Japanese seeked peace before A-bombs dropped!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bird17dec17,1,2302127.story

snip

This is a view that historical research has confirmed. The discovery of President Truman's handwritten private diary, for example, revealed that on July 18, 1945, he had read a "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace…. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland." And again, on Aug. 3, 1945, Walter Brown, an aide to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, noted in his diary that Truman and his aides "agreed Japs looking for peace…. "

How nations deal with their histories can be an exacting litmus test of national character.

Throughout Asia, the Japanese are reviled for their dishonest refusal to acknowledge their barbarous behavior during their occupations of China, Korea and the countries of Southeast Asia. Our nation's uneasy relationship to the historical debate over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is such a test and, despite history's patient annual re- administration of it, the U.S. has yet to achieve a passing grade.

As a result, we find ourselves — ironically it must be said — in the same remedial national history class as the Japanese. And we are certain to remain there, mocked by world opinion, as long as our misguided sense of American exceptionalism continues to dictate that public displays of American history be morally pure and patriotically correct.

So, will people finally put aside the canard that our country vaporize 1/4 million people to save the lives of 2 million and accept that the A-bombings were a terrorist act meant to frighten the Russians and the rest of the world into accepting our dominance?

I'd suggest doing some reading on the history of how the surrender actually took place. The Japanese military almost prevented the surrender message from ever getting out.

Sorry, but your assessment is factually incorrect.

July 18, 1945, he had read a "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace…. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland." And again, on Aug. 3, 1945, Walter Brown, an aide to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, noted in his diary that Truman and his aides "agreed Japs looking for peace…. "

Evidently they somehow managed to get the message out 2 months and 1 month before the bombs were dropped. And this comes from Truman's own diary lest we forget. And once again, "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace…. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland." Sounds like someone wanting to try out a new toy to me, NOT someone looking to end the war with as little loss of life as possible.

Just because the emperor wanted to surrender, didn't mean that it was so; the military controlled almost every aspect of Japan's government and almost prevented the surrender from getting out at all. Prior to the bombs dropping, the emperor announcing surrender would not have stopped the military. If you do not believe me, that is fine, but it's all out there if you want to look.

and while some in the military wanted to fight on, most Japanese people were ready for peace, if they weren't they would have fought us after we occupied. If we had gone for peace earlier the same thing would have happened, there would have been an attempted coup, and it would have been put down, because they respected the emperor over continuing the war. Of course since this is all speculation, we'll all just stick to our opinions

but when those opinions smear President Truman and the United States you can expect to generate a lot of replies each time you express them.

As to the Japanese people being ready for peace, I suggest you do some more study in Japanese history and culture before you point to that as evidence that the Emperor could simply call for peace and be obeyed by the military.

If the Emporer had not personally endorsed the surrender, there would have been continuous warfare on all levels until the bodies were too numerous to count.

The whole world isn't like the US, and expecting other cultures to act like ours does is one of the most common mistakes Americans make in dealing with other societies.

Case in point: why is anyone surprised that the resistance in Iraq is growing? Baghdad isn't Newark, and our rules don't apply.

aside from the coups leaders, which was stopped, and according to Trumans own diary he was seeking peace BEFORE the bomb was dropped, so tell me again, why was it neccessary?

The Japanese military were quite willing to keep on fighting after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. After all, the firebombing of Tokyo resulted in more civilian casualities and fatalities than both a-bombs combined. What forced the Japanese to give up the ghost was the entry of Russia into the war. Only then did they surrender.

The bombing was not entirely necessary, certainly. But it was justifiable. The damage it did, by the way, was a whole lot greater than anything the American scientists were expecting.

First you say: . . .before you point to that as evidence that the Emperor could simply call for peace and be obeyed by the military with the implication that the Emperor did not have any authority over the military and that in fact they would not have obeyed him if he called for surrender.

But immediately following that, you write If the Emporer had not personally endorsed the surrender, there would have been continuous warfare on all levels until the bodies were too numerous to count. And now the implication is that no surrender would have been possible without the Emperor's authority.

