That was an excellent article. And yes the writer is correct, but I would suggest that a combination of Soviet involvement and the A Bomb was the straw that broke the camels back.
Ike hadn’t even been in the Pacific Theater.
The Soviets didn’t even invade Manchuria until the 9th of August, the same day we bombed Nagasaki and were facing a fiercely determined and very well equipped army of over 1.7 Million men, 1,800 combat aircraft, thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of artillery pieces.
They never threatened the Japanese mainland.
Exactly. The emperor honestly feared after the dropping of the 2nd Bomb that if they didn’t surrender Japanese would be a dead language in 2 years and the Japanese as a race would be extinct.
I already posted for you earlier in this thread the study groups conclusion commissioned by Truman.
They found that even if there had been no atomic bombings, even if there had been no Russian entrance, even if their had been no land invasion, the Japanese would have surrendered in November AT THE LATEST…
Btw, Eisenhower and Mac Arthur are far more relevant and knowledgeable on the subject than any of us banging away on keyboards 75 years after the fact. I’ve provided you what they had to say in their own words. And that’s what matters.
Pure guesswork and how many millions of Japanese would have died in those extra 3-6 months?
How many Americans, Brits, and Australians?
They were certainly not going to ever surrender if we ceased pressing the attack.
Would you not agree with me that we are second guessing President´s Truman´s decision? After all he refused to Nuke China when they invaded Korea. (General McAuthor wanted 25 targets nuked!)
Monte will never accept anything but her own revisionist version of history where the US is made to look like a nation of devils burning the world down for sport and eating the dead for fun.
Truman heard what Eisenhower said and subsequently didn’t even ask Mac Arthur because of it, and again, his own commissioned committees findings I posted earlier. I’ve provided you what the men prosecuting the war had to say in their own words, you should also refer to SOW Stimson’s contemporaneous journals. There’s far less guesswork needed when you consult that material and ignore subsequent revisionist bullshit.
But what you have pointed out is a judgement call. President Truman used his discretion and made that fateful decision. Personally I disagree, but I was not born until 4 years after the conclusion of WW 2. I cannot second guess our commander in chief. He saw the misery.
The committees findings were no judgement call, it was compiled after the fact. Truman ignored his generals, choosing not to even consult Mac Arthur. A poor judgement call at least.
And the facts show that the Japanese were nowhere near ready to surrender.
I think you are correct.The Japs had a perverted view and practice of Bushido.It took the A bomb to convince them to give up!
Mostly it took a command from the Emperor. Remember he never left the Palace, so his view of the war was still unchanged other than the smoke from the fires.
The walled compound where he lived is a garden in the middle of a high walled prison essentially.
He did not tour the battlefields.
Much like our resident “intellectual experts” who never see the world beyond a college campus or corporate office.
Emperor Hirohito, even during war years, was a puppet. He had little control over the actions of the military.
When push comes to shove, people choose to live. There are always fanatics who want to die for a cause, but the majority of people want to live and the Japanese were no exceptions.
The Wall Street cabal had tested an A-bomb successfully in New Mexico, but they needed to see its effectiveness on live cities, and for that to happen, the war had to be prolonged until two more bombs were ready to go in August.
US servicemen who died on Iwo Jima and Okinawa were victims of this “Manhattan Project” as well.
No it did not. You keep talking about books that have been written years after the fact and ignore what was said, and what was going on, at the time. Many of the upper brass were opposed to the use of the atomic bomb, I’ve quoted some of them for you.
Mac Arthur pointed out this reality, “The war might have ended weeks earlier, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the Emperor.”
Here’s another from brigadier general Carter Clarke.
“We didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”
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He was too modest. Months would be more accurate.
Australia paid a price too, by chasing the Japanese remnants in Borneo. Totally meaningless exercise.
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Complete bullshit. As the war drug on we saw Japanese garrisons literally fight to the last man rather than surrender.
Saipan, 95% of Japanese forces fought to the death. Over 50,000 combined dead.
Empire of Japan
24,000 killed
5,000 suicides
921 prisoners
22,000 civilians dead (mostly suicides)
On Okinawa over 90% of the troops fought to the death and nearly 100,000 civilians chose suicide over being conquered.
Over 200,000 dead combined Japanese troops and civilians.
Tell us just how much they wanted to live and proved it by surrendering?
Why do you insist on just making shit up constantly when it’s so easily proven to be lies?
All the more reason to accept Japan’s bid for surrender early in 1945.
Civilians in Okinawa met death by US naval bombardment.
In all wars there will be civilian deaths. I only know one one war where there were very few civilian deaths, and that was the American Civil was. You could also say that Napoleons reign of terror also resulted in relatively few civilian deaths.
Some no doubt did but then Naval gunfire couldn’t reach more than about 10 miles inland.
Thousands of them killed their own children and committed suicide.
These are documented facts as opposed to the BS you keep peddling.
