LeMay’s legacy was further tainted by his statement during the Vietnam War about bombing the enemy back to the Stone Age. Times had changed, and such remarks, celebrated during WWII, were less acceptable to the majority of Americans. The man many call the architect of the Vietnam War, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, worked for LeMay during the WWII firebombing campaign. McNamara went on to order the use of napalm in Vietnam as Secretary of Defense.
Why Not Kyoto?
UNDERSTANDING WHY KYOTO WAS not bombed during World War II is based in large part on the debates among senior leaders in Washington, recorded by Secretary of War Henry Stimson in his diaries. You can read Stimson’s diaries, written in his cramped handwriting, in the Yale University library.
Spared conventional bombing throughout the conflict, Kyoto was on the shortlist of targets for nuclear destruction. Consideration was based primarily on Kyoto’s value as an untouched site, to allow a full evaluation of the Bomb’s potential.
Stimson was no pacifist; when the Bomb was ready, he was very much in favor of using it. But he argued to President Truman against bombing Kyoto, a site of global cultural significance. Destroying the city, particularly after it had been ignored during the previous years of fighting, and destroying it with an atomic weapon, would influence world opinion against the U.S. after the war, as if the Nazis had dynamited the Louvre and burned the Mona Lisa on their way out of Paris. Stimson had been Governor-General of the Philippines in the 1920s and spent his honeymoon in Kyoto, so he knew the place better than most inside the government. If he’d honeymooned in Hiroshima instead, who knows how the end of the war might have gone.
Japanese Children’s Evacuation
EICHI NAKAGAWA’S EVACUATION DEEP into the countryside is based on historical fact. The details in Eichi’s story are derived primarily from personal interviews I conducted with now quite elderly Japanese who were sent away as children for their safety.
The government sponsored the movement of 350,000 elementary school boys and girls from a dozen cities into the countryside. Another 100,000 more were moved out of urban areas in March 1945. Some 300,000 children were relocated by their parents independently. For many children, it was an odd way to spend a war they only later learned in detail had been so tragic and devastating.
Food Shortages in Japan
THE ISSUE OF FOOD shortages among the Japanese population in the late-war period has received less emphasis in western scholarship than it deserves. Japanese historians, however, are clear on the impact hunger made on the nation’s civilians.
A series of factors created the food crisis, including the American navy sinking or blockading supplies to Japan from its conquered territories, the lack of human capital to grow food as men disappeared into the armed forces, the diversion of foodstuffs to the military, and the havoc American air power wreaked on Japanese transportation infrastructure. The latter point was particularly important; Tokyo brought in 97 percent of its rice from outside the city.
Urban populations turned to a flourishing black market run by crime syndicates, the yakuza. The authorities, desperate to see the food shortages dealt with, turned a blind eye.
As the American occupation began, some 25 percent of the Japanese population suffered from serious nutritional deficiencies. The situation grew desperate enough that 150,000 people demonstrated in front of the Imperial Palace demanding food. Outright famine was avoided only after MacArthur, then ruling Japan as head of the occupation (the Japanese called him Shogun, after the samurai leaders), ordered thousands of tons of food to be imported. He reportedly sent word back to Washington to “send me more food, or send me more bullets.”
The Debate Over the Bomb
THE DEBATE OVER WHETHER the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only alternative to a land invasion of Japan is one of the most contested among modern historians.
The dominant narrative in the United States is the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a smaller price to pay than the greater loss of life anticipated under an invasion; in a grim calculus, the bombings were practically an act of humanity. Included in this view is that those killed were mostly Japanese anyway, while an invasion would have taken many American lives. The debate is framed as black or white, invasion or bomb.
The “we had no choice but to use the Bomb” argument is most strongly presented in Paul Fussell’s (in)famous essay, Thank God for the Atom Bomb. His premise is that absent those horrific shocks, Japan would have never agreed to surrender without a bloody invasion. And indeed the Bombs were dropped, and Japan surrendered. War is hell, and bigger bombs just made the work go faster, Fussell believed, stating matter-of-factly the U.S. had crossed any lines of morality anyway a long time prior. Himself scheduled to be in the invading force, Fussell, like every young man facing his own death, thought back then, damn straight, use the bigger bombs, and thank God we have ’em. I personally heard Howard Baker, a gentle and educated man, then U.S. Ambassador to Japan, make similar statements. Baker was assigned to pilot a landing craft in the invasion of Japan. Such reactions are understandable, even predictable, a survivor’s quest for personal significance in what may otherwise be psychologically unprocessable.
There are tag-along arguments, all with at least some truth in them. One is the use of the Bomb was the end process of a technological roller coaster; it was built at great cost (the uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for example, used more electrical power in 1945 than all of Canada) and had to be used to justify that. Another is that the Bomb needed to be tested in combat ahead of the next war. Revenge for Pearl Harbor and racism (“dirty Japs”) are also claimed by some as reasons. Some in the military argued in favor of destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples to the Russians of our atomic prowess. The war with Japan was almost over one way or another, and the Pentagon was thinking ahead to the next one.
