War of Words Heats Up on 1945 Decision to Bomb Hiroshima : Atomic bomb: Now, 50 years later, the incineration of a city is a topic of fresh examination. What then seemed clear-cut is now less so, the subject of a spate of new books, articles and discussions.

It is a suggestion that can make a U.S. veteran of World War II red-faced with anger--that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway.

But now, 50 years later, what happened on Aug. 6, 1945, is a topic of fresh examination. What then seemed clear-cut is now less so, the subject of a spate of new books, articles and discussions.

Some of them argue the war would have ended just as quickly even if President Harry S. Truman had not approved the first use of the atomic bomb.

In 1945, with that spring’s mass Japanese suicide attacks during the three-month bloody battle for Okinawa fresh in memory, American soldiers dreaded what seemed next: an island-by-island invasion of the Japanese homeland, against a ferocious defense by a 2 million-man army, a campaign that could have taken years.

Small wonder the Americans rejoiced when the meaning sank in of the atomic blast that turned the city of Hiroshima into cinders--an invasion of Japan would not be required. War historian Paul Fussell caught the GIs’ universal sentiment in the title of an essay, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”

A few days ago, veteran Melvin Burks visited the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on the 50th anniversary of the first test of the atomic bomb, and spoke for many in his generation.

“I’m here to see the place that saved my life,” he told a reporter. “This place is why I didn’t have to go over to Japan to fight.”

The Hiroshima bomb’s death toll is estimated at between 70,000 and 150,000 people in a city with a population of 344,000. The effects of radiation killed many more in subsequent months and years; more than 186,000 victims are memorialized in the city’s Peace Park. A second atomic bomb killed between 40,000 and 70,000 at a second city, Nagasaki. Japan surrendered five days after that.

And the bomb changed the world. It caused Moscow to build its own atomic weapons, bringing about a tense half century of Cold War that turned hot and costly in Korea and Vietnam, taking billions from the American and Soviet economies, a drain that ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the demise of communism.

At the time and for years later, the use of the bomb was almost universally seen in this country as logical and necessary--and a blessing. And inevitable, too, given its existence; billions of dollars and the talents of leading scientists had been poured into its development, starting in 1939.

Installed into office only four months earlier, Truman would have been crucified politically if the American public came to believe that GIs died needlessly in an invasion because of his hesitancy to use a weapon at hand. Yet he had no such hesitancy.

Americans were of no mind to be gentle toward Japan. Their country had been the victim of a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; some of their sons who had become prisoners had been subjected to bestiality.

But since 1965 and with escalating insistence, some historical researchers have advanced the view that Japan’s capitulation was within reach without the bomb and without an invasion--and that Truman and many of his top advisers knew it.

These scholars argue that the Soviet Union’s agreement to enter the war--reaffirmed by Josef Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in July, 1945--would have been enough to tip the balance if the allies were willing to modify their demand for Japan’s “unconditional surrender” to allow Emperor Hirohito, a god to the Japanese, to survive. Ultimately, of course, they did.

Foremost among those historians is Gar Alperovitz, president of the National Center for Economic Alternatives, a think tank. As a 26-year-old student in 1965, he published his doctoral dissertation as a book with this central thesis: “The use of the bomb was not necessary to end the war before an invasion.”

In August, Knopf will publish an 800-page book by Alperovitz bringing in new research--including what he says is evidence that even Pacific commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur was wary of using the bomb.

Alperovitz says he is not a radical revisionist: “Among historians who have been digging through the archives for the last 50 years that Hiroshima was unnecessary is now the consensus position.”

Other researchers dissent sharply. Political scientist John Mueller of the University of Rochester, a specialist in presidents and warfare, accepts that the Soviet Union’s agreement to enter the war might have been enough to cause Japan to capitulate.

But Truman “could not have known that at the time,” Mueller insisted in an interview, “and he had good reason to think the war could have gone on for 20 years against an incredibly fanatical enemy.”

Those who argue against the necessity of using the bomb cite as a central document a 1946 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluding that Japan would have surrendered sometime in late 1945 “even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

That, however, was a post-Hiroshima judgment, reached partly on the basis of postwar interviews with Japanese leaders. Alperovitz prefers the evidence drawn from events that occurred before Hiroshima:

* An intercepted message to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow in July, 1945. It showed the emperor had intervened to attempt to end the war and wanted the Soviets to broker a negotiated peace. (Mueller says the message was too murky to support any big conclusions, that no one in the American government at the time could have known of the degree of peace sentiment among Japan’s civilian leaders or their influence against the fight-to-the-finish sentiment of the military.)

* A Joint Intelligence Committee report on April 25, 1945, said, “The entry of the U.S.S.R. into the war would . . . convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat.” (Mueller: What “most Japanese” believed was not relevant; the public had no influence.)

* Truman’s own judgment. When Stalin confirmed at Potsdam that the Soviet army would enter the war, Truman wrote in his diary: “Fini Japs when that comes about.”

“Truman was punishing them and punishing them and punishing them,” Mueller said. “Before Hiroshima, he said, [in effect] ‘Have you had enough?’ They said, as far as he could see, ‘No, we have not.’ ”

The emperor was not mentioned in the formal Potsdam Declaration, however.

Historian Stephen Ambrose also believes the Japanese got the message from Potsdam that the emperor would be spared, but the military still was not satisfied.