Background to Hiroshima and V-J Day: Potsdam Conference, AP Wirephoto

Among the first little historical curiosities that I collected as a high school student was a group of World War II Associated Press Wirephotos found among the random stuff in the bins of a Wisconsin antiques store. (I seem to recall that there were other subjects and I simply picked out the few wartime shots as most suited to my interests and budget.)

Accustomed as we now are to being able to receive the news in live time, most of us have no idea what the classic AP "Wirephoto" service was: how it functioned , and how it revolutionized journalism by transmitting images with unprecedented speed, thus enabling them to become news in their own right.

As this retrospective nicely explains, a transmitter, equipped with a sort of early optical scanner, converted a photo to electrical signals, sent via "10,000 miles of leased telephone lines – the wires," to a receiver, where they were "converted back into light, which was then recorded onto the negative, reproducing the original image." (The "Wirephoto" still exists, but in digital form since 1989.)


World War II, understandably enough, greatly increased the demand for photographic reportage, and the US Army Signal Corps developed its own radiophoto system. This Wirephoto depicts a US security checkpoint on the eve of the Potsdam Conference.

MPs CHECK VEHICLES IN CONFERENCE AREA--MILITARY POLICE OF THE 713TH MP BATTALION CHECK VEHICLES AND PERSONNEL AT A ROAD BARRIER IN THE AMERICAN COMPOUND OF THE POTSDAM CONFERENCE AREA, JULY 15. (AP WIREPHOTO FROM SIGNAL CORPS RADIOPHOTO FROM PARIS)

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The 713th Military Police Battalion was responsible for security in the US sector of nearby Berlin. The Signal Corps radiophoto above features in Robert L. Gunnarsson's history of American Military Police in Europe.

The meeting (July 17- August 2, 1945) is of course best known for mandating the shared occupation and denazification of recently defeated Germany, as well as endorsing the redrawing of the Soviet-Polish-German borders and, more controversially, permitting the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the former occupied territories of Central Europe.

But the Conference also had a bearing on the war in the Pacific and the dropping of the atomic bomb, treated in a recent post. The official declaration demanded unconditional surrender of Japan, lest she suffer "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." There was no mention of the atomic bomb, as such (tested in secret just as the conference began), but it did figure in a now-famous conversation between Truman and Stalin.

As the US Department of Energy aptly summarizes:

During the second week of Allied deliberations at Potsdam, on the evening of July 24, 1945, Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a "new weapon of unusual destructive force."  Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make "good use of it against the Japanese."  The reason for Stalin's composure became clear later: Soviet intelligence had been receiving information about the atomic bomb program since fall 1941.

The nuclear arms race was already beginning.



Next Wirephoto:  Okinawa

Recalling the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

In arguing in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran, President Obama cited President Kennedy and moreover copied his predecessor by choosing to make his principal statement on the agreement at American University where, in June 1963, Kennedy had delivered a major address on foreign policy and nuclear arms control.  In that address, Kennedy announced the resumption of negotiations over arms control.

In the tense era of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and new Berlin crisis, both the US and USSR had resumed nuclear testing. The narrow avoidance of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis prompted them to reconsider.

The result was the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which, as  summarized by the Kennedy Presidential Library:

    prohibited nuclear weapons tests or other nuclear explosions under water, in the atmosphere, or in outer space
    allowed underground nuclear tests as long as no radioactive debris falls outside the boundaries of the nation conducting the test
    pledged signatories to work towards complete disarmament, an end to the armaments race, and an end to the contamination of the environment by radioactive substances.

The US, UK, and USSR (the only nuclear powers at the time, aside from France, which continued to test) signed the Treaty on August 5, 1963, a day before the anniversary of the Hiroshima attack. The Senate  ratified the treaty on September 23, and President Kennedy signed it on October 7.

On October 23, 1964, the United Nations released this stamp marking the occasion (one  of five commemoratives that year). Designed by Ole Hamann of Denmark, it was issued in a run of 2,600,000 copies.

If one pauses to consider even just the date of the treaty--1963--it was an impressive achievement: only 18 years after the first use of nuclear weapons against Japan, 14 years after the first Soviet nuclear test, and 10 years after the Soviets tested the first deployable hydrogen bomb.

Ironically, though, on October 16, 1964, exactly a week before the stamp was issued, the People's Republic of China tested its first nuclear weapon.