Harry Truman as Baptist president

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 1999 by Glen Harold Stassen

Japan most feared that Russia might enter the war against them, so that their postwar life would be under Russian rule. Suppose we had told them what we knew: Russia was indeed about to enter the war against them, and the time to surrender was now.

Japanese scientists had been trying to develop an atomic bomb and had failed. Suppose we announced to them that we had developed it successfully, explained its awesome destructive force, and announced that to demonstrate its force, we would soon detonate one where they could see its power but too far away to destroy a city. And then suppose we had detonated one over Tokyo Bay in the evening of August 6th, just after dark, so it would be seen by millions of people, and their leaders, but too far out to kill many people. And then suppose we had asked the emperor to declare he favored surrender?

The best way to change minds is to present the combination of evidence, not in small dribbles, but all together. Suppose we had made these announcements simultaneously and quickly followed them with the overwhelming evidence of the test explosion over Tokyo Bay. The persuasive power would have been enormous. I think it likely the emperor would have spoken.

Had he not spoken, there were still three months in which to try other options before so badly violating the ethics of just war.

The Vietnam War

Before World War II, Vietnam was a colony of France. During the war, the Japanese drove the French out and Vietnam became a Japanese colony. What would happen after the war? President Franklin Roosevelt was opposed to colonialism, and proposed in 1943 that Vietnam should be placed under a United Nations trusteeship after the war, not French colonial administration. That was the powerful desire of most Vietnamese, who had suffered for years first under oppressive French and then Japanese colonialism.

Ho Chi Minh was the popular nationalist leader of the Vietnamese struggling against both Japanese and French colonialism. He had learned English in London, had visited the United Statea, (17) and had sent several appeals to the U.S. government to do as Roosevelt had proposed--to oppose French takeover again. In 1919, Ho drew up a plan for Vietnam's emancipation. "Today this plan, inspired by President Wilson's Fourteen Points, sounds extremely moderate. It asked for permanent representation in the French Parliament; freedom of the press; freedom to hold meetings and form associations; amnesty and release of political prisoners; government by law instead of government by decree; equality of legal rights between French and [Vietnamese]." He tried to argue his case with Woodrow Wilson himself. (18) He also joined a communist group because it, like Wilson and Roosevelt, was anticolonialist. Anticolonialism was his one criterion. (19)

He had great admiration for the U.S. Declaration of Independence, for Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. He "felt a strong historical affinity with the rebels of 1776" against British colonialism. (20) The U.S. Combat Section (Southern Command), on direct orders from General Wedemeyer, provided crucial sup port for his temporary takeover of Vietnam in 1945. (21) The first paragraph of the Proclamation of Vietnamese Independence on September 2, 1945, opens: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Ho had reason to hope for U.S. anticolonial support. How history might have turned out differently if it had been given!