Codebreakers Victory (52 page)

The moment had come for Harry Truman to make up his mind about dropping the A-bomb. Churchill later wrote that "the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue." It was also clear that President Roosevelt had had every intention of using it. General Marshall, Admiral King and several other top Allied commanders were in no doubt. Still, as the hour approached, the prospect aroused controversy.

The idea of exploding a bomb in a "non-military demonstration" in order to awe Japanese leaders into surrender was suggested—and rejected. "We could not afford the chance that it might be a dud," explained atomic scientist and Manhattan Project member Arthur H. Compton.

Another idea was to give the Japanese a warning in advance of dropping the bomb on a predesignated area. That, too, was turned down because, as Secretary of State James F. Byrnes put it, "if the Japanese were told that the bomb would be used on a given locality, they might bring our boys who were prisoners of war to that area." Fear of the bomb's failure to explode was also a factor.

Truman had formed an Interim Committee of top government officials and bomb-building scientists to advise him on the use of the bomb. Committee member Harvey H. Bundy expressed a belief held by scientists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer: that it was necessary to employ the bomb in order to assure world peace. "Unless the bomb were used," Bundy said, "it would be impossible to persuade the world that the saving of civilization in the future would depend on a proper international control of atomic energy."

Not all the commanders acquiesced in using the bomb. Eisenhower, judging from afar that the Japanese were on the point of collapse, expressed "grave misgivings" and pled with Truman not to rely on "that awful thing." Chief of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy thought neither the bomb nor an invasion would be necessary: the navy alone could finish off the Japanese will to fight. MacArthur was not consulted in advance, but if he had been, he would no doubt have given the opinion he expressed later that the A-bombing was "completely unnecessary from a military point of view."

As a counter, McCullough has offered one other cogent reason to release the bomb: "How could a President, or the others charged with responsibility for the decision, answer to the American people if when the war was over, after the bloodbath of an invasion of Japan, it became known that a weapon sufficient to end the war had been available by midsummer and was not used?"

All of these ideas revolved in the head of the studious, hardworking American president,, but in the end the main determinant for Truman seems to have been his concern for the lives of American fighting men. That concern grew stronger as decrypts revealed more and more divisions being mobilized on Kyushu. From the original estimates of six combat divisions and two supporting "depot" divisions, the verified number had, by early August, grown to fourteen combat divisions plus below-division-sized units such as mixed brigades, tank regiments and artillery units. Truman
faced the fact that the Japanese military had changed Kyushu into a bristling fortress of death for the invaders and, true to the Bushido spirit, were prepared to sacrifice seventy million civilians rather than surrender.

Not having received any response to the Potsdam Declaration, he ordered the bombing to proceed.

To enable the U.S. to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the decision was to drop the first bomb on a city that had not been previously damaged by air raids. It was also deemed desirable to choose a city reported to be free of Allied prisoners of war. Hiroshima filled the bill. The
Enola Gay
crew dropped "Little Boy" on the city's center on August 6, 1945.

In one blinding moment, some eighty thousand people died, including a small number of American POWs. Thousands more would die from the effects of radiation. More than two-thirds of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed.

When news of the Hiroshima bomb reached MacArthur's headquarters, according to members of his staff, "General MacArthur was livid" and later seemed to be "in a daze." His reaction was understandable: gone were all those visions of leading the greatest amphibious et cetera.

The second bombing was not scheduled until August 11, but the air force command was given leeway for the timing, depending on the weather. When the forecasters predicted bad weather for that day, the mission was moved forward two days. Also, it was supposed to be dropped on the city of Kokura. Finding that city obscured by industrial haze and following orders to bomb only a visual target, the captain of
Bock's Car
dropped the plutonium "Fat Boy" on his alternate choice, the
Madame Butterfly
city of Nagasaki, on August 9. Nearly fifty thousand more people were added to the atomic death toll.

Although none of the other Allied leaders now wanted it to happen, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan on September 8. Russian troops immediately crossed the border into Manchuria to begin pushing back the depleted Japanese defenders.

As to what happened in Japan following the nuclear bombing, the best analysis has been given by Robert J. C. Butow. After the war he went to Japan, interviewed the surviving leaders, read voluminously in the documents and presented his findings in his book
Japan's Decision to Surrender.

The shortened interval between the two bombings, he made clear, was unfortunate. The devastation at Hiroshima was so complete, and reports out of the city were so fragmentary, that the leaders in Tokyo lacked the time to learn what had hit them. The peace faction and the militarists remained deadlocked. The minister of war declared, "It is far too early to say that the war is lost," adding that upon the Allies' invasion, "it is by no means impossible that we may be able to reverse the situation in our favor, pulling victory out of defeat."

As Butow reported, the two factions finally did the unprecedented: on the night of August 10 they stated their cases before the emperor, who was traditionally limited to having only to endorse unanimous decisions. His response was emphatic: "I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer. Ending the war is the only way to restore world peace and to relieve the nation from the terrible distress with which it is burdened."

A reply was quickly drafted and dispatched, accepting the Potsdam ultimatum "with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

To accept this condition outright went against the Allied grain. U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes wrote a reply that stated, "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms." The reply also demanded that the emperor issue orders to the military to cease active operations and stated, "The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people."

