I was curious about this because of the part in bold:
In the 1930s and 40s, a young, politically precocious Noam Chomsky was much affected by the Great Depression and the slow, seemingly inexorable slide toward world war. The jingoism, racism and brutality unleashed on all sides were appalling, but it seemed to him from his home in Philadelphia that America had reserved a special level of animosity for the Japanese. When Washington ended a campaign of mass civilian slaughter from the air with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the summer of 1945, the 16-year-old, deeply alienated by the celebrations around him, walked off into the local woods to mourn alone. “I could never talk to anyone about it and never understood anyone’s reaction,” he said. “I felt completely isolated.”
But this made me wonder what the reaction was across the entire United States. After all, Chomsky only offers an account of what happened at his summer-camp ("Camp Massad"), but the country is a big place with millions of people. I'm curious about the US population's reactions to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many celebrated? How many were neutral? How many "mourned?"
There were multiple opinion polls taken in 1945 after the atomic bombings of August 6th and 9th.
Gallup, during August 24th-29th, asked
Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing that the atomic bomb was developed?
with 69% choosing "good thing", 17% "bad thing", and 14% "no opinion".
A month later, a National Opinion Research Center poll asked
If you had been the one to decide whether or not to use the atomic bomb against Japan, which one of these things do you think you would have done?
The responses were 44% at "bombed one city at a time", 23% at "wiped out cities", 26% at "bombed where there were no people,", 4% at "refused to use" and 2% at "don't know".
The magazine Fortune had a November 30 poll also specifically about the bombings, leading to 53.5% endorsing the bombings "without qualifications", 22.7% who thought the US should have dropped more bombs, 13.8% who thought the bomb should have been demonstrated on an "unpopulated region" and 4.5% who opposed using the bomb under any circumstances.
The 22.7% indicates (AVENGE December 7, as a propaganda poster said) that the idea of the bomb as atrocity was not in everyone's thoughts.
It was in some thoughts, though.
August 8th:
...we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war is not to be waged to wipe out women and children.
-- Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to Truman, speaking to Dorothy Ringquist (Leahy's secretary)
August 10th:
The story of the atomic bomb should fill us with dismay.
-- John K. Ryan, professor at the Catholic University of America
August 29th:
Something like a moral earthquake has followed the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Its continued tremors throughout the world have diverted attention even from the military victory itself .... It is our belief that the use made of the atomic bomb has placed our nation in an indefensible moral position.
-- From the magazine The Christian Century
The euphoria of winning a war must not be confused with naivete: that September 1945 poll I mentioned earlier had another result; it found 82% of people expected other nations to develop bombs of their own. On the threat of nuclear, E.B. White wrote on August 18th: "...if the place looks unfamiliar, forgive us. We shall try to restore certain characteristics we all love. Please bear in mind that there is a brightness in the room. Even the blind can see it."
References:
Adams, H. H. (1985). Witness to power: the life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
America's Atomic Atrocity. (29 August 1945). The Christian Century.
Gaddis, J. L. (2000). The United States and the origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York: Columbia University Press.
Leaders Admit Vast Moral Implications in Use of Atomic Energy. (10 August 1945). Arkansas Catholic.
Stokes, B. (4 August 2015) 70 years after Hiroshima, opinions have shifted on use of atomic bomb. Pew Research Center.
White, E. B. (18 August 1945) Opinion. The New Yorker, 13.
Yavenditti, M. J. (1974). John Hersey and the American Conscience: The Reception of "Hiroshima". Pacific Historical Review, 43(1), 24-49.