates. See Sherwin, “A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race,” rev. ed. (New York, 1987); and Sherry, “The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon” (New Haven, 1987).

Edward J. Drea challenged the much lower estimates of Allied casualties in a brief discussion of the issue in his book “MacArthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, 1992). He based his arguments on a letter that Truman sent in early 1953 to historians writing an official account of the role of the air force in the Pacific war. Drea suggested that a rapid Japanese build up of forces on Kyushu so alarmed General Marshall that he told Truman at Potsdam that the invasion of Kyushu and later of Honshu would cost 250,000 to 1,000,000 American casualties. Robert H. Ferrell used this information to support his argument that Truman had received very large casualty projections before the bomb was dropped. In Ferrell’s view, Truman “faced the dreadful choice of ordering the army and navy into an invasion of the home islands, with untold numbers of casualties, or ending the war as soon as possible” by using the bomb. See Ferrell, “Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia, MO, 1994). But Truman’s claim of hearing estimates of such large numbers from Marshall is very dubious. Bernstein has shown that the meeting at which Marshall supposedly gave the high estimates to Truman almost certainly never took place. The upper end of the casualty projections was a creation of White House staff officials, who wished to bring Truman’s estimates into line with those published early by Stimson. See Bernstein, “Writing, Righting, or Wronging the Historical Record: President Trumans’s Letter on His Atomic-Bomb Decision,” Diplomatic History 16 (Winter 1992): 163-73. To date, no contemporaneous evidence has been found to support estimates of deaths or casualties from an invasion in the range claimed by Stimson, Truman, and others after the war.”
(Walker 23)

“Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it. Furthermore, most scholars, at least in retrospect, regard an invasion as a remote possibility. Whether the bomb shortened the war and saved lives among those who were fighting in the Pacific is much more difficult to ascertain. Some analysts have argued that the war would have ended just as soon, or even sooner, if American leaders had pursued available alternatives, but this is speculative and a matter of continuing debate. It is certain that the hoary claim that the bomb prevented a half million or more American combat deaths cannot be supported with available evidence. The issue of whether the use of the bomb was justified if it spared far fewer American lives belongs more in the realm of philosophy than history. But there are tantalizing hints that Truman had some unacknowledged doubts about the morality of his decision.”
(Walker 32)

As the debate over the decision to drop the bomb continues, several issues merit more attention than they have received. One concerns the meaning of the test explosion of the first nuclear device (it was not, strictly speaking, a bomb) at Alamogordo. The consequences of the Trinity shot in symbolic and scientific terms is clear enough, but its significance for policy is less so. The test was made to prove the design of a weapon fueled with plutonium and detonated by an intricate system of implosion, which was one of two different bombs being built in Los Alamos. The effectiveness of this method was in doubt until the experimental explosion lighted the New Mexico sky. But the atomic scientists were much more certain that the other design, a gun-type method in which one subcritical mass of highly enriched uranium-235 was fired at another, would succeed. Groves told Truman in their first meeting about the Manhattan Project in April 1945 that the uranium bomb would be ready without requiring a test around 1 August, and despite some qualms, scientists remained confident that it would have little awareness that two types of bombs were being built. Even Stimson, the best-informed and most reflective senior official on matters regarding the bomb, appeared to think in terms of a single weapon that had to be tested at Alamogordo.29 The issue is not one of transcending importance, but it could help to clarify the significance that Truman and his advisers attached to the bomb and its role in their planning. It might in that way resolve some of the contradictions and apparent confusion in Truman's diary.

Original Notes/Sources:
30 William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man behind the Bomb (New York, 1992). Alice Kiraball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945-1947 (Chicago, 1965), portrayed the views of dissenting scientists sympathetically. Brian Loring Villa chided them for waiting too long to try to register their doubts about using the bomb with policymakers. See "A Confusion of Signals: James Franck, the Chicago Scientists, and Early Efforts to Stop the Bomb," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 31 (December 1975): 36-43. (Walker 33-34)

Another subject that could benefit from further study is the role of scientists in the Manhattan Project. The ideas and activities of the atomic scientists, individually and corporately, have hardly suffered from neglect. Several scholars offered detailed accounts, particularly of the dissenting opinions of some of the Chicago scientists who wanted alternatives to the bomb explored and an approach to the Soviets seriously considered. William Lanouette provided a portrait of, arguably, the most engaging and eccentric of the atomic scientists, Leo Szilard, who was particularly outspoken in presenting his own ideas. The concerns of the scientists had no discernible impact on policy, which has led some scholars to reproach policymakers for failing to heed the warnings of the experts and others to chide the scientists for failing to press their views more effectively.30
Richard Rhodes, Peter Wyden, and Joseph Rotblat, a scientist
who left Los Alamos in 1944 after learning that Nazi Germany had no atomic bomb, critically scrutinized the activities of the atomic scientists and raised, implicitly and explicitly, a number of difficult but important questions. What were the motivations of atomic scientists in building the bomb? Was their quest to prove their theories about the atom socially and politically irresponsible? Did they fail to provide moral leadership commensurate with their scientific leadership? What precisely was the relationship between the policies being framed in Washington and the process of building the bomb in Los Alamos? What, if any, were the political and moral obligations of the scientists involved in the bomb project? Were atomic scientists sedated by an assumption that their spokesmen or political leaders would have the foresight, wisdom, and power to control atomic energy once it became a reality?31

