There are some interesting arguments Rolex. Grossly overstated and based on the views of a single revisionist historian, but worth looking into and considering. After all, mythology can become history and revisionist history is not a bad thing if done accurately and honestly (and not just to serve a personal bias). IMO the arguments have some degree of truth, but they also overlook the big picture where the Soviet Union was only one consideration among many with the bomb.
The Japanese government had made the decision to surrender and the U.S. was fully aware of that, but chose to kill another 300,000 people on a political agenda of displaying the bomb in an attempt to thwart Soviet control over eastern Europe and before the planned Soviet declaration of war against Japan.
The Japanese government made no formal peace overtures. Individuals, largely unofficially, tested the waters on several occasions. The best that can be said is that with enough time and effort, a settlement similar to the one finally reached might have been reached -- maybe not -- without the bomb. The civilian leadership might have been on board with the idea of ending the war, even in a relatively unconditional manner (with the Monarchy intact), but the militarists certainly weren’t on board. And there was a distinct split. They had no military justification to continue the war, no hope of winning beyond the miracle, but then, there were still Japanese soldiers refusing to surrender as late as the 1960s. The militarists still believed in the war ending with an American defeat on the beaches. In fact, they might have been able to achieve that goal had an invasion been launched. The showdown between the civilians and the military might or might not have won out in favor of ending the war if Hirohito had developed a stronger will, sooner. Too bad we’ll never know for sure.
Some counter quotes from this source:
http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/07-02.aspJapan was dead on its feet in every way but one: The Japanese still had the means -- and the determination -- to make the invading Allied forces pay a terrible price for the final victory. Since the summer of 1944, the armed forces had been drawing units back to Japan in anticipation of a final stand there.
The Japanese were prepared to absorb massive casualties. According to Gen. Korechika Anami, the War Minister, the military could commit 2.3 million troops. Commanders were authorized to call up four million civil servants to augment the troops. The Japanese Cabinet extended the draft to cover most civilians (men from ages fifteen to sixty and women from seventeen to forty-five).
The defending force would have upwards of 10,000 aircraft, most of them kamikaze. Suicide boats and human torpedoes would defend the beaches. The Japanese Army planned to attack the Allied landing force with a three-to-one advantage in manpower. If that failed, the militia and the people of Japan were expected to carry on the fight. Civilians were being taught to strap explosives to their bodies and throw themselves under advancing tanks. Construction battalions had fortified the shorelines of Kyushu and Honshu with tunnels, bunkers, and barbed wire.
As late as August 1945, the Japanese Army thought it could destroy most of the invading force and that there was a fair chance the invasion could be defeated.
World War II would eventually cost the United States more than a million casualties. It consumed the nation's energies and resources to an extent never experienced before or since. When Truman became President in April 1945, US casualties were averaging more than 900 a day. In the Pacific, the toll from each successive battle rose higher.
Note: Not quite the same experience during this time for the small country in the mountains that makes Rolexes.
Hirohito shattered precedent at a meeting of the Supreme War Council June 22, openly stating his criticism of the military: "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers. We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will now strive to study the ways and means to conclude the war. In so doing, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."
Anami and his faction managed to sidestep the Emperor's rebuke. All concerned -- including the Emperor -- hoped that the Soviet Union could be persuaded to act as an intermediary and help end the war on a more acceptable basis than unconditional surrender.
The Potsdam Proclamation, issued July 26 by the heads of government of the US, UK, and China, warned of "utter devastation of the Japanese homeland" unless Japan surrendered unconditionally. "We shall brook no delay," it said. The same day, the cruiser Indianapolis delivered the U-235 core of the "Little Boy" bomb to Tinian.
On July 28, Prime Minister Suzuki declared the Potsdam Proclamation a "thing of no great value" and said "We will simply mokusatsu it." Literally, mokusatsu means "kill with silence." Suzuki said later the meaning he intended was "no comment." The Allies took the statement as rejection of the Potsdam Proclamation.
The Japanese people weren't on board either. Many actually thought the Emperor's announcement of surrender was an announcement of an allied surrender. Misguided, swayed by unending propaganda and bushido culture (a fairly recent development at that, actually) -- I have yet to read anything that significantly supports the opposite. No demonstrations in the street, pent up frustrations boiling over, etc. You can even find the example of the young wife who kills herself so her kamikaze husband will have an easier mission.
As to the “5 Stars” and other source from Alperovitz, well, lets look at them:
Gar Alperovitz - his work is not without criticism. You seem to have pulled most of your quotes and direction exclusively from his work, a historian with an apparently biased world view who also blames the start of the cold war on the United States (and not the Soviet occupation of not only enemy nations but previously occupied victim countries after the war). Using the bomb against Japan was a cornerstone of that theory. There are plenty of historians who, point by point object to many of his core conclusions. But, Gar is famous as the first significant A-bomb revisionist and has done rather well by it.
Admiral William "Bull" Halsey - We won the war with the pacific feet, not some bomb.
General Curtis LeMay - We won the war with my innovative and driven conventional bombing campaign, not some bomb.
General Douglas MacArthur - I WON THE WAR, who needed a bomb.
President Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William Leahy - cold war positions, in the face of MAD, on the morality of the nuclear genie. Leah in fact became quite the anti-nuclear activist after the war.
Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold - again, a plug to the Air Corps long running bombing campaigns as practiced in both theaters.
Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, said that "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."
Again, with King the navy won the war, not some bomb, but last bit is worth noting. Had this been carried to completion, you would now be criticizing the US for starving to death millions of Japanese civilians. It did almost happen, and it might even have worked after the dead piled high enough. It’s telling that a town in Japan dedicated a monument to an American naval base commander who opened up the facility’s garbage dump to the public and saved many from starvation immediately post war. Saburo Saki talked of relatives who did not make it through those lean years.
As to the life vs. life equation, some people are missing the point - perhaps intentionally. How many criminal lives are worth one victim? If a robber is shooting at you and his wife is handing him bullets while holding her baby, are you justified in shooting at the wife? If killing his wife stops him from shooting out of grief, is it itself justified? In both Japan and Germany you had criminal aggressor governments that operated with massive support of the population, though both the “good years” and the bad. They supported a modern industrial “total” war (not just called that because of civilian targeting, but because of the active civilian role in fighting a modern war) and kept their forces supplied with soldiers, tanks, planes, ships, shells and everything else. WW2 was not some Napoleonic era, limited “professional army” live off the land kind of war.
Frankly, I had a grandfather who served from Operation Torch to Okinawa manning a 5-inch gun on a communications ship at every major invasion. He faced dive-bombers, U-boats and kamikazes. He didn’t start the war, he didn’t want the war, was away from his family for five years because of it and his death in an invasion of Japan would not have been, IMO and that of the rest of his family, worth any number of aggressors and those who actively supported them. Had Truman decided to forgo the bombing and go with the invasion, he would have been grossly negligent.
Charon