Were the Only Choices the Bomb or an Invasion?
BUT WAS THERE A path that bypassed both the atomic bombings and a land invasion?
By summer 1945 Japanese leadership was divided over the best course of action. The loss of Okinawa made clear some version of defeat was inevitable. Despite much overt blustering in front of one’s superiors, often via diplomatic cables that were not a place for contrary opinions, Japan’s military professionals privately knew of both the unprecedented resources America was bringing to bear, and the pitiful reserves available to Japan. They also deeply feared the coming Soviet entry into the war.
The best result all but the most conservative of the Japanese hierarchy hoped for was indeed a peace settlement of some sort. The gap between what the U.S. expected out of an unconditional surrender and what the Japanese realistically hoped for out of a lightly negotiated one was not significant.
As a prelude to negotiations, in June 1945, a month before the Potsdam conference, and within hours of the Japanese commanding general’s death on Okinawa, the Emperor directed the Supreme War Direction Council—his “inner cabinet”—to begin formal peace negotiations, if possible, through the “good offices” of Russia. Such negotiations, it was hoped in Tokyo, might also serve to keep the Russian army away from the Japanese home islands.
Japan wanted most of all to avoid a war crimes trial of the Emperor, fearing his imprisonment or execution. As one historian saw it, in perhaps a slight exaggeration, a public end to the Emperor, held by many in god-like status, would have been equivalent to the crucifixion of Christ.
The overvaluing of the atomic bombs in compelling surrender also overlooks that Japanese fear of the Soviet Union entering the Pacific War. While accepting defeat against the Americans, Japanese political elites did not want to cede large swaths of their northern territory, especially Hokkaido, to the Soviet Union, nor see the Soviets be part of any occupation. Events in Europe as the Red Army rolled toward Berlin were known to the Japanese.
The sequence of events is telling: After the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan on Augu
st 8, and crossed the Manchurian border in force the morning of August 9, followed by the bombing of Nagasaki that same day (the near-simultaneous acts likely fueled Japanese paranoia, though history shows them unrelated.) Conventional bombing of Japan by the 20th U.S. Army Air Force continued for five full days after Nagasaki, until Japan accepted the modified “unconditional” surrender terms allowing it to retain the Emperor as head of state, on August 15.
Throughout the Pacific War the American mantra was Japan would never surrender. Then they did. How things would have played out with a week or two more of skilled diplomacy cannot be known, but it is clear there was a third alternative. To end the war, neither the use of nuclear weapons nor a land invasion of the Japanese mainland, was, at least, a possibility. Had such an option been pursued as aggressively as the martial ones, Lieutenant Hooper’s story would have been different, as perhaps would have our own.
Acknowledgments
YOU WRITE ALONE, BUT you don’t think alone. My thanks to early readers Lisa Ehrle, Joshua Patton, Lyn Liao Butler, Sarah Van Buren, Abigail Van Buren, Japanese language consultant Mari Nakamura, Chris Keelty and the New York Writers Critique Group, proofreader Laurie Russo, as well as Oliver Stone, Tom Englehardt, Jesslyn Radack, Kathleen McClellan, Helen Coster, the 79th Street Workshop, and Jim Hruska and Lisa Finkelstein, who helped me better understand PTSD. Once again my gratitude to the people at Luminis Books, especially Chris Katsaropoulos.
All errors are my own.
The quotation by Randy Brown is from his book, Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire (Middle West Press, 2015), and is used with his permission.
We all owe a great debt to the two greatest anti-war novels ever written, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
About the Author
PETER VAN BUREN is a 24-year veteran of the State Department. He lived in Japan for ten years and speaks Japanese.
Following his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (Metropolitan, 2011), the Department of State began judicial proceedings against Van Buren, falsely claiming he exposed classified material. Through the efforts of the Government Accountability Project and the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State Department on his own terms.
Van Buren’s second book, Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent (Luminis, 2014), traces the rise of the working poor and the destruction of the middle class. The novel tells the story of one Midwestern blue collar family across three generations.
Peter’s commentary has been featured in The New York Times, Reuters, Salon, NPR, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, The Nation, TomDispatch.com, Antiwar.com, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, MichaelMoore.com, Le Monde, Asia Times, The Guardian, and others. He has appeared on the BBC, All Things Considered and Fresh Air, Fox News, VICE, Japanese NHK, Democracy Now!, Voice of America, and more.
Follow Peter @wemeantwell and at www.wemeantwell.com
Praise for Peter Van Buren’s Ghosts of Tom Joad:
“Politicians come and go, but the critical issues tearing at our society do not. In his new book Ghosts of Tom Joad, Van Buren turns to the larger themes of social justice and equality, and asks uncomfortable questions about where we are headed. He is no stranger to speaking truth to power, and the critical importance of doing that in a democracy cannot be overestimated. Standing up and saying ‘This is wrong’ is the basis of a free society. The act of doing so must be often practiced, and regularly tested.”
—Daniel Ellsberg, whistleblower, The Pentagon Papers
“A lyrical, and deeply reported look at America’s decline from the bottom up. Though a work of fiction, Ghosts of Tom Joad is—sadly, and importantly—based on absolute fact. Buy it, read it, think about it.”