Original Notes/Sources
31 Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb; Wyden, Day One; and Joseph Rotblat, "Leaving the Bomb Project," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 41 (August 1985): 16— 19. For other useful discussions of the views of scientists see Martin J. Sherwin, "How Well They Meant," Victor F. Weisskopf, "Looking Back on Los Alamos," Robert R. Wilson, "Niels Bohr and the Young Scientists," and Rudolf Peierls, "Reflections of a British Participant," in ibid., 9-15, 20-9.
(Walker 35-36)

“Since the United States did not drop the bomb to save hundreds of thousands of American lives, as policymakers later claimed, the key question and the source of most of the historiographical debate is why the bomb was used. No scholar of the subject accepts in unadulterated form Alperovitz’s argument that political considerations dictated the decision. But nearly all students of the events leading to Hiroshima agree that, in addition to viewing it as the means to end the war quickly, the political implications of the bomb figured in the administration’s deliberations. The consensus of the mid-1970's, which held that the bomb was used primarily for military reasons and secondarily for diplomatic ones, continues to prevail. It has been challenged and reassessed in some of its specific points. But the central theme in the consensus that has existed for the past two decades - that U.S. officials always assumed that the bomb would be used and saw no reason not to use it once it became available - remains intact. There were no moral, military, diplomatic, or bureaucratic considerations that carried enough weight to deter dropping the bomb and gaining its projected military and diplomatic benefits.”
(Walker 32)

Excerpts from “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory” by Barton J. Bernstein.

Few events in modern American history have attracted as much attention, and provoked as much dispute, as the use of the atomic bomb. The analysis of the use of that weapon has had a curious, and often polemical, history.2 One school ("orthodox") stresses that the atomic bombing was necessary, that the bomb saved many American lives (possibly a quarter million or more), and that not using it would have been unconscionable. Another school ("revisionist") argues that the atomic bombing was unnecessary, that American leaders knew that Japan was near defeat and hence near surrender, and that the bomb was used for an ulterior purpose. In this framework, the motive of intimidating the Soviet Union is usually cited as primary, though sometimes analysts define it as secondary but essential, and occasionally historians also stress bureaucratic interests as playing a controlling role in the decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan. By implication, and often by assertion, the revisionists are quite sure that the war against Japan could have been ended without the bomb, that ulterior motives blocked other approaches, and that the use of the bomb was clearly immoral.3
Between these two schools, a third has emerged, employing parts of the revisionist and orthodox analyses to conclude in a new synthesis: that the A-bomb was conceived as a legitimate weapon to be used against the enemy; that this assumption under President Franklin D. Roosevelt went largely unexamined and unchallenged; that Truman comfortably inherited this assumption, and that it also fit his inclinations and desires; and that the combat use of the bomb on Japan even came to seem both necessary and desirable. For President Harry S. Truman, the bomb could help end the war on American terms, possibly avoid the dreaded invasions, punish the Japanese for Pearl Harbor and their mistreatment of POWs, conform to the desires of the American people, and also intimidate the Soviets, perhaps making them tractable in Eastern Europe.
According to this formulation, the atomic bomb might well have been used against Japan on the same days, in the same ways, even if the Bolshevik Revolution had never occurred and the Soviet Union had not existed. But the prospect of intimidating the Soviet Union added another reason, a kind of bonus, or what some would call overdetermination. In turn, the prospects of this bonus may have blocked some policymakers from reconsidering in July or early August the use of the atomic bomb; but there is no reason to conclude that such a reconsideration — had it occurred — would have produced a different policy. In short, the combat use of the A-bomb was, unfortunately, virtually inevitable. Truman's commitment to its use was, basically, the implementation of the assumption that he had inherited.4

Original Notes/Sources
2 Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bomb and American Foreign Policy, 1941-1945: An Historiographical Controversy," Peace and Change 3 (Spring 1974): 1—14; idem, "The Struggle over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative," in Judgment at the Smithsonian, ed. Philip Nobile (New York, 1995); J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update," in this volume.
3 For a recent brief statement of these positions see Gar Alperovitz and Robert Messer, "Marshall, Truman, and the Decision to Drop the Bomb," International Security 16 (Winter 1991/92): 204-14.
4 See Barton J. Bernstein, "Roosevelt, Truman, and the Atomic Bomb, 1941-1945: A Reinterpretation," Political Science Quarterly 90 (Spring 1975): 23—69; and Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1975).
(Bernstein 40-41)

“In 1946, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded (in an often-quoted sentence), ‘it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered 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.’ Those who have relied heavily on this report have usually overlooked its slight hedge (‘in all probability’) and also some very disconcerting contrary evidence.”
(Bernstein 66)

