Another new publication. This one is short, open access, and quotes unpublished letters to von Wright.
Abstract
In G. E. M. Anscombe’s extensive correspondence with G. H. von Wright, one of the many topics that come up is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. What she says in these letters is significant because of the interest in what she wrote elsewhere about the use of atomic weapons. It is especially interesting because she might seem to imply here that only a person with religious faith is capable of being just. This paper quotes the relevant passages from the correspondence, explores what she might have meant, and concludes that she is not committed to the view that only the faithful can be just.
"The people who support Truman’s action, both at the time and since then, generally believe that, while the bombing that he ordered cost many lives, it was the right thing to do because even more lives would have been lost if Japan had not been forced to surrender."
ReplyDeleteYou give no sources for this. But I wonder if it is quite true, even if you use this precise wording. There's more than one other widely circulated argument that is completely independent of this "generally" held one. For instance:
1) Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army, with 40,000 soldiers stationed; Nagasaki had a significant naval presence and a major military factory. Thus it is at least arguable that the civilian casualties were covered by the doctrine of double effect. (Although Anscombe probably would have had an interpretation of the doctrine ready to hand which would have neutralised this objection for her?)
2) Anscombe's claims that Japan was "known by [Truman] to have made two attempts towards a negotiated peace" and that "Truman knew the Japanese were urgently seeking to surrender on terms" are seriously at odds with mainstream military and diplomatic history.
3) Anscombe tendentiously belittles the Potsdam Declaration to such an extent that this amounts to a serious misrepresentation. There simply was no "fixation on unconditional surrender" (Anscombe), as the Declaration was precisely a document that set out very clearly the terms for a conditional surrender.
4) The Japanese government took measures to obliterate any practical means for Allied soldiers to distinguish combatants from noncombatants in Japan, and publicised this as widely as possible in hopes that it would act as a deterrent to a conventional land invasion. In such an invasion, the indiscriminate killing of civilians would have had an equally large role as in the bombings, because the Japanese authorities themselves were doing their best to prevent any discrimination from occurring.
I would also add a consideration about Anscombe that I've been waiting for years and years for someone to address (I guess I have somehow never raised it with you before):
5) Anscombe viewed herself as being as Catholic as a Catholic can be. But before Truman came to Oxford, his 1956 European trip had taken him to the Vatican, where he'd had the same kind of friendly welcome as at Oxford, including from Pope Pius XII.
And I should add that this is not some suggestion that you roll over and play dead, overwhelmed by the sheer awesome force of these anti-Anscombe arguments. What I would be genuinely not only interested in, but extremely interested in, would be any serious attempt at formulating a thought-through response to the arguments from an Anscombean viewpoint.
I do not personally "support Truman's action" any more than I condemn it. Even here I'm trying to be faithful to the ideal of neutrality of D. Z. Phillips's contemplative conception of philosophy, on which I'm doing research, as you know. But over the years I have been increasingly irritated, occasionally almost beyond bearing, by the recurrent simplifications of the pro-Truman position in the secondary literature on Anscombe, by people who are quite up in arms about an exactly similar degree of simplification when it is applied to, say, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (as it all too often is!). This applies especially to the seemingly boundless willingness in Anscombe/Wartime-Quartet scholarship to take all of Anscombe's empirical claims about military and diplomatic history at face value without subjecting them to any source criticism.
ReplyDeleteBut this new paper of yours is nevertheless a good start, and as a von Wright-ite (after a fashion) I found it a truly fascinating read. I should perhaps add that I was commissioned to write a long essay review of The Creation of Wittgenstein for the Nordic Wittgenstein Review. It's now written up and coming up, I don't know if this year or the next. As a matter of fact I initially rather criticised your Anscombe chapter for not finding anything new to say about the Truman episode, but in acknowledgement that your research was still ongoing, I toned this down considerably after your book announcement came. Well, it turns out that I didn't even have to wait for the book to come out...!
Thanks, Tommi
DeleteIt's difficult to write a defence of Anscombe's position in response to these points because I don't know the history well enough, I don't think she really gives sources for her information (or her interpretation of the facts), and it is her position rather than mine (although I am sympathetic towards her view). But I'll see if I can come up with something better than this to say.
On the question of what Truman's defenders generally believe, I have spoken to a few and they have all offered this argument and no others. Perhaps I need to speak to more people and/or read more on the subject.
OK, here's an attempt at a response to each of your numbered points.
ReplyDelete1. I think Anscombe would have cared a lot about the intention or reason for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the goal had been to destroy the military targets there then it might have been justifiable, but I think she would argue that this was not the (only, or even primary) goal. According to Gary J. Bass Judgment at Tokyo p. 79, “the teams choosing targets had wanted a military installation or factory surrounded by homes that would be destroyed, in order to break the Japanese will to fight.”
This source (https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/target-committee-recommendations/) provides this information (and more):
Summary of Target Committee Meetings
May 10 and 11, 1945
Declassified government document
Memorandum from Major J. A. Derry and Dr. N. F. Ramsey to General L. R. Groves
Status of Targets
A. Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualifications: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are likely to be unattacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Forces would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise. These targets are:
(1) Kyoto—This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1,000,000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget. (Classified as an AA Target)
(2) Hiroshima—This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers, it is not a good incendiary target. (Classified as an AA Target)
Kyoto was recommended as the first choice target. Hiroshima was second. Nagasaki did not make the top four. Apparently Kyoto was spared because of its cultural significance.
