Languish.org

Fascinating blog:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/

The author is Alex Wellerstein Professor of History of Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the USA. He's expanded on this theory (as mentioned in the blog) in an article which has now been published in the Age of Hiroshima:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193458/the-age-of-hiroshima

As he says - an interpretation and nothing definite but on this and his thread on this (https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1424387390391652358), it does seem like a plausible and horrifying possibility/interpretation.

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 12, 2021, 02:56:03 PM
Fascinating blog:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/

The author is Alex Wellerstein Professor of History of Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the USA. He's expanded on this theory (as mentioned in the blog) in an article which has now been published in the Age of Hiroshima:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193458/the-age-of-hiroshima

As he says - an interpretation and nothing definite but on this and his thread on this (https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1424387390391652358), it does seem like a plausible and horrifying possibility/interpretation.

I'm not sold on this at all. Truman was perfectly okay with firebombing Japanese cities into oblivion, including Tokyo.
Only Kyoto was spared, allegedly because of Stimson's personal attachment to the city.

He's actually written about the Kyoto target as well - again, quite interestingly:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/

It feels like this is modern argumentation to try and clear Truman of an imagined crime.  It's impossible to say whether Truman knew that Hiroshima was a city or not, but it's not really an important distinction.  Cities were acceptable targets during the war.  It's only decades later that we're trying to condemn or acquit him. 

Honestly, I don't see the point.  If you're looking to condemn Truman for dropping the bomb on a city, then 'he didn't know' isn't a good enough argument, as he should have known, and very easily could have known by paying attention to his briefings.  Hiroshima was an industrial center, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to deduce that where the are factories, there must also be workers. 

Quote from: Neil on August 12, 2021, 03:50:28 PM
It feels like this is modern argumentation to try and clear Truman of an imagined crime.  It's impossible to say whether Truman knew that Hiroshima was a city or not, but it's not really an important distinction.  Cities were acceptable targets during the war.  It's only decades later that we're trying to condemn or acquit him. 

Honestly, I don't see the point.  If you're looking to condemn Truman for dropping the bomb on a city, then 'he didn't know' isn't a good enough argument, as he should have known, and very easily could have known by paying attention to his briefings.  Hiroshima was an industrial center, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to deduce that where the are factories, there must also be workers.

Of course it's impossible - but that's why the interpretation is interesting. It isn't obvious or clear whether he knew or not. And it is an answer - as is guilt at realising/being confronted by the power of the bomb - in Truman's change of attitude towards it from a great weapon to something too awful and destructive to use.

Although I don't think his suggestion is too much of an acquittal: Truman was too incurious (unlike Ike or FDR) and didn't really grill his advisors or understand the power he was unleashing.

Totally separate - but the most interesting Truman revisionism I've seen recently is that, despite what he said and popular memory, he was loaded when he left the White House.

The Allies were regularly burning German and Japanese cities by this point. I have a hard time thinking Truman, or Churchill or Roosevelt, would have had issues with bombing these kinds of targets at least by 1945.

It was World War II, insanity was the normal. Early on the British were dropping leaflets and that was after years of the Germans, Japanese, and Italians committing horrible crimes against neutral countries throughout the world. It took awhile for the Allies to get to a place where burning Hamburg and Kyoto to the ground was considered a reasonable thing to do. We have to consider the context.

It's interesting in the way that many college papers are interesting, because they take a counterfactual statement and then try and build an argument for it. 

Yeah Japanese and German cities were literally destroyed as a matter of routine by that time.

If Truman thought that Hiroshima was not a city, what did he think it was?

Quote from: Tamas on August 12, 2021, 04:39:55 PM
Yeah Japanese and German cities were literally destroyed as a matter of routine by that time.

I don't think anyone's disputing that - it's a question of why the language in August 1945 changed around the bomb. And whether the reason was actually that Truman didn't really understand that Hiroshima was a city not a military target (possibly because of a misapprehension of Stimson emphasising Kyoto's importance as a city and a cultural centre v Hiroshima's military facilities and industry). From the quotes he draws out - I think it is a plausible interpretation.