As with any surrender, negotiations for a Japanese surrender had been under way for months, going back at least to May 1945, when the Allies defeated Germany. By August, even before the dropping of the atomic bombs, Japan was defeated. As the program on the History Channel (since someone here has obviously seen it) showed, the American bombers who made the final raid on Japan on 15 August 1945 encountered little resistance. They destroyed Japan's last oil refinery (there could have been little if any production of war materiel without fuel) and all the planes on that run, and it was over 100 of them, returned to their base without a single loss. Japan simply did not have the weapons to fight back with, and they had already been in negotiations for surrender for months.

And the two atomic bomb targets were not military targets; they were almost entirely civilian areas.

While it is undoubtedly true that some Japanese would have put up a fierce defense of their homeland if invaded and if supported by their emperor, this would not have been the invasion of a militarily healthy country. They had been devastated by the war, by the bombings and the loss of their troops.

Not meaning to hijack the thread but I found this intresting.

August 15th, 1945 Japan:

Major Hatanaka, Lt. Col. Shiizaki and Col. Ida arrive at the HQ of the Imperial Guards Division to enlist General Mori in the coup. There they gather Major Koga and Ishihara who have the written order to be signed by General Mori which will put the coup in motion. They wait on the General.

After midnight they barge in. When asked to lead the coup, Mori refuses without orders from his superior. They continue to cajole him to join them. They are joined by Captain Uehara. Mori refuses again and Uehara draws his sword. Col. Shiraishi, the General's aide is killed. Major Hatanaka draws his pistol and shoots General Mori.

It is now 2:00 am and the coup leaders proceed to the palace. There they obtain the cooperation of the guards on duty. The palace is sealed from the outside, telephone lines are cut. The rebels also take the Broadcasting House across the street from the Palace. The imperial chamberlains are alerted. They remove the recordings from storage and take them to a out of the way air raid shelter.

Troops ransack the palace looking for the recordings and Privy Seal Kido and others. Other rebels fan out over the city to kill the PM and FM and others of the "peace faction".

War Minister Anami commits ceremonial suicide. He does this because he has failed the Emperor by failing to win the war; failing to follow the Emperor's wish for peace; failing to control his officers; failing to live up to the expectations of the Junior officers and because the rebels have assassinated General Mori.

The coup comes to the attention of General Tanaka, General Mori's commander. At 4:00 am he proceeds to the palace. One unit at a time he seizes control of the situation. He confronts the leaders of the coup and advises them to commit ceremonial suicide for disobeying the wishes of the Emperor.

The Emperor is told of the coup at 7:00 am and then General Tanaka pays his respects. Radio Tokyo goes back on the air at 7:21 and announces that the Emperor will broadcast a rescript at Noon. General Tanaka finishes at the palace and takes the recordings to Radio Tokyo.

The Emperor broadcast his rescript at noon.

"Despite the best that has been done by everyone, the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces .... and the devoted service of our 100,000,000 people, the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage ... Moreover the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking toll of many innocent lives.

"Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

103 carrier-based aircraft of the USN's Task Force 38 are launched at 0415 hours local and attack airfields in the Tokyo area. They encounter heavy aerial opposition and shoot down 32 Japanese aircraft. A second strike is cancelled while it is en route to objectives; pilots jettison their ordnance and return to their carriers. The last aircraft shot down by the USN in World War II occurs at 1400 hours when an F6F-5 Hellcat pilot of Fighting Squadron Thirty One (VF-31) in the light aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) shoots down a "Judy" carrier bomber (Kugisho D4Y Navy Carrier Bomber Suisei) at sea. (Jack McKillop)

many in the military did want to fight to the death, even after the a-bombs, but as we saw, they were stopped, and could have been stopped before the a-bombs as well, if only Truman hadn't been so eager to display our new found might.

Did you see it?

I wonder if it is going to be on again?

It's just revisionism that sometimes takes longer.

"Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland."

this sentence seems to show the opposite, that the bombs were dropped because Truman thought they'd end the war before the Russians entered, ie, QUICKER.


BTW, the author, Kai Bird, is one of those historians, unfortunately, that allows her political views to color her analysis. The telegram Truman read was to the Russians offering to negotiate a surrender, when the US was demanding unconditional surrender. It's NOT as black and white as Dr Bird would have it.

A more balanced account may be found in Alonzo Hamby's biography of Truman, "Man of the People".

"telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace"

Isn't that pretty much what we got after we dropped the bombs? And how do you know that this telegram was to the Russians and not to Truman? And even after we dropped the bombs we negotiated peace, because the Japanese wanted to keep the emperor and we let them. Those were conditions, so why would we say unconditional surrender only, and then say, "ok conditions are fine" when we were obviously in a much better position two months later.

