A Political and Economic History of China Addendum: Critics of the Atomic Bomb, Part 3 of 4

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Photo: Millions dead and more dying from famine in Vietnam and Indonesia, c. August 1945.

6 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs moves on with the deadliest of all alternatives to secure Japan’s surrender in 1945, which ironically critics of the atomic bomb considered the most merciful: naval blockade.

In the last two columns we dispelled myths cited by critics of the atomic bomb that:

1) “Japan was just about to surrender,” and

2) “A conventional invasion and occupation of Japan would have cost fewer lives.”

In this third installment we address what’s probably the most mathematically backwards claim of all made by critics of the atomic bomb:

3) “The use of the atomic bomb created needless death since a naval blockade of Japan would have ended the war in at most a year without bloodshed.”

This is a fantastic myth that alleges there was a painless, casualty-free way to make Japan accept surrender without an invasion or use of the atomic bomb.

The contention is that the U.S. Navy, which the bomb’s critics correctly note enjoyed virtual supremacy on the seas by mid-1945, had already choked oil and food imports from the Japanese home islands. A blockade, they say, would have starved Japan enough that after at most one year the imperial government would have succumbed to economic pressure and surrendered.

There are several reasons this is one of the more absurd claims of bomb critics.

By this point the most obvious problem should be self-evident: the Japanese war cabinet had already demonstrated it didn’t care about the deaths of Japanese civilians. 

We know the “Big Six” cabinet members were willing to sacrifice millions of their own people in a face-saving national martyrdom campaign against conventional Allied invasion. The mobilization of all able-bodied Japanese men, women, and students was named “The Glorious Hundred Million Deaths” campaign.

We know even after hundreds of thousands of Japanese died in the massive 1945 U.S. firebombing campaigns that the war cabinet was unmoved and didn’t consider anything resembling surrender.

We know that after Hiroshima the war cabinet rejected an internal proposal for surrender that wasn’t even really a surrender: allowing the military government to remain in place, keep its conquered territories, prohibit any war crimes trials or any Allied soldiers on Japanese soil, and refusing to allow the Allies to disarm the Japanese military.

In reality a blockade would have lasted several years and hundreds of thousands, more likely millions, of Japanese civilians would have slowly starved to death while the cabinet fretted inside the imperial palace about saving face.

The Japanese government would also have plenty of time to film propaganda footage of civilians reduced to skeletons, curled up in the streets while slowly dying from starvation—a far worse death than vaporizing under an atomic explosion—and today the same critics of the atomic bombings would be accusing Harry Truman of war crimes for “slowly murdering millions of Japanese civilians by famine when the atomic bomb could have ended the war instantly with minimal loss of life.”

The second reason the “blockade is better” argument is horrible is because it would have been the most deadly option globally.

While the allies waited years for a blockade to pressure the imperial government into surrendering, not only would hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of Japanese civilians starve to death, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) would continue killing even larger numbers of civilians in its occupied territories.

Years ago the Economics Correspondent’s back-of-the-napkin research yielded a 1945 estimate that over 100,000 people were dying each month at the hands of occupying Japanese forces, mostly in China. Waiting only a year for a blockade to work would have therefore resulted in about 1.2 million more dead outside of Japan versus ending the war quickly with 150,000 killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, Pacific War historian Jon Parshall has conducted a much more thorough review of Japanese occupied territories in 1945, one that includes other factors the Correspondent missed.

First, by mid-1945 there were already famines raging in Japanese occupied Vietnam and Indonesia. Even if the Allied nations tried to deliver food relief it would have been impossible given the disruptive IJA land presence. 

Japan’s sudden surrender stopped the famines, but not after 1-2 million had already starved to death in Vietnam and 2.5 million more in Indonesia.

Obviously waiting out a blockade would have permitted the famines to continue, killing millions more innocent people.

Also, during a blockade not only would Japanese civilians have starved, but the Allies would have continued their bombing and firebombing campaigns to pressure the Japanese government into giving in.

Parshall crunches the math in multiple war-ending scenarios starting with a baseline of the atomic bombings themselves. 

Atomic bomb: All-in-all, more than 150,000 Japanese died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, from both the initial explosions and lingering radiation effects including cancer. Then the war ended.

Blockade: The numbers balloon appallingly. Several hundred thousand more civilians would continue to die every month in the previously mentioned famines that were already raging in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Chinese civilians and a smaller number of soldiers would also continue dying at a rapid rate each month, plus smaller numbers in Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, parts of Burma, and extreme northern Philippines.

In total, adding Japanese, Allied, and neutral country deaths, Parshall calculates that somewhere between 500,000 to 700,000 people were dying in Asia every month before the atomic bomb was dropped.

Over the fantasy timeline of surrender after just one year, the cruel math works out to anywhere from 6 million to 7.2 million people dying while the world waited for Tokyo to give in. And since that’s based on the actual observed fatality rate in mid-1945, which doesn’t include Japanese starvation numbers under a blockade scenario, the real death toll would be even higher.

On a more realistic timeline, if the blockade took two or three years to produce a surrender, that works out to something between 15 million to 21 million more dead. Admittedly though, by that point there may not have been enough living civilians left in Vietnamese and Indonesian famine zones to starve at the previous rate.

So the bomb critics who advocate blockade should choose: 

A. 150,000 dead to end the war immediately.

B. 15 to 21 million dead “waiting it out.”

Of course even Parshall argues these are only best estimates based on the data we have, so a skeptic could assume the numbers are too high. But even if the death toll is a few million overstated, Allied planners would still be faced with an atomic bomb solution that kills 150,000 versus a blockade that kills, say… “only” 4 million to 15 million depending how long it lasts.

And if the Allies had elected blockade and millions more died, the Correspondent can guarantee the bomb critics would accuse Harry Truman of war crimes for “choosing to kill millions of civilians throughout Japanese-occupied Asia when he could have ended the war quickly with the atomic bomb.”

The blockade option is immoral for one more reason: the Economics Correspondent has long considered it a strange and even perverse morality that cares more about the deaths of 150,000 Japanese than the deaths of millions in her conquered territories.

The 150,000 victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 40,000 of whom were military, were citizens of the belligerent country that invaded its neighbors for years to satisfy imperial ambitions of colonialism and racial domination.

The latter 6 million to 21 million, who critics of the bomb choose to kill in order to spare 150,000 Japanese, were citizens of the “victim” countries that had done nothing to warrant unprovoked Japanese invasion and mass slaughter.

The final, inescapable, twisted logic is “millions of lives in the invaded countries are worth less than 150,000 in the invading one.” 

Parshall, being more generous and accusing bomb critics of being more ignorant than callous or ideological, argues “what they fail to realize is just the scale of human devastation in wider Asia.”