In Tokyo, Bymes's reply rekindled the bitter debate between the hawks and the doves. In researching his book
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire,
Richard Frank found that Japanese militarists had argued the war should be continued because the U.S. had no additional atomic weapons. The fierce clash continued until August 14 when, again, the two factions presented their arguments to the emperor. He was no less decisive. Having studied the terms set by the Allies, he said, "I consider the reply acceptable." He also ordered that machinery be set in motion so that he could broadcast the decision to the people. For the first time in history the Japanese nation heard the voice of the emperor himself, proclaiming in a shaking voice that because "the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb," Japan would accept the Allies' peace terms and cease all hostilities.

Despite some violent reactions by a few military extremists, the Japanese war machine was closed down. The transfer of thousands of GIs from the European theater to the Pacific ended. For the codebreakers, Japanese traffic declined to just a few plaintext messages. Nevertheless the Allies stayed on the alert, scarcely daring to believe that the words of one man could bring the Japanese war effort to a complete halt. Bull Halsey warned his ships to maintain a close watch. "Any ex-enemy aircraft attacking the fleet," he signaled, "is to be shot down in a friendly manner."

The stage was set for Douglas MacArthur to make another dramatic landing, this one by plane to an uncertain reception in Japan on August 30. To the great relief of his party, he found the people compliant and their officers polite. Aboard the battleship
Missouri
in Tokyo Bay on September 2, he conducted the peace-signing ceremonies. His brief speech, to which he had given most careful thought, forecast the magnanimity toward the defeated that he would exercise in his control of Japan's postwar recovery. Toshikazu Kase, the American-educated diplomat chosen to give the official report to Emperor Hirohito, described The General as "a man of light." It was, he went on, "a piece of rare good fortune" that "a man of such caliber and character should have been designated as the Supreme Commander" to "shape the destiny of Japan."

Of this glowing report, William Manchester has commented, "MacArthur himself could hardly have improved upon it."

For the Allies, these were the happiest, most celebratory days of the twentieth century. All too soon that relief and joy would end in anger and fear. As early as 1943 the virus of a new conflict had been detected by U.S. codebreakers. Cryptanalysts of the Signal Intelligence Service had begun breaking Soviet codes whose messages revealed the extensive Russian intelligence network operating in Britain, among de Gaulle's Free French, in the Scandinavian countries, in Australia and, most critical of all, in the U.S. The U.S. net was made up of outright agents and Americans enamored of Communism. All through the McCarthy flimflam the genuine news about Russia's secret allies had to remain hidden within what became code-named as the Venona project. The import of the decrypts was chilling. They told of Soviet spies penetrating the Manhattan Project, the Los Alamos test site, the War Department staff, the Office of Strategic Services and the British embassy in Washington. They penetrated past the cover names to identify many of the spies, including Britain's Cambridge moles and such U.S. deniers as Alger Hiss. They traced the flow of vital technological data to Moscow. The Venona secrets remained classified until 1995, after the USSR had crumbled and the Cold War been brought to an end.

In World War II's long aftermath, the predictions of Harvey Bundy, Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists of the Interim Committee have been borne out. Those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are our modem martyrs; the horror of their vanquishing seared into the minds of the world a fear of nuclear war that maintained a fragile, trigger-happy peace all through the militaristic temptations of the Cold War and that has continued its hold down to the present day.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

To review World War II from the perspective of the codebreakers is to wonder at the fragility of the thread that bound their story together. How easily that thread could have broken at any of many places. If the Poles hadn't had the foresight to concentrate the minds of brilliant young mathematicians on the problem . . . if French signals intelligence had been in the hands of a less determined man . . . if a German code worker hadn't picked this moment to sell out his country . . . if the Poles had lacked the initiative at the last hour to pass on their secrets to their allies ... if the Japanese had been able to change over to new naval codes on schedule . . . if one of these or any of the other potential threats had materialized, the thread would have snapped, the story ended.

Because the thread held, Allied commanders at the critical turning points of the war gained the upper hand by securing advance knowledge of their opponents' next moves. The contention here is that this advantage was decisive in producing Allied victory.

Agreement on this point is hardly to be expected.

Harry Hinsley gave a guarded answer: "in attempting that assessment we may at once dismiss the claim that Ultra by itself won the war."

His assertion is, of course, made inarguable by his inclusion of "by itself." Obviously an Alan Turing sitting in a Bletchley Park hut couldn't shoot down Luftwaffe planes or brew up Tiger tanks. Nor could a Joe Rochefort holed up in an Oahu cellar sink the battlewagons of Yamamoto. For the Allies to win demanded that many factors work together, from the Rosie riveters on the home front to the G.I. Joe infantrymen on the firing line. Victory, in Charles Ameringer's words, "would have been impossible without troops and guns and leadership and resolve," but it was Ultra, he added, that determined "the conduct of the war."

That is the point. The codebreakers supplied the information that shaped the strategies. They influenced the decisions of what would be done, and then the men and guns and leadership and resolve
carried out
what these revelations had shown to be the most promising courses of action. Or, as Edward Drea wrote about a U.S. campaign, "American GIs paid in sweat, pain and blood to reap the harvest that intelligence had sown."

D-Day offers a prime example. If Eisenhower had not known that Hitler had been fooled into ordering Rommel to hold his main strength in the Pas de Calais, and if Rommel had been allowed to shift his Fifteenth Army into Normandy, would Ike have tried his tremendously vulnerable five-pronged landings?

From his disclaimer that Ultra did not alone win the war, Hinsley swung to the other pole by asserting that the Normandy invasion "would have been impracticable—or would have failed—without the precise and reliable intelligence provided by Ultra about German strengths and order of battle."

So it was at all the pivotal points of the war: the Allies' superiority in secret intelligence turned the tide of combat.