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| Fig. 1: The devastation in Hiroshima, which Harry Truman chose to bomb on August 6, 1945. (Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
In August of 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman made the decision to attack the Japanese city of Hiroshima with a nuclear bomb. The first ever use of nuclear weapons in war, Hiroshima witnessed utter devastation not seen before or since the bombing of Nagasaki three days later. One can see the flattening of Hiroshima and the annihilation brought by the bomb in Fig. 1. The pair of attacks brought a swifter end to the Pacific War than anticipated yet ushered in decades of fear of the potential of nuclear weapons. Public support for the bombings, incredibly high in the moment, has significantly withered since. This report looks at various polls throughout the past three quarters of a century. Public support for the bombings has declined in retrospect. Americans, it seems, have become more conscientious of the lives of global citizens and aware of the dangers of nuclear destruction reaching American soil. Nowadays, there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons around the world with the nuclear (and destructive) power "roughly 1,000,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb." [1]
Gallup took a string of polls, the first in 1945 and then a set in the 1990s, examining public support for the use of nuclear weapons during World War II. A recent Washington Post article analyzed the polling data to find that over half a century, approval for the bombings dropped nearly thirty percentage points, from 85% to 57%, yet barely moved from 1995 to 2005. [2] The raw data demonstrates a dramatic decrease in approval for the bombings that even more recent polls demonstrate could be a generational shift. A majority of Americans still appears to support what was, at the time of the act, an incredibly popular decision. An even stronger shift is to the question as to whether the invention of the bomb was "good or bad." A different set of Gallup polling analyzed by the Washington Post found that the percentage of people who viewed the bomb as good dropped from 69% to 31% from 1945 to 1998. [2] It seems that the American populace is unpersuaded by arguments that the deterrent abilities of nuclear weapons outweigh the risks of their destructive potential.
Indeed, rationalizing support for nuclear weapons often has to take into account the better of two bad options. That choice comes into play specifically with the use of nuclear bombs in World War II: bringing a swift end to the War by using them, or letting the fight continue with American casualties for an indeterminate amount of time. In that regard, another important issue that polls have taken into account has been whether the Japanese bombings saved lives - human lives in general and American lives more specifically. The results of these polls help illuminate the downward shift of public approval for the Japanese bombings over the past decades and why the shift has occurred. Stanford University Professor Scott Sagan argues that the historical poll results show "a shallow and easily overcome" American commitment to "the principle of noncombatant immunity." [3]
Interestingly, a set of Gallup polls asked whether the bombing decisions "saved American lives" and if they "saved Japanese lives." Sagan analyzes these polls to find that, when put in the context of a potential Iran conflict, "55.6% percent of the U.S. public preferred and 59.3% percent approved of killing 100,000 Iranian civilians to save 20,000 U.S. soldiers". [3] These figures give significant insight into what the American today thinks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki's efficacy and, more abstractly, of Sagan's "principle of noncombatant immunity" (perhaps in the layman's terms that the polling subjects considered, the benefit of sacrificing the innocent lives of another country's people to save those of Americans). Such a rationalization was undoubtedly required after the World War II bombs.
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| Fig. 2: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Manhattan Project, was initially satisfied with his success. After the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (and later in life) Oppenheimer would denounce nuclear weapons and hint at regret of his involvement. (Courtesy of the DOE. Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Comparing the basic polls (yes or no to nuclear weapons) to the more specific ones (whether or not the weapons saved lives) helps to explain the decline in nuclear support. While the vast majority - of over 80% - agree that the use of nuclear weapons helped save American lives, only 57% support the use of the bomb. In 1945, the 80% figures (yes use the bomb; yes save American lives) match up nicely. One of the two opinions dropped while the other stayed the same: Americans still resoundingly believe that the bomb saved American lives but are not nearly as supportive of the use of the bomb itself. While the American populace still probably values saving American lives, the shift is potentially due to a different frame of reference. Over the past half century, and particularly during the Cold War, Americans have been forced to reckon with the potential for the power of the bomb to be turned on its creators. Indeed, Finlandia University Professor William Knoblauch examines a series of polls taken before and after the 1983 film The Day After: he found that in 1981, 47% of Americans "believed that nuclear war was possible." In 1983, he found that a similar percent of America believed they would die as a result of a nuclear war. [1]
One explanation for the decrease in support, then, is a positive one: Americans are not prioritizing themselves but human lives in general. This priority is centered around innocent civilians, reflecting Sagan's idea of noncombatant immunity. [3] The net attention paid to human life, then, is what is reflected in the current public opinion of the use of the bomb in World War II. This number is likely inflated by an extra emphasis placed on American life, which could suggest that, during a wartime period, the value of an American life could once again triumph over the value of human life in rationalizations and public opinion. Sentiments during war are different than those during peace. No man felt that change more clearly than J. Robert Oppenheimer, who, a biographer writes, became "a man wracked by guilt and self-doubt." [4] One can see Oppenheimer, pictured in 1946, in Fig. 2. While he never fully renounced the bomb and maintained that its use saved lives, he expressed disappointment in the decision to bomb Nagasaki and hope that the bomb would never again be used. "The physicists have known sin," Oppenheimer would later say, and the public that once almost wholeheartedly supported the bomb appears to have known guilt. [4]
© Dante Mangiaracina. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] W. M. Knoblauch, Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017).
[2] P. Bump, "In 1945, Americans Were Thrilled with Nuclear Weapons. That is No Longer True," The Washington Post, 27 May 16.
[3] S. D. Sagan and B. A. Valentino, "Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants," Int. Security, 42, 41 (2017).
[4] C. Thorpe, Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
