Iran, Israel and others, 81 years after Hiroshima

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast.
It's Wednesday, August 5th.
This week marks the 81st anniversary of the United States' actual first use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It dropped another one three days later on Nagasaki. Today, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, nine countries possess nuclear weapons, the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. And of course, nuclear weapons are more in the news than usual this year with the war in Iran. One of the rationales for all the death and destruction in this war is that Iran, out of all the countries in the world, because of the militancy of its regime, would be especially likely to actually use a nuclear weapon if it had one, as well as use that possibility as a background threat to intimidate enemies during more conventional warfare. That's one of the rationales for this war. But what would it actually take for Iran or its biggest enemy, Israel or any other country, to decide to actually pull the nuclear trigger in today's world, knowing what we know about the likely effects, and what are the best ways to prevent those scenarios? With us for this, Fred Kaplan, author of two relevant books, The Wizards of Armageddon, first published in 1983, described as the untold story of the small group of men who devised the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the bomb, and his book, The Bomb, President's Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War. That one is a history of American nuclear weapons policy, including analyses of president's actions from Truman all the way to Trump, published in 2021 Fred also writes the War Stories column for Slate, and is a frequent guest on military affairs here. Fred, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Fred Kaplan** (2:10)
Thanks for asking me.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:12)
How was the decision made to actually use an atomic bomb at the end of World War II? Who considered what kinds of moral and military trade-offs?

**Fred Kaplan** (2:23)
Well, you know, in a strange way, there was no decision to use the bomb. There was a decision to build the bomb, and once it was ready to be used, it was used.
And once a second bomb came down the line, it was used. There was no separate decision, okay, now do we go ahead after destroying Hiroshima to drop a second bomb on Nagasaki? No, it kind of was in lockstep.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:53)
Now, I was looking up stats for this conversation for the human toll of those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The website of the US National Archives says as many as 70,000 people were killed instantly in Hiroshima. Those who survived the initial blast were hit with a powerful shockwave that leveled nearly every structure within a mile of the impact. The site says it was followed by intense heat that created a firestorm that engulfed the city and claimed even more lives. In Nagasaki, three days later, another 35,000 to 40,000 people perished, says the National Archives. So Fred, those are staggering numbers and descriptions for single attacks. No wonder you called your first book, The Wizards of Armageddon.
Was that death toll and those other effects about what they were expecting?

**Fred Kaplan** (3:47)
Well, here's the thing, too. People had already become inured to this kind of damage.
General Curtis LeMay, who is the commander of the 21st Bomber Command, was firebombing all of Japan with incendiary weapons. In one night in March of 1945, 334 B-29 bombers dropped incendiary weapons over Tokyo, killing 84,000 people.
Now, 84,000 people in one night destroying, setting on fire about 15 square miles of the capital of Japan. When the officials in Washington, and this was going to keep going, the officials in Washington, when they were selecting the targets for the atom bomb, they deliberately left off some cities that LeMay was still set to attack so that he could go ahead with his firebombing. It's not like, okay, now we're going to stop everything else and drop this atom bomb. So everything else still kept going. LeMay was still dropping his incendiary bombs. The plans for the invasion, which might have happened as early as August or September, were still going on. You know, in 1981, I interviewed General LeMay for my first book, The Wizards of Armageddon, and he told me that Hap Arnold, the commander in chief of the Army Air Forces, asked him in the spring when the war in Japan would be over. And LeMay had his numbers guys do the math, and he came back and said, the war will be over by September 1st, because by September 1st, I will have bombed every square mile in Japan. Now, LeMay didn't know about the atom bomb either at that time. But his view of warfare, and the people who went into the early days of an independent US. Air Force, their view of warfare was you bomb everything with as big a bomb as you can and the A bomb fit into that. And so you talk about these numbers now, which sound absolutely hideous. And by the way, they're trivial compared with the kind of damage that even the smallest bomb nuclear weapons in the US or Russian arsenals would inflict today.