The A-Bomb Challenged

This research negates the widely held view that the U.S. was justified in dropping the A-bombs during WWII in order to save the lives of American soldiers:

…in his new book, “Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan” (Harvard University Press), Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presents a broader view that the New York Times has called “a brilliant and definitive study of American, Soviet, and Japanese records of the last weeks of the war.” Examining in detail the deliberations of the Japanese leadership immersed in squabbling over how to end the war with the emperor system intact, Hasegawa claims the bombs were not the most decisive factor in Japan’s decision to end the war. Only when the Soviets, jockeying with the United States for post-war influence in Asia, declared war and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria did the Japanese leadership capitulate to prevent falling under Soviet dominance.

I remember back in middle school and high school we used to debate whether the U.S. was justified in using the Bomb on Japan. During these debates, the final word would always be something like “It was justified because it saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers”. If the main reason for the Japanese surrendering was because of their fear of being dominated by the Russians, then this argument loses a lot of its validity.
Nonetheless, I have a suspicion that the textbooks won?t be revised to reflect this view any time soon, and if it does, it will get a small paragraph like the one that mentioned the internment of Japanese-American citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Read the rest of the story here (via UCSB news).