Always has been always will be I guess is the answer?

Like other nations made up of ordinary human beings, our nation makes mistakes. Failure to admit those mistakes leaves us vulnerable to making them again.

The truth is that the government of the US is run by people, like all governments, and depending on the people in charge can be good or evil. Unfortunately many people seem to delude themselves into thinking that no evil person has ever been in charge of the US govt.

Yes, even FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower (who chose to run as a republican, for whatever that's worth).

there does that make you feel validated?

....could the end of the war been negotiated without dropping nuclear weapons?
....coupla books have come out in recent years indicating that it would have taken and army of 2 million, or 4 million or whatever in order to defeat Japan.
I don't think so. the U.S. by that time had complete mastery of the skies and could bomb Japanese war production facilities at will. A blockade could have been established.

However, the U.S. should have made its terms more clear. Truman et all kept demanding 'unconditional surrender,' which the Japanese took to mean that the Emperor would be deposed and probably executed. To them that meant that their nation would cease to exist, and they were prepared to put up a bloody fight to maintain the integrity of their homeland. the U.S. had no intention of deposing the Emperor because the U.S. wanted an intact Japan as a bulwark against the Soviets & Chinese communists.


on edit: i think -- and this gets me in trouble a lot --- that it was necessary to use the bomb. Not because the Japanese were prepared to fight to the end, but because SOMEONE had to let the genie out of the bottle for one instant, to show the world the destructive power of nuclear weapons. Use it to demonstrate by blowing up an uninhabited island? there were many prepared to dismiss it as a hoax. you will notice that they have not been used since.


this by the way is by no means a 'blame america first' thread as the new poster above implies. it is a discussion of facts. if you want to know what the militaristic, nationalistic, racist streak did to the Japanese, read about the rape of Nanking, which the Japanese STILL have not apologized for.
my father was part of the occupation army after the war ended. once that racist/militaristic/nationalistic element had been torn from the Japanese consciousness, he found them to be kind people of integrity.

Now we have to rid ourselves of the above. :(

Now we have to rid ourselves of the above. :(

I've wondered if using the bomb on an uninhabited island would have drove the point home and averted the deaths of innocents. Did the genie have to come out of the bottle at all? Couldn't we have kept the lid on such a weapon forever, or was its development inevitable given human nature (i.e. if we don't, someone else will)?

And did we have to drop two? Wouldn't one be enough?

I have a hard time getting past the fact that the targets were civilian targets. Couldn't they have bombed a more military target, if at all? I just can't get past the horror of it. Men, women and children suffered and died to save the lives of military men.

War is not about random gestures. While you are proposing random gestures, we were still fighting. People were dying in Asia and the Pacific.

Yes, we had to drop a second bomb. They didn't surrender after the first.

the emperor was a figurehead used by the military to tell people what to do. He was kidnapped or isolated in his palace. Although he wanted peace, he was in no position to negotiate or to force surrender.

The emperor was the ultimate authority. the Japanese believed he was descended from the Sun and gave the Japanese people their identity.
Only his words, from his mouth, could cause all of Japan to surrender.
That's why the pro-war faction fought so hard to keep the broadcast from happening.
When he spoke most Japanese had never heard his voice, but they knew it was the Emperor because he used an old, rarely used very formal form of the Japanese language.
He was easily swayed but he was no one's puppet. There was probably enough evidence to convict him of war crimes but the U.S. did not allow it because it wanted to maintain the emperor as a figurehead, stripped of his divine image.

the emperor of japan has been the SYMBOLIC head of state for centuries.

militarism began to rise in the 20/30s and by the start of wwII - for the japanese - had effectively takin controll.

but don't believe me look it up :hi:

thank GORE he 'invented' the internet :bounce:

peace

i said he was easily swayed -- by the military, for one.
but his word was law, as he was deemed a divine figure.
that is why the various groups sought favor with him. he was not really a symbolic leader.
the militarists convinced him that a war with the u.s. could be won, so he permitted them to go ahead with the attack on pearl harbor.

if Truman HAD to drop an A-bomb, why didn't they drop it out to sea off Tokyo? The Japanese officials would have seen it, the loss of life would have been far less. The US could then have warned them to surrender, or the next one will be on land.

