How did the Chinese respond to the US using atomic bombs on the Japanese? Was there a sense of vengeance?

by CrixusTheCreature

Considering the Japanese were ruthless to the Chinese not even a decade earlier.

crazedmongoose

I'll take a stab at this only because the rest of the answers seems to be a hot mess of [deleted]. Apologies in advance for my scarce answer, but actually I want to make a point that the scarceness of my answer kind of supports my argument

If you're talking about how the Chinese of immediately after WW2 view the event of the atomic bombings, then actually the framing of the question may be wrong. You're supposing they felt it was a matter of righteous vengeance or horror in response to the game changers that is atom bombs. Actually they felt...not much, and I think the lack of response and thoughts backed this up. Whereas from whatever sources we can glean, they didn't seem to feel like much had changed.

Chinese media at the time barely covered the atomic bombings. The largest paper in the country, the Shanghai Shenbao, briefly noted that Hiroshima had been attacked by a formation of B29s with a new type of bomb (1.). In fact, it's hard to even find mentions in immediate post-war China about the atomic bomb among the press, or even among memoirs of people like Chiang, Mao etc.

Chiang Kai-Shek, president of the RoC, never gave too many opinions one way or another about atomic bombs. He reportedly had discussions with John Foster Dulles on the prospect of using atomic bombs against the communist mainland, where he basically felt neither strongly for or against the idea of nuclear weapons, saying he believed that nuclear weapons are not necessary but that tactical atomic weapons may be advisable. When Dulles clarified that the US possessed no such thing as tactical atomic weapons, and that any nuclear weapons employed against the mainland would cause mass losses of life and radiation, Chiang replied that he was neither an artillery man or nuclear weapons expert, and that others should study the option more closely (2.).

Mao's thoughts on the atomic bomb meanwhile are more famously known - namely that he thought they were of little value or importance strategically. Famously saying:

β€œThe atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.”

In Maoist terms nuclear weapons is something used to cow those without nuclear weapons. It's strategic value is limited because it does not result in control over something, merely destruction. He claimed:

The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9,600,000 square kilometres. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs.

You can read between the lines on how he thought the atomic bomb was more a weapon for intimidation than for winning a war:

"Riding roughshod everywhere, U.S. imperialism has made itself the enemy of the people of the world and has increasingly isolated itself. The atom bombs and hydrogen bombs in the hands of the U.S. imperialists will never cow those who refuse to be enslaved."(3)

So I guess that's my answer: it's hard to gauge what the Chinese thought about the particular morality of using nukes on Japan because the political and media leaders at the very least did not consider atomic bombs to be so special and out of the norm.

Source:

  1. Popular Responses to the Atomic Bomb in China 1945–1955, Henrietta Harrison, Past & Present, Volume 218, Issue suppl_8, 1 January 2013, Pages 98–116
  2. Communications between Taiwan & the USA at the time of the 1958 Quemoy Crisis, Dulles' meeting with Chiang Kai Shek, Wan Chin Tai
  3. "Statement Supporting the Panamanian People's Just Patriotic Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism" (January 12, 1964),
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