As it notes - Truman's diary in Potsdam after making the final decision not to go for Kyoto says (he didn't normally write a diary so this may have been him trying out early drafts):

QuoteI have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.

Then in Truman's second draft (which he apparently wrote himself of his speech on this) - before he'd seen images of the damage read:

QuoteThe world will note that the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima which is purely a military base. This was because we did not want to destroy the lives of women and children and innocent civilians in this first attack. But it is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on war industries and thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge the Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities and save themselves from destruction.

They only add a justification in the 5th draft when there were initial casualty estimates and images of the scale of the damage. And you're right about firebombing - that's why the Japanese sent scientists to ascertain if Hiroshima had actually been hit by an atomic bomb or if it had just been firebombed, because they didn't know at the time.

The version of Truman's statement that he actually read (on 9 August - so the day of the Nagasaki bomb) was:

QuoteThe world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction. [...]

    Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against  those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.

When Truman was informed that the Hiroshima bombing had been successful he wrote "this is the greatest thing in history!" The day after he makes that speech on the atomic bomb he gave an order to stop atomic bombing and started taking steps to really formalise civilian not military control of the weapons (there is a dispute over whether he really knew about Nagasaki ahead of schedule - not least because all of these decisions were happening on the sides of the Potsdam Conference and he didn't separately authorise that bombing).

So I think the question is what causes Truman to change - and I think the traditional argument is, arguably, more kind to Truman. That, confronted with the scale of destruction, he became aware and perhaps felt some sort of horror over the bomb. This piece is wondering if perhaps he was under a genuine misapprehension from the briefing with Stimson and actually thought Hiroshima was a "purely military" site and was too incurious or indifferent to ask questions that would disabuse him of that notion (like how many casualties will there be). Did he actually not know until he saw the images and the first reports of casualties - which is why he starts justifying (and self-justifying) it by reference to Pearl Harbor, Japanese war crimes and ending the war quickly? Which is a slightly different type of responsibility.

And personally I find that almost more scary that it was perhaps used without the person ordering it really understanding what he'd ordered.

I mean the problem I have is this is the sort of counterfactual that's easy to build out but hard to debunk, so I don't have a ton of use for it. About the only thing that would debunk would be some awkward recorded conversation where someone tells Truman point blank "by the way, Hiroshima is a city." The reality is Truman almost certainly would have known it was an urban, built up area based on briefings he received and what would have probably have been generalized knowledge of Japan he would have attained from being briefed on military matters on a daily basis. He certainly understood that "industrial area" is all but synonymous with "urban area" in Japan, and honestly in most countries, and he would be aware that in all the Axis countries, the idea of a "purely military" target is fanciful. I think it has to be remembered that in the 1940s the government was far more comfortable with being openly deceitful to the public, due to massive informational asymmetry.

In that era you could plausibly say a city of over 100,000 is a "military" or "industrial" target, and assume that 99% of Americans aren't going to go digging into the specifics on what Hiroshima's nature really is. But I think it was realized after the scale of reporting on the bombings started to come out that wouldn't work. So Truman's broadcast initial statement calls Hiroshima a "Military target" he doesn't call it a purely military target, nor does he elaborate. Which seems typical of someone not looking to bloody the details for the public.

Keep in mind, while the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are old hat today, for many Americans the full details didn't come out for a couple of years. Certainly, the kind of people who made sure to know such things knew it early on, but we didn't live in an information age back then like we do now. John Hersey's long form reporting (published as a book) on the Hiroshima bombing in 1946 was the first heavy exposure for many people of just the scale of what happened. He wrote about people having their eyes melted out of their skulls, their skin blistered beyond recognition by massive doses of radiation, the pure nightmare that was the days and weeks of dying left to those who had received a lethal, but not instantly-lethal, dose of radiation. The vaporization of downtown etc. I can promise you Truman had no desire to get too speechy about that shit on the radio.