This would still have made the geopolitical point: Stalin would have known all about it, and the US could have stood for minimizing further killing.

The war with Japan was not an exercise in humantarian philosophy.

The first military strike was an attack on our navy at Pearl Harbor, the campaign to take the war to the Home Islands was unmitigatedly violent and bloody, and all of these "nice" scenarios posits leaders able to see clearly what we have come to understand forty or fifty years later.

Now that everyone knows that everything in the world is the doing of the secret masters who make all the decisions and move us plebes around like pawns on their chessboard, it is clear that Truman and the others were just murderous thugs anxious to try out their new toys on hapless civilians who were thirsting for the opportunity to abandon their land and culture.

Bull. The reasoning for the use of the bombs as they were used was the best available at the time.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Same thing with Saddam, Bush said no negotiation...we needed that invasion.

And then a bunch of Afrikaaners would have gotten in their time machine and delivered a bunch of AK-47s and grenade launchers to the confederacy so they would win the Civil war, but the brave General Lee and the Duke boys caught on to their evil scheme!

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Lee.

Harry Turtledove is a good storyteller!

stunning!

The Japanese surrendered more than once.
Truman pretended they didn't and only bombed
Japan to scare Stalin out of Greece, thereby starting
the cold war.

How will Americans understand what's going on right now
if we don't know real world history?

We aren't going to learn from official books containing 'all
the history that's fit to print.' They lie.

What do you think they'll say about BushCo in a few decades
given that the mainstream media is not willing to tell the
truth now?

there was no excuse I can imagine on Nagasaki being nuked only 3 days later. Given the state of communications in those days, it gave no opportunity to the Japanese to surrender before fully assessing what had happened in Hiroshima.

And neither nuke had to be dropped on overwealmingly civilian targets to accomplish the U.S. goal even if it was to intimidate Russia. As the U.S. currently defines terrorism, the two bombings were the worst terrorist acts in world history.

Another historical revision. There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin. So I won't. Read some more history, please. Better yet, there are still people alive who were there. Talk to them.

If you have proof that the LA Times made this up I'd like to see it, so I never waste my time reading another article from them. Thanks in advance.

We've been dealing with this tactic for years.

Since we can't dig HST up and ask him what he meant by his comment there hardly seems much point to this claim, does it? He knew what he meant by it but apparently he isn't talking.

And, of course, if he was part of the big conspiracy of history, he never would have put something like that in writing anyway.

n/t

And neither will all those children of US servicemen who came home to have kids instead of dying on the beaches of Japan.

If the Emperor wanted peace, why did he not simply order his commanders to step down and order his soldiers to put down their weapons?

Can you cite that command being issued before Hiroshima/Nagasaki?

This seems more like academic studies that begin with the concept that the nuclear attack was wrong and unjustified, and then hunts up arguments to support that position. History with an ax to grind is not history, it's politics.

The Japanese themselves have stated that the Imperial military was not ready to surrender until the A-bombs allowed the Emperor to point out that there was no honor to allowing the homeland to be destroyed.

which is subtitled "A Half Century of Denial"

<snip, referring to an essay published in Harper's in early 1947. The essay was bylined by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson but was in fact the product of a "committee" dedicated to putting a justification on Truman's actions in front of the public, who were just then reeling from the revelations of John Hersey's novel Hiroshima . This essay would form an "official" narrative of what "really" happened>

p. 108-109

"Because it would prove to be the keystone of all future justifications of the bombings, the question of how Stimson arrived at his figure for U.S. casualties is an important one -- especially since many Americans mistakenly read "casualties" as "deaths." He wrote:

We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this {invasion} plan to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the latter part of 1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties, in American forces alone.

Stimson did not disclose who "informed" him of this. In fact, as we shall see, official estimates for the Joint Chiefs were much lower. But until the mid-1980s, Stimson's figure was rarely challenged. Over the years President Truman even upgraded his own estimate to approximate Stimson's number.

This indicates how completely the Harper's essay was regarded as authoritative. Stimson himself would offer in 1948 an explanation for why this would be so. "History," he wrote, "is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such."
<end snip>

History is indeed written by the victors, and they are never war criminals. Everything they ever did was justified and excused. Everything. Everything /sarcasm off/

that the homeland would be destroyed. I'm sure he saw the invasion coming and the devastation it would bring the same as anyone else, and that's probably why he contacted Truman TWICE asking for peace.