“By mid 1945, largely because of American naval operations, Japan’s merchant fleet had been reduced to about 10 percent of its prewar size, its oil supplies cut to under 3 percent of the prewar peak, most imports of foodstuffs, oil, and other materials blocked, and Japan’s economy was in shambles. Food supplies had perilously dwindled, with sharp cuts in food rations in 1944 and again in 1945. The 1945 rice crop had been a disaster, and imports were virtually impossible. In June 1945, a then-secret Japanese analysis for the cabinet warned, ‘The food situation has grown worse and a crisis will be reached at the end of this year. The people will have to get along on an absolute minimum of rice and salt required for subsistence.’
That bleak and rather accurate estimate was, of course, not available to American leaders. During the last months of war, Marshall’s plans for the invasion, endorsed by Truman and his other military advisers, had easily triumphed. None ever argued in the summer for a prolonged blockade and no invasion in late 1945 or even early 1946. Truman, despite his uneasiness in mid-June 1945 about the invasion plan, was easily diverted from seriously considering postponement of the invasion and trying to ‘starve out’ the Japanese in order to save American lives. Had he received different counsel from his military advisers, or had they split in June 1945 as they had at times in 1944, the president might have dwelled on the siege strategy of blockade and bombing without invasion. Still, such a strategy would have easily included for him, and for his advisers, the use of the atomic bomb.
The siege strategy (without the A-bomb) might have produced the desired Japanese surrender by 1 November. The probabilities are not very high (maybe 25-30 percent), because the crucial problems, in this counterfactual history, are whether the peace forces would have pushed ardently for surrender, whether the emperor would have intervened if his government had been divided, whether the militarists would have yielded to his sense of necessity, and whether the government would have accepted defeat and moved to surrender. That process would have involved many contingencies and have required the Japanese government to deal directly with the United States.”
(Bernstein 68-69)

“On 9 August 1945, three days after the Hiroshima bomb, in implementing the orders to use bombs ‘as made ready,’ the air force dropped the second atomic bomb, killing about thirty-five to eighty thousand at Nagasaki. This bomb was almost definitely unnecessary. Without that bombing, Japan would have surrendered - very probably on the 10th. Amid the continuing blockade and the heavy conventional bombing, the powerful hammerlike blows of the Hiroshima weapon on the 6th and Soviet entry on the 8th had emboldened the peace forces in the Japanese government to try to end the war with only the single condition of the guarantee of the emperor. The day before the Nagasaki bombing, the emperor had agreed to intervene in deliberations, if necessary, to end the war with that one condition. ‘We must put an end to the war as speedily as possible,’ he had instructed the Lord Privy Seal Koichi Kido. Undoubtedly, Hirohito would have intervened without the Nagasaki bombing to plead, successfully, for Japan’s surrender.”
(Bernstein 70-71)

What was the effect of Soviet entry on the Japanese government?
“...the Soviet attack smashed many lingering hopes in the cabinet that had allowed the peace forces to dawdle until the 8th and 9th.”
(Bernstein 71)

Why was the second (plutonium) bomb dropped so promptly?
“The bomb’s use was automatic - not because some wanted to test this kind of bomb on a city but because no one had seen any reason to delay it. No one had foreseen the great psychological impact of the first bomb on Japan, and there was no available evidence, beyond the inner circles of Japan’s government, that the peace forces had been galvanized toward action even before the Nagasaki bomb.”
(Bernstein 72)

“In Washington, because no one had foreseen such an early Japanese surrender, no one had suggested delaying before using a second atomic bomb. Even after the Hiroshima bomb, top officials in Washington were unsure how long the war might continue and thus whether to risk cutting back miliary procurement contracts.”
(Bernstein 71)

“On the 9th, recording his own uncertainty, Stimson wrote in his diary, ‘the bomb and the entrance of the Russians into the war will certainly have an effect on hastening the victory. But just how much that effect is on how long and how many men we will have to keep to accomplish that victory, it is impossible to determine.’”
(Bernstein 71)

“Truman’s administration was unprepared for Japan’s peace offer on 10 August. Policymakers had not expected such a speedy response, nor had they even hoped for it. So little did Stimson anticipate that anything significant was likely to happen that week that he was actually leaving for a much-needed vacation when Japan’s message arrived. He dashed to the White House to join the important discussion on whether the air force should continue its conventional bombing and use more atomic bombs.”
(Bernstein 73)

Truman’s morality: A-bomb vs Conventional Bombing.
“That day [Mikael: August 10], Truman sharply redefined his policy on the atomic bomb. No longer would its use be automatic. He actually wanted to avoid dropping another one. As he told his cabinet (in Henry Wallace’s words): ‘The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing ‘all those kids.’ For the first time, Truman admitted that the A-bombs had killed many innocent noncombatants. But Truman chose to continue the heavy conventional bombing of Japanese cities, which would kill thousands of others.”
(Bernstein 73)

When did the conventional bombing cease?
“Perhaps at least twenty thousand died in those conventional attacks during the last week of the Pacific war. Some, indeed, even died on 14 August, when American bombers, in their largest attack of the Pacific war, pummeled Japan, sometimes dropping their deadly cargo even after Japan had publicly accepted Washington’s terms for surrender.”
(Bernstein 76)