FWIW I don't think Truman ever struggled that much with the after effects. There's a story from Oppenheimer who was in Truman's office years later, and started to kinda wax philosophic about the terrible thing they had done. Truman basically called him a bitch, said Oppenheimer didn't do anything, the decision was Truman's and Truman's alone, and that he didn't have time to cry over spilt milk.

I mean Truman came into the Presidency knowing very little and had to learn on the job. It is possible he was misinformed intentionally, but so what? Somebody who made the decision in authority did know and either convinced him it was a military target or was fine with him thinking that. Politicians are susceptible to that kind of thing from their staff all the time.

But again in the context of World War 2 everybody was bombing cities all the time. It is not like if Truman wasn't the President but somebody else, would it have been different? It seems weird to me that after more than a decade of systematic targetting of civilians by all the world powers to make a big deal about this one dude as if it was a personal failing of Truman and Hiroshima would not have been targeted but for his own personal failings.

Quote from: The Larch on August 12, 2021, 04:59:54 PM
If Truman thought that Hiroshima was not a city, what did he think it was?

Basically Stimson and Truman agreed the target list. Stimson - for whatever reason - strongly argued against bombing Kyoto. But in making that argument he emphasised Kyoto's civilian characteristics v Hiroshima's military ones (and there was a military base in Hiroshima).

So Stimson's diary on 24 July notes:

QuoteWe had a few words more about the S-1 program, and I again gave him my reasons for eliminating one of the proposed targets [Kyoto]. He again reiterated with the utmost emphasis his own concurring belief on that subject, and he was particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that if elimination was not done, the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians. It might thus, I pointed out, be the means of preventing what our policy demanded, namely a sympathetic Japan to the United States in case there should be any aggression by Russia in Manchuria.

Truman's diary on the 25th is a little different (as above):

QuoteThis weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

    He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.

So the point in his Kyoto post is whether Truman took more away from that meeting - inaccurately - than Stimson had actually been saying and perhaps not questioned enough to actually clarify the misunderstanding (reminder of Reagan and W Bush in not getting into the weeds?), to disabuse him of that misunderstanding. Or he may have known but just didn't realise how much damage it would do to the wider city, not just the base and industrial sector but then later changed his tone once he realised the scale of the violence from the bomb?

There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

Even if you don't like the human experimentation angle on the bomb its certain that at the time there was a huge amount of acceptance of collateral damage and levelling half a city just so long as you were knocking out a military target with it.
Terror bombing a purely civilian target on the other hand was quite different.

This sounds like the sort of elitism that all Missourians must deal with.  Everyone one assumes that if you are Missouri you are illiterate.

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:19:18 PM
There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

You have proof of this?

I do have a hard time believing that Truman didn't look at maps and saw that for some reason the "military base" of Hiroshima was marked exactly like cities filled with civilians on the maps.

Maybe he thought the bomb was less destructive and somehow more accurate and would only take out a military base.

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 05:22:29 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:19:18 PM
There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

You have proof of this?

I don't have reading links to hand, though a lot of it is there in primary sources.
Nobody would claim the live-fire exercise reason was the main one of course, far more important was maneuvering for position in the post-war world, but it was there.

This is a pretty good, albeit hefty, listen on the topic that does a decent job of looking beyond the all too pervasive even in the 21st century, cold war propaganda "the bomb won the war! no debate allowed!" view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go&t=3840s

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 05:16:25 PM
Keep in mind, while the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are old hat today, for many Americans the full details didn't come out for a couple of years. Certainly, the kind of people who made sure to know such things knew it early on, but we didn't live in an information age back then like we do now. John Hersey's long form reporting (published as a book) on the Hiroshima bombing in 1946 was the first heavy exposure for many people of just the scale of what happened. He wrote about people having their eyes melted out of their skulls, their skin blistered beyond recognition by massive doses of radiation, the pure nightmare that was the days and weeks of dying left to those who had received a lethal, but not instantly-lethal, dose of radiation. The vaporization of downtown etc. I can promise you Truman had no desire to get too speechy about that shit on the radio.