Of course he wasn't going to command the soldiers to lay down their arms before an agreement was reached, so of course there's no evidence that he gave this order. But there is evidence that he contacted Truman TWICE asking for peace so that he could give that order. Sadly Truman ignored those pleas, and it appears from the entries of the diary that it was to let 'Manhattan appear in the skies of Japan."

and was ACTIVELY seeking out terms for peace.

in fact they had only 1 condition that they would NOT move on, the recognition of the institution of emperor even after we dropped the second nuke on a second city filled with innocent civilians, men, women, children, nature and has left an indelible scar on all our souls.

in these dangerous times of unilateralism, aggression and MINI NUKES this historic story MUST be told.

peace

and suddenly became so peaceful only AFTER starting the deadliest conflict the world has ever seen.

If any nation ever deserved the A bomb, its was Germany and Japan for killing more people in the history of humanity.

TWICE.

peace

Both sides believed that civilians were a legit target because they were part of the economy that supported the war effort. One tactic was to try to disrupt industrial production by bombing residential areas on the premise that the residents would have trouble getting to work (the euphemism was "de-housing the enemy"). At any rate, it was no noble impulse that made most nations abandon the practice of targeting civilians, it was the reality that civilian bombing was expensive, dangerous (bomber crews had the shortest life expectancy) and ineffective.

That in all of the bombing runs the US performed over Japan, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were spared. Why? Because they wanted a clean slate in order to judge the bomb's effectiveness.

Read your history, it ain't always pretty.

"the deadliest conflict the world has ever seen?"

At what point do you and I "deserve" to be vaporized for the actions of our government?

What city did you say you live in?

As horrible as those regimes were, on the mass-murder scale Germany is a distant third and Japan further back. Stalin already had 10 million dead before Hitler had taken power, and Mao managed to out-kill Stalin.

peace

I doubt it. What if they did? Would it change anything? What is done is done and let's just make sure it never happens again.

to prevent their use again.

peace

Singing the "never again" tune in the key of Hitler. We should all reaffirm that we won't be killing innocents ever again.

the germans and japanese have been strog advocates for peace for 60 years... shoot they were against the iraq war... the japanese renounced foreign war outright and never forget hiroshima or nagasaki.

it is my country that worries me.

:hi:

peace

until you first admit that it was a mistake. that's why it's important that people accept the truth.

Agreed. This is a point of history that I'm surprised
is even in dispute now. Multiple points in fact;

The Japanese were forced into WW2 (albeit probably for a
more noble reason than why we were forced into Iraq,
because FDR wanted us to fight Hitler but had vowed America's sons
would never fight in a foreign war "unless attacked,").
Then they were cornered into a ~first strike (though it's not clear
to me if FDR knew it'd be at Pearl Harbor or elsewhere).
Then they were spread way too thin over China etc
so it was just a matter of time.
Finally, by the time the bombs were dropped they'd already
surrendered - as Truman's telegram indicates.

No judgements in the above; just history.

They were bent on world conquest on their own.

My God, what a rationalization.

First, this is an OPINION piece. Not that makes it bad, but opinion pieces by nature are opinion, and do not live up to the rigors (as it were) of full fledged reporting.

Case and point, just because Truman said that the Japs were looking for peace does not mean that they wanted unconditional surrender.

I asked for a reference for this "one condition" that you repeatedly claim they had. What was the condition? Do you have a link? Also, what confidence do you have that this was the only condition they ever had? Are you claming that they never had any other conditions. And, the policy of the United States was unconditional surrender. That's all they had to do. We were clear about what we wanted, if you ask me (and many other level headed sorts -- not that I am level headed mind you) they were the intransigence ones.

War is hell. It always has been, it always will be. Innocents always get hurt. It is entirely possible that the Japanese army murdered more innocent men women and children at the end of a bayonet or with a rifle than we did with the nuclear bombs. Does not alone justify dropping the bomb, just to get back at them? No. But there is more to the story.

In Europe, Italian and German soldiers (with typical Western thought) would surrender when it was obvious that they were beaten, as a result we would gave entire regiments surrender at once. By contrast, Japanese soldiers would almost always be down to the singleton before he would surrender.