I am not a historian, but as far as I can tell, multiple people were involved in making the decision and they had various objectives. One was to demonstrate the power of the bomb, including to the Soviet Union. Another was to crush Japanese morale in order to hasten the end of the war. This seems to have been a major reason for picking Kyoto as a target. I don’t know what Truman mostly cared about, nor whether anyone knows. Jonathan Glover (see Humanity pp. 93-94) describes those responsible as sleepwalking into the decision. Bass writes that “In his memoirs, Truman claimed that he had chosen a military target in accordance with the laws of war—which was either disingenuous or deluded.” (Judgment at Tokyo, p. 79.)
The Americans intercepted a telegram from the Japanese Emperor to the Soviet Union asking for peace (see Bass, p. 71). But “Hirohito’s call for peace was enfeebled by its lack of specific peace terms.” (Bass, p. 71) Japan’s foreign minister, Togo Shigenori, “grasped at the [Potsdam Declaration] as a precious chance to end the war” (Bass, p. 76). On both sides there were more and less peace-oriented parties. Whether a peaceful surrender could have ben negotiated is disputed. There are some interesting primary source materials here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2025-08-05/atomic-bombings-japan-and-end-world-war-ii-80-years-later The introduction to them says:
ReplyDeleteAs with all events in human history, interpretations vary and readings of primary sources can lead to different conclusions. Thus, the extent to which the bombings contributed to the end of World War II or to the beginning of the Cold War remains debatable. A significant contested question is whether, under the weight of a U.S. blockade and massive conventional bombing, the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. Also still debated is the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria on the Japanese decision to surrender. Controversies abound over counterfactual issues, such as whether there were alternatives to the atomic bombings or whether the Japanese would have surrendered had a demonstration of the bomb been used to produced shock and awe.
Alex Wellerstein (here https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/02/did-the-japanese-offer-to-surrender-before-hiroshima-part-1/) writes:
That there were “peace feelers” put out by some highly-placed Japanese in mid-1945 is well-known and well-documented. Specifically, there were several attempts to see whether the (then still-neutral) Soviet Union would be willing to serve as a mediator for a negotiated peace between the US and Japan.
However, he continues as follows:
The distance between these “peace feelers” and an “offer” or even “readiness” to surrender is quite large. Japan was being governed at this point by a Supreme War Council, which was dominated by militarists who had no interest in peace. The “peace party” behind these feelers was a small minority of officials who were keeping their efforts secret from the rest of the Council, because they clearly feared they would be squashed otherwise. The “peace party” did appear to have the interest — and sometimes even the favor — of the Emperor, which is important and interesting, though the Emperor […] was not as powerful as is sometimes assumed.
So it looks as though there is at least a grain of truth in Anscombe’s claims, but perhaps not more than that. It looks to me as though some historians take something like her view, however.
3. The Potsdam Declaration (https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html) says both “Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay” and “We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” So Anscombe seems right that it revealed a determination that Japan should surrender unconditionally.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says:
Contrary to what had been intended at its conception, which was to disenfranchise the Japanese leadership so that the people would accept a mediated transition, the declaration made no direct mention of the Japanese emperor at all. However, it insisted that "the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest must be eliminated for all time."[10] Allied intentions on issues of utmost importance to the Japanese, including the extent and number of Allied "occupation points," the fate of Japan's minor islands, and the extent to which the Allies planned to "control" Japan's "raw materials," as well as whether Hirohito was to be regarded as one of those who had "misled the people of Japan" or he might potentially become part of "a peacefully inclined and responsible government," were thus left unstated, which essentially made it a blank check for the Allies.
4. I don’t think Anscombe would dispute this.
ReplyDelete5. Anscombe was certainly very Catholic, but not unthinkingly so. I don’t think she would have celebrated something she considered wrong just because the Church supported it, nor condemned something she thought was all right just because the Church was against it. Her view of the bombings seems to have become the official Catholic view, and I don’t see any evidence that the Catholic Church was ever very strongly in favour of Truman’s decision. The New York Times on May 21, 1956, reported that:
ROME, May 20-Harry S. Truman had an audience with Pope Pius XII today. They talked alone for fifteen minutes. Later Mrs. Truman and other members of the former President's party had a brief audience with the Pontiff. Neither Mr. Truman nor the Vatican revealed what topics were discussed. An unofficial but reliable Vatican source said the Pontiff and the former President reviewed the world situation and agreed that the West should use the utmost circumspection in dealing with the Communists. Pope Pius, according to this source, also voiced his grave concern over the nuclear armaments race. It was understood that Mr. Truman, who authorized the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, showed what was described as "great understanding" of the Pope's anxiety.
[…]
When he emerged from the Vatican, Mr. Truman would say only that it had been a "most happy visit indeed." He refused to disclose any details, recalling that when he was President he would not have expected any caller at the White House to make public comments afterward. The Vatican press office issued only a short communiqué recording the fact of Mr. Truman's audience and describing his conversation with the Pope as "cordial.” Later the Trumans drove to the St. Paul's American Protestant (Episcopal) Church, where they attended a service. In the sermon Canon Charles E. Shreve stressed the unity of American Protestants living in Rome. On leaving the church Mr. Truman was cheered by hundreds of Americans who had attended the Whitsunday service and by many Italians who had waited outside. The Trumans and their party are scheduled to leave Rome tomorrow for Naples and Pompeii.
An article in America magazine (https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2025/07/15/80-years-trinity-atomic-age-251131/) says:
The Vatican did not immediately condemn the twin atomic attacks: Though L’Osservatore Romano published an editorial critical of President Truman’s decision soon after Hiroshima, Pope Pius XII stopped short of an official condemnation.
[…]
The Vatican […] has become increasingly vocal in its opposition not only to the use of nuclear arms but even their possession.
So Anscombe seems to have been somewhat ahead of her time. I don’t think Catholics would see anything wrong with this.