For sure they didn't realise the full horrors but the headline points came out quickly.

From that piece on 8 August the New York Herald Tribune reported "Atom Bomb Destroyed 60% of Hiroshima; Pictures Show 4 Square Miles of City Gone" and this was in the Boston Globe on 9 August 1945 (the day after Truman was briefed on the impact of the bomb in Hiroshima and the day of the Nagasaki bombing which he didn't get prior warning of):
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.nuclearsecrecy.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2F1945-08-09-Boston-Globe-Hiroshima-damage-600x594.jpg&hash=916b2624511c39775c81b16c6b1544e4fb9eb9dc)
It may not be the full details of the horrors - but it actually overstates the number of casualties by estimating that 60% of the city were killed. Which opens another possible explanation, that Truman wanted to emphasise the military nature of the target in communicating to the public and the world.

QuoteI mean Truman came into the Presidency knowing very little and had to learn on the job. It is possible he was misinformed intentionally, but so what? Somebody who made the decision in authority did know and either convinced him it was a military target or was fine with him thinking that. Politicians are susceptible to that kind of thing from their staff all the time.

There is no so what - it's just a possibility based on the information we have. One of several, like most of history, which we then have to interpret. And I don't think there's any suggestion he was deliberately misinformed. And it is a way of reconciling very disparate written records by Truman (there are other possibilities). If Truman's diary a "purely military" target reflects what he genuinely thought at the time, he had misunderstood. And in this guy's argument it provides a different explanation for the emphasis by Truman in the rest of his presidency of putting nukes under civilian control and establishing a "taboo" against using them again.

It's one I think is quite interesting and is a sort of horrifying possibility because I think we like to imagine that such decisions are made on full information and people being briefed (despite our own experience of daily life) and cognisant of what they're doing.

I go back to it seems like we're putting a lot of stock in phrasing in a diary and other transcripts and for some reason assuming it gives us anything like a complete picture. I find it unlikely that Truman was unaware the atomic bombings were going to kill lots of civilian Japanese. There's some small chance maybe he had a different understanding of what "Hiroshima" was versus what it actually was, but I don't think he imagined it was a fort in the middle of a grassy field.

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 05:42:38 PM
Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

:bleeding:

OK Grumbler.

Quote from: PDH on August 12, 2021, 05:23:11 PM
I do have a hard time believing that Truman didn't look at maps and saw that for some reason the "military base" of Hiroshima was marked exactly like cities filled with civilians on the maps.

Maybe he thought the bomb was less destructive and somehow more accurate and would only take out a military base.

Yeah - I think that's a possibility.

The other interesting I didn't realise - but makes sense now I've read it - is that Truman wasn't involved in picking targets. The "target committee" was run out of the Pentagon and included Groves and his deputy Farrell, Brig. General Lauris Norstad of the US Army Air Forces plus some of the scientists. They were aware Hiroshima wasa "typical Jap city" - i.e. lots of wooden buildinngs. They definitely got a detailed target map made of Kyoto but I'm not sure if they did anywhere else. Their list of targets then went up to Stimson - Stimson told them not to bomb Kyoto at all without his permission and the rest of the targets were put on a "reserve list" not to be firebombed.

But the final decision on the target list was made at the end of July when they were in Potsdam. That's when Stimson makes his case that Kyoto is primarily civilian and cultural so shouldn't be a target, while Hiroshima is more military - and Truman writes in his diary.