—Janet Reitman, contributing editor, Rolling Stone, author of Inside Scientology: the Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion
“At the State Department Peter Van Buren was a pioneer blowing the whistle in defense of human rights by challenging torture. In this novel, he blows the whistle in defense of America’s roots by challenging the dehumanizing consequences when big business abandoned the Rust Belt in Ohio. This tale of a mythical Earl’s relentless quest for an American dream that has become a mirage is worthy of the voices that inspired it, from Woody Guthrie to John Steinbeck to Bruce Springsteen.”
—Tom Devine, Legal Director, Government Accountability Project
“Van Buren is passionate about the truth, and his new book Ghosts of Tom Joad is a masterpiece, a must-read about the decline of our economy and social structure, an inspirational story showing how one man and one nation can claw its way back to greatness.”
—Kathryn Milofsky, Producer Reporter ITV (UK) / Executive Producer of “The Brian Oxman Show” (US)
“A twenty-first century Grapes of Wrath, this memorable volume documents in a concrete, personal, often moving way the despair among many in America today due to economic and family hardships. In the words of its fictional but all too real narrator—Earl, from a rust-belt small Ohio town, unable get a permanent job or start a family—‘they took away the factory, but left the people; this ain’t a story, it’s an autopsy.’”
—John H. Brown, Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies, Georgetown University
“In Peter Van Buren’s Ghosts of Tom Joad, things do not always look better in the morning. In this autopsy of the new depression, you turn a page and keep reading, hoping the story’s left-behind people catch up … because one way or another, they’re us.”
—Diplopundit
“In Ghosts of Tom Joad, Peter Van Buren invokes his powerful storytelling gifts to portray a job-starved Ohio community. This gripping, contemporary novel in the tradition of The Grapes of Wrath is more real than real—and a worthy successor to Van Buren’s reporting about Iraq in his courageous We Meant Well.”
—Andrew Kreig, Director, Justice Integrity Project
“Ghosts of Tom Joad is a powerful and provocative tale of the working poor. Although the story is fiction, the themes are anything but. In a lively yet serious manner, Peter Van Buren tackles one of the most important issues of our day—how can a free society deal with the costs associated with creative destruction? Ghosts of Tom Joad is required reading for all concerned with the future of our country.”
—Christopher J. Coyne, F.A. Harper Professor of Economics, George Mason University
“Ghosts of Tom Joad takes a hard, honest look at where millions of Americans are today: living a marginal existence, a no-exit life of grinding poverty. What Peter Van Buren is able to show through his gritty, close-to-the-ground prose, is how capitalism destroys the human spirit, leaving its victims devoid of any purpose in life. Those of us in our sixties and seventies are completely bewildered at where the America of our youth—a very different sort of place from today—went. The answer is contained in the pages of this book: the values of ‘the market’ finally swamped everything else, destroyed any values except those of rapaciousness and self-interest. ‘I think God owes us an apology,’ says the central character of this novel. No, I’d reply; but America certainly does.”
—Morris Berman, historian and author of The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire and Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline
“I can’t tell you what an impact this book had on me. The writing is beautiful, but the story is brutal. I grew up in and around these places, and to say it is grim is an understatement. Ghosts captures everything—the human complexity and the profound cultural/economic damages. The story stuck with me long after I stopped reading.”
“I grew up and later worked in a ‘Reeve, Ohio.’ While experiencing a visceral recognition, Van Buren’s intimate portrait of this dying town made me feel like a stranger peeking in on places many Americans have no idea exist. I will never again drive by the old manufacturing towns of my youth without wondering about the shadows within, as drawn so me
smerizingly in Van Buren’s relentlessly vivid portrayal. As Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath made a place for the Dust Bowl in our literary canon, Ghosts aims to do the same for the devastating industrial decline of the late-American 20th century.”
—Kelley Vlahos, The American Conservative
“Bottom line: It’s accessible and compelling, a mix of Canterbury Tales meets Grapes of Wrath meets American Beauty.”
—Charlie Sherpa, military blogger, Red Bull Rising
“Have and have-nots have always existed. Ghosts of Tom Joad brings this conflict so often touched upon in literature into a modern day, down-turned economy. Riveted with a bit of nostalgia for the rosier ’70s and ’80s, the story manages to find humor in an otherwise dismal life. When you choose to ride this bus with Earl, you’ll find yourself reminiscing with him, rooting for him, and yearning for the release he strives to find.”
—Lisa Ehrle, Teacher-Librarian, Aurora, Colorado.
“Haunting and a kick in the gut, Peter Van Buren’s first novel, Ghosts of Tom Joad, lays bare the brutal and very personal reality of America’s Great Recession. In his first book, We Meant Well, Peter blew the whistle on the catastrophic effects of American policy in Iraq; now Peter turns his necessary and just attention on the effects of American policy at home. Want to understand the true and honest nature of our modern society and the American way of life? Then read Ghosts of Tom Joad.”
—Matthew Hoh, Peace and Veterans advocate, former Marine
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