This year marks the 80th anniversary of the indiscriminate massacre caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were carried out by US forces. Both Japan’s domestic and overseas media outlets are actively covering this issue. One such outlet is Le Devoir, a major French-language Canadian newspaper, which recently published a three-part series on the atomic bombings. The first article is titled ‘Was it the atomic bombs that forced Japan to surrender?’, while the second is titled ‘Hiroshima, Nagasaki: when Japan turned from aggressor to victim.’ Both articles focus on the historical context of the atomic bombs. The third article is an interview with Mr. Tanaka Hiromi, representative of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers.
The first two articles introduce the views of three historians. The first is J. Samuel Walker, a former historian at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and author of Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. The second is Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. The third is myself, Yuki Tanaka.
Samuel Walker is regarded as a representative of the many American historians who adhere to the official US government view that ‘the atomic bombing was essential to end the long-lasting and bloody war.’ Conversely, Hasegawa’s book is a meticulous analysis of official documents from the United States and the Soviet Union, which reveals that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war was the most decisive factor in Japan’s surrender. I also share Hasegawa’s view.
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| A distant view of Hiroshima immediatley after the atomic bombing |
When the Le Devoir journalist who wrote this series of articles asked me for an interview, I told her that my views were detailed in my book Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the US–Japan Alliance. She can also find a summary of the book in a paper titled ‘Political Lies Are More Plausible Than Reality: American and Japanese Lies about the Atomic Bombing,’ which I recently published in an English-language online journal. This paper is available at https://apjjf.org/2025/6/Tanaka. I then asked her to read the paper before conducting the interview.
However, from the questions she asked me in her email interview, it became clear that she had not read my article, let alone my book. The only book of mine that she might have read is Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, in which I do not address the issue of the atomic bomb at all. Her questions focused solely on the relationship between the post-war political exploitation of Hirohito’s authority as emperor by the United States, and Japan’s lack of a national sense of responsibility for the war. My responses to these questions are presented in the second article.
However, the two most important issues that I discuss in my recent English book and essay are as follows: (1) The interrelationship between Emperor Hirohito’s (and the Japanese government’s) responsibility for prolonging the war unnecessarily, which resulted in the atomic bombings, and the US’s responsibility for plotting to make Japan induce the atomic bombings for political reasons. (2) The major falsehood created by the United States was that ‘the war could not have ended without the use of atomic bombs,’ while the falsehood created by Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government was that ‘Japan ended the war because of the atomic bombings.’ For the past 80 years, these two nations’ myths, or political lies, have been firmly believed as if they were true, not only by the Japanese and American people, but worldwide. Unfortunately, this issue is not addressed at all in this three-part series published in Le Devoir.
Over the past few years, I have realized that exposing the blatant lies told by both Japan and the United States is no easy task, and ensuring that people around the world are fully aware of the historical facts is even more challenging. As Hannah Arendt said, ‘Political lies sound much more plausible than the truth.’
Le Devoir's three-part series on the atomic bomb issue:
https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/906472/est-ce-bombe-atomique-force-reddition-japon
https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/906478/hiroshima-nagasaki-ou-quand-japon-est-passe-agresseur-victime
https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/906475/ce-j-ai-vu-marque-vie-temoignage-survivant-nagasaki
I tried to explain the above two issues as concisely and clearly as possible in my Zoom lecture for the Modern Japan History Association of the US in April this year. Shortly afterwards, I was honored to receive a message from Professor Ogawa Akira, Head of the Japanese Studies at the University of Melbourne, inviting me to deliver the same lecture via Zoom on Wednesday, 13 August from 12:30 to 13:30 Melbourne time (11:30 to 12:30 Japan time). I am delighted to accept this invitation. This lecture is a joint project between the University of Melbourne and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and it seems that members of the public will also be able to attend for free. However, those who wish to attend must register in advance. If you wish to attend, please click on the ‘Register’ button at the URL below to complete your registration.
With best wishes,
Yuki
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