I think given the general context of everything going on at that point - it could be possible that there wasn't the sort of maps and presentations we probably imagine. I think if Truman made the decision in DC and we were aware that he was in the White House or visited the Pentagon would be very unlikely, but the fact the decision on the final list was made in Europe makes it feel quite possible he was just getting a list and a briefing.

The US bombing major cities to kill civilians was already established practice, witness Tokyo or Dresden. Of course Truman knew Hiroshima was a city, any atlas would have told him that if he was unsure. As POTUS he was C-in-C and responsible for all US operations, something he also knew. Hiroshima wasn't the deadliest single bombing of a Japanese city. Truman knew what nuking Hiroshima meant, and if he didn't that's even worse since it was his job to know. FDR was OK with burning the civilians of major Japanese cities including Tokyo to ashes, why wouldn't Truman be?

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 12, 2021, 05:41:29 PM
I go back to it seems like we're putting a lot of stock in phrasing in a diary and other transcripts and for some reason assuming it gives us anything like a complete picture. I find it unlikely that Truman was unaware the atomic bombings were going to kill lots of civilian Japanese. There's some small chance maybe he had a different understanding of what "Hiroshima" was versus what it actually was, but I don't think he imagined it was a fort in the middle of a grassy field.

Yeah I agree - and I think it is a possibility. But it is an interesting one that explains the change in tone from both Truman's diary and drafts of his statement on Hiroshima and his responses from "this is the greatest thing in history" and we're only targeting the military, to we've tried "insofar as possible" to limit civilian casualties and there are justifications for why Hiroshima was bombed. I think the possibility that his briefing on the scale of the damage, change Truman's attitudes and rhetoric isalso very plausible.

I get that it's just phrasing in his diary and drafts he was writing with his team for a statement - and there is no way to have a complete picture, this is just an interpretation and a possibility among others. But it seems weird to discount contemporaneous written records by Truman based on common sense that he must have known.

Edit: I think it's the most - I don't know - destabilising, or scary, or unsettling possibility because we know what nukes are now and we know how seriously a leader would take the decisions of targets and ordering their use (in part because of Truman in the rest of his presidency). So it seems odd that he might not have had that knowledge and asked all those questions, but they didn't have knowledge then so it seems possible to me. And a reminder that then and now leaders don't just have imperfect information but may understand it imperfectly even when making the most consequential decisions.

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:43:41 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 05:42:38 PM
Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

:bleeding:

OK Grumbler.

:lol:  This whole thing is such a complete Tyr that it is hilarious.  You may be the most gullible person on this board, and you can't resist ad hom arguments even when the hom isn't the person you are responding to.

So the answer is, no, you don't have any evidence for the absurd claims you made, but will go total belligerence instead of just admitting that.

People are making a mountain out of a molehill.  Truman stated that the target was a purely military one, and it was:  the Tenth Army headquarters, in command of the defenses assembled on Kyushu to defend against an American invasion.  Damage to the rest of the city was collateral damage, as far as Truman's briefings were concerned.

There is little doubt that the reasons this HQ was selected as the first target included the fact that it would disrupt Japanese defenses, but also that the city would be devastated by targeting that HQ (not on the fringes of the city like most military installations).  The Targeting Committee wanted to ensure maximum psychological damage on the Japanese military and naval leadership by showing that the bomb could, indeed, destroy cities and make all the Yamato Spirit in Japan moot.

So the "target" wasn't the city, it was the HQ, a purely military installation.  The objective, though, was to devastate the city.  Truman may not have fully appreciated the latter fact.

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:43:41 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 05:42:38 PM
Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

:bleeding:

OK Grumbler.

Oh, I spoke too soon.  You do have evidence to back up your claim. :)  I thought you were making claims based on dodgy innuendo.  I eagerly await your new information.

Quote from: Neil on August 12, 2021, 03:50:28 PM
It feels like this is modern argumentation to try and clear Truman of an imagined crime.  It's impossible to say whether Truman knew that Hiroshima was a city or not, but it's not really an important distinction.  Cities were acceptable targets during the war.  It's only decades later that we're trying to condemn or acquit him. 

