General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hiroshima - quit lying to yourselves [View all]former9thward
(31,963 posts)All they wanted was the Emperor to remain. We rejected that and the war continued. We finally accepted that demand and the war ended. That is why Eisenhower, MacArthur and Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy were all against the bomb. There was no point to it.
And the bomb did not even end the war anyway. That is history from the U.S. side.
That is history from the U.S. side. Japanese historians say the war ended due to the Soviet declaration of war on August 7 and the invasion of Manchuria.
As Hasegawa writes in his book Racing the Enemy, the Japanese leadership reacted with concern, but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a sense of urgency, Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same.
Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japans strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing Japans traditional imperial system to continue. Better to surrender to Washington than to Moscow.
By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender. (During the meeting, the second atomic bomb killed tens of thousands at Nagasaki.) On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated?
One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach.
Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are indistinguishable
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=3