Places with Japanese natives had mothers jumping off of cliffs with a child in each arm before allowing allied soldiers capturing them. The Japanese government was equiping the local women with bamboo spears to defend the homeland. Clearly there was ample evidence that everyone on the home islands would be hostile and actively fight the invasion and occupation.

I believe (please correct me if I am wrong) that Hiroshima was not the initial target, the first target was clouded over and that is when Hiroshima became a target. Also, they had three days, exactly how long would YOU give them before they assessed that an ENTIRE CITY was just leveled?

Everything I read indicated that the Japanese military were hell bent on fighting and they had the Emperor's ear. The bomb was not for the Emperor, but for all of the military commanders to understand that fighting would be useless.

And if that does not disuade you that the Russians were our primary audience, please remember that they had spies, and they knew we had atomic bombs, and they knew how devistating they would be. There were plenty of Soviet scientists that understood the principles.

cost many lives and is NOT the NORM it is BARBARIC and NUKING a DEFEATED trying to surrender nation TWICE is TERRORISM.

their main condition was the recognition of the traditional institution of emperor, which as a matter of FACT remains to this very day, can you IMAGINE hitler and his supporters remaining in power after wwII... didn't think so.

Chicago Tribune, August 19,1945

JAPS ASKED PEACE IN JAN. ENVOYS ON WAY -- TOKYO

Roosevelt Ignored M'Arthur Report On Nip Proposals

By Walter Trohan

Release of all censorship restrictions in the United States makes it possible to report that the first Japanese peace bid was relayed to the White House seven months ago.

Two days before the late President Roosevelt left the last week in January for the Yalta conference with Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin he received a Japanese offer identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, Harry S. Truman.

MacArthur Relayed Message to F.D.

The Jap offer, based on five separate overtures, was relayed to the White House by Gen. MacArthur in a 40-page communication. The American commander, who had just returned triumphantly to Bataan, urged negotiations on the basis of the Jap overtures.

The offer, as relayed by MacArthur, contemplated abject surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. The suggestion was advanced from the Japanese quarters making the offer that the Emperor become a puppet in the hands of American forces.

Two of the five Jap overtures were made through American channels and three through British channels. All came from responsible Japanese, acting for Emperor Hirohito.

...

The significance of General MacArthur's statement to Roosevelt is monumental. Trohan's article shows that the war in the Pacific could have been over by the early Spring and that Roosevelt had sent thousands of American boys to needless deaths at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as Truman would later do to hundreds of thousands of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

...

~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.


they didn't surrender, even AFTER two nukes, until we ge accepted their 1 condition.

think about it...

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

peace

Japan agreed to Unconditional Surrender.

It seems like as soon as they agreed to it, we stopped the aggression.

not to mention it REMAINS to this very day the longest uniterupted throne in modern history.

not to mention you skipped over all the other stuff i posted.

cat got your tounge?

peace

apsuman wrote:

"Case and {sic} point, just because Truman said that the Japs were looking for peace does not mean that they wanted unconditional surrender."

The Japanese had only one condition: that the Emperor not be removed as an institution. As another poster provided, they were afraid he would be tried as a war criminal and executed. I suspect that had the war dragged on, Truman (and the American people) would have demanded just that, and we would have had a very different post-war Japan, one that might have looked something like Iraq today. "Saving face" is very important in the Japanese culture, and allowing the Emperor to remain as an institution, even if not as a god, allowed the Japanese to retain some national dignity, which they then channeled into peaceful endeavors.

apsuman also wrote:

"Places with Japanese natives had mothers jumping off of cliffs with a child in each arm before allowing allied soldiers capturing them. The Japanese government was equiping the local women with bamboo spears to defend the homeland."

Please recognize the contradiction in this statement: suicide is not the same as fighting to the death. Equipping people with weapons is not the same as the people using them. The Japanese had been told -- exactly as we Americans are being told today -- that "the enemy" was a barbarian and was capable of untold atrocities. They believed what their government propaganda ministers told them. That they ceased hostilities on the word of their emperor says much.

apsuman also wrote:

"And if that does not disuade you that the Russians were our primary audience, please remember that they had spies, and they knew we had atomic bombs, and they knew how devistating they would be. There were plenty of Soviet scientists that understood the principles."

