The Real Reason America Used Nukes Against Japan

[Jim Lane]

10. The single most damning argument is: Wait a week.

Under a secret provision of the Yalta agreement, the USSR agreed to enter the war against Japan three months after V-E Day. Therefore, the American government knew of the impending Soviet action, but Japan did not.

There was no military downside to delaying the atomic bombing while waiting to see the effect of the Soviet declaration of war. The invasion of the Japanese home islands was not imminent -- the target date was November 1, 1945.

I haven't read Gar Alperovitz's more recent work. I read his earlier book, Atomic Diplomacy, which documents that American policymakers were already looking ahead to a postwar world in which the USA and the USSR would be the dominant powers and would be rivals. The bomb was seen as an important basis of American leverage in that struggle. They were aware of the Yalta timetable, however. Their view was that if the war ended before the bomb was dropped, then the bomb, never having been demonstrated on a real city, would be of less value diplomatically.

In other words, the motivation for the Hiroshima attack was not the fear that Japan would not surrender otherwise. It was the fear that Japan would surrender.