The war-time alliance between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was a fragile one. FDR and later Truman both knew Stalin had his eye on eastern Europe and had already seen how the peace was negotiated with Germany being partitioned. Truman wanted no part of that kind of splintering in the Pacific; he did not want the Russians to enter the Pacific theatre and have any claim on the "spoils" thereof. Not only to save the lives of American troops that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan, Truman wanted to keep the Soviets out. The only way to do that was to end the war before they had a chance to join.

The Soviets, like the defeated Germans, were hot on the trail of the atomic weapon. Truman knew he could hold Stalin's Asiatic conquest at bay if he demonstrated that the U.S. not only had the a-bomb in theory but had actually produced one. . . .or more. Truman believed, erroneously, that the Soviets were many years if not decades behind the U.S. in development of atomic weapons. Therefore, the detonation of one, in his estimation, would put Stalin and the USSR in their place and consolidate the U.S. position of dominance for the foreseeable future, thus preventing rather than escalating an arms' race. (The Soviets actually exploded their first nuclear weapon in 1949; what Truman thought would halt the arms' race actually spurred the Soviets.)

No one knew how devastating nuclear bombs would be. The Trinity test in New Mexico was only carried out in July; the bombs were dropped on Japan in August. There was no way to test for the radiation or the long-term effects; we don't even know all of that yet, a mere half century later. Some reports from the time say that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were exploded in the air rather than on the ground (like the Trinity test) to both maximize the immediate effects on the victims AND minimize any possible subsequent effects on U.S. troops who would be invading and/or occupying Japan. Reports of radioactive fallout in the U.S. from the New Mexico test were not even made public for months after the tests and the Japanese bombings: Kodak's plant in Rochester NY reported that its film was being affected by an unknown something and they suspected it was radiation from the bombs and tests.

And the Russians did not have spies at Alamogordo.

For what it's worth, the Germans would probably have developed atomic weapons before the U.S. except that the Nazi scientists dismissed a lot of the pre-war theoretical work done by Jewish physicists.

Truman may well have sincerely believed he was dropping the bombs to save American lives. But the years and years and years of official obfuscation that followed suggest that even Truman knew he had stepped into very dangerous and unknown territory. To examine and even criticize his decision is not to paint him as a bad or evil person: it is only to admit that we can learn from the past and that sometimes we learn that we -- or at least our national predecessors -- may have acted injudiciously. Understanding now what they did not understand then, we can try to avoid the negative consequences of repeating their actions.

Tansy Gold

I don't doubt that there is a difference between suicide and fighting to the death. However, if she were armed she might have fought to the end rather than jump off a cliff.

I did not say that the Soviets had spies at alamogordo, I said they knew we had nukes, dropping one for their benefit was unnecessary.

Given that the Soviets did not fight the Japanese until August 1945, I can see lots of level headed leaders believing that if possible we should simply try to end the war before the Soviets enter the Japanese theater.

I started reading bpilgrims link above and have yet to be dissuaded from my initial position.

Back in the day there was a sincere belief that strategic bombing would end war as it would allow the aggressors to avoid trench warfare of WWI and attack the enemy in the "vital center". We bombed the hell out of German cities too but with conventional weapons. Earlier in the war we bombed Toyko. Do I wish in war the bullents and bombs would only hit the guys in uniforms? Sure I do. Do I believe that at the time leaders on all sides of the conflict decided upon bombing cities was acceptable? Yes. In the morality of war (hey a new oxymoron) bombing Hiroshima is hardly any different than the bombing of Dresden, London, or Toyko? I don't think so.

Look, I belive that Truman was a pretty moral and straightforward guy. I believe that he believed that dropping the bomb was the right thing to do at the time. In the link from bpilgrim above (before the successful a bomb) Truman was excited at the possibility of Russians entering the war with the Japanese and he said this would end the war a year early. Now, unless I read wrong, that would imply that without the Russians the Japanese had a year of fight left in them. A year of home island fighing. So, I think that he thought that dropping the bomb was a life saving thing to do.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

We're not saying this didn't happen.

We're saying it did happen, but maybe it didn't need to have happened, and maybe we if understand what did happen and what didn't, we can keep from making the same mistakes again.

Sheesh, I'm startin' to sound like Rumsfeld! :-)

Seriously, I see nothing wrong with this discussion. We're not denying what happened, only examining it.

Have you never done something you thought was right at the time but you later regretted and vowed never to do again? Or do you never make mistakes?

That they were oil starved. The very act of Pearl Harbor was one of desperation. Unconditional surrender? We can lay aside what the standards were that the Allied powers wanted, and think about how the Pacific war could've ended without the use.

How could Japan have continued fighting? After that how could thier economy still suffice. We could make fake rubber, could they make fake oil?

In my opinion the bomb was a message to Stalin.

as intended.

and so it goes...



peace

Why not ask the people that Japan brutalized if it was OK to end the war when we did.

we should have ended it sooner when we had the chance as ALL our military leaders in theater at that time thought as well.

peace

A winner sets the terms, a loser either accepts them or the fighting continues.

As only nation to be A-bombed,
Japan should urge U.S. to do everything in its power
to eliminate nuclear weapons
so that such tragedy cannot be repeated


The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs in August 1945 contained a warning of potential nuclear disaster that the U.S. government failed to heed. Yet J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," immediately understood the awful significance of his creation, and he worked to neutralize its power. In 1945 he spoke publicly of the dangers associated with a nuclear arms race, and in 1946 he worked secretly to design the State Department's plan for the international control of atomic energy. In the spring of 1946 he urged congress to look over the horizon to a terrifying nuclear future. Warning senators that eventually a few men could sneak a small atomic weapon into New York City and destroy it, he urged nuclear disarmament.

On September 11th hijackers turned commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction. At some future time they might use spent nuclear reactor fuel wrapped in explosives. And if they are determined to sacrifice their own lives, the assassins will often achieve a high degree of success. The hard truth, as Israel's recent history demonstrates, is that there is no certain defense against suicide bombers.
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/02e/opinion/contribution.html

thanks for sharing :toast:

peace

They shouldn't of attacked America. You think it isn't fair we used that weapon on them? Has someone in your life been telling you life is fair, because if so they are wrong.

I don't think you grip the magnitude of the second world war if you think the bombings shouldn't of happened. We could possibly cut their country off, but that doesn't really matter and a naval blockade of that scale more likely than not is impossible. We didn't have advanced radar and sonar and jets that could intercept vessels wherever they may be, and I suggest you look at a map to get an idea for the circumference of Japan. Nor could we 'bomb their factories' as some other suggested. If you believe that, go read about the 'success' or lack-there-of in regards to bombing campaigns during that time. Bombs drops were sigthed by looking through a scope in the nose of the bomber pointed at the ground coupled with free falling bombs. More civilians were killed from strategic bombing than the atomic weapons, on all fronts. More civilians died in firebombings than in the atomic drops. But guess what, we got drug into this war and had been in it for four long years, something this generation can not even fathom, especially not the vietnam generation, because as is evident that war was miniscule in scale. People were wary of the war but they would not want anything BUT the complete destruction of their enemy. That's what happens when you become involved in something like that rather than being an arm-chair specialist arguing about it over the internet where we are in complete safety. Chinese still hate the japanese after they had 12 million of their civilians murdered by em.

You think people were ready to be nice to the country that attacked us and subsequently caused the loss of a quarter of a million Americans? Thats pure fantasy land talk and you know it. We are dealing with real people where real life emotions play into every step, and to second guess the heroes of that generation is flat our disrespectful. You aren't doing it so we 'dont repeat the past' you are doing it to make them look bad, otherwise you wouldn't be playing the blame game and blaming everyone but the country that attacked us.

I suggest taking a look as this page of a list of FATALITIES if you have trouble grasping the scale, stakes, and emotions that occured during the war.
http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html

295,000 fatalities for the U.S. comes out to 203 people a day for four years straight. Lemme guess, the pres. didn't attend any of those funerals, like what the current president is attacked for after going to war in a country we've been told to hate starting with BushSr and Clinton in 92.

Maybe you can die for no reason some die.

What a profound and effective argument. Are you scared of dying or something? I mean you just cease to exist, nothing to be affraid of, you won't be aware, eternal damnation and heaven aren't real.

Suffering from blinding ignorance must be far more frightful.

when he talks about getting revenge on us :scared:

peace

After you do what Japan did you don't have the right to demand ANYTHING much less demanding their leader remain in control. They were told to shove it in the clearest way possible. They eventually did get to keep their leader......but not as they wanted, he took orders form the US.