Honestly, I don't see the point.  If you're looking to condemn Truman for dropping the bomb on a city, then 'he didn't know' isn't a good enough argument, as he should have known, and very easily could have known by paying attention to his briefings.  Hiroshima was an industrial center, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to deduce that where the are factories, there must also be workers.

Agreed

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 07:34:04 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:43:41 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on August 12, 2021, 05:42:38 PM
Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

:bleeding:

OK Grumbler.

Oh, I spoke too soon.  You do have evidence to back up your claim. :)  I thought you were making claims based on dodgy innuendo.  I eagerly await your new information.

I know you're not actually interested in discussion and are merely trying to debate in bad faith about semantics. Doubtless this won't be enough as you will demand a literal quote using the exact words I used despite my making zero claim to be quoting someone. But...

(https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?institutionId=0&user=0&id=38541593&clippingId=11687746&width=557&height=1049&crop=2735_612_714_1370&rotation=0&ts=1628856063)

Quote from: Tyr on August 13, 2021, 07:03:04 AM
I know you're not actually interested in discussion and are merely trying to debate in bad faith about semantics. Doubtless this won't be enough as you will demand a literal quote using the exact words I used despite my making zero claim to be quoting someone. But...

(https://img.newspapers.com/img/img?institutionId=0&user=0&id=38541593&clippingId=11687746&width=557&height=1049&crop=2735_612_714_1370&rotation=0&ts=1628856063)

If the best you can do is a quote from someone unconnected to the decision who thinks that "the scientists" were the ones who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima (and who is apparently unaware that Nagasaki was also bombed, kinda making his argument moot), then you have no evidence.

This is  an equivalent of the arguments of "Q" from QAnon.

Wow. An All-American Football Conference reference.

(https://www.top5must.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Top-5-Interesting-Facts-About-The-Super-Bowl-AAFC-logo.jpg)

Anyway it seems to me that Halsey is just spouting his own personal opinion with no insider knowledge.

Quote from: Valmy on August 13, 2021, 10:46:06 AM
Wow. An All-American Football Conference reference.

(https://www.top5must.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Top-5-Interesting-Facts-About-The-Super-Bowl-AAFC-logo.jpg)

Anyway it seems to me that Halsey is just spouting his own personal opinion with no insider knowledge.

Note what I said, there's some evidence suggesting this was part of the decision. Not it's absolutely definitely the reason it happened.
I don't have a full list of sources to hand but there is stuff out there.
Another for instance
https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/general-paul-tibbets-%E2%80%93-reflections-hiroshima

Quote

Ryan:  General, two things I want to find out about. Why Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo? I mean you would have shocked the world if you would have wiped out Tokyo. Would it have had more impact?

Tibbets: It may have, but let me answer that question the way the sequence of events occurred. First off, remember, we are working with something that was experimental. The atom bomb was experimental.

Number two, how much damage does that bomb do to different types of manmade materials? Steel, wood, dwellings, factories, you name it. What happened was that in the months before, in other words, as early as April 1945, the Targeting Committee in Washington met at the request of General Groves, and General Arnold in concurrence, to select – let us call them "virgin targets" – targets that would not be struck by the 20th Air Force in their regular bombing. They didn't want a mixture of bomb damage. They wanted to assess damage that the atom bomb did, and not have any impurities wound into it. At that time, there were five cities selected. Unfortunately, I can only recall four of them today: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, and Niigata. Those were the cities that were selected, and General Arnold ordered General [Curtis] LeMay not to strike them under any circumstances until further instructions.

It's unlikely you'd ever get a scientist on record being the moustache twirling villain raz wants. But to me at least it does seem convincing that they were keen to test the bomb in a live fire scenario.
The YouTube link I posted earlier is worth a listen outlining the topic. Also (quite a bit harder to see) the hiroshima museum has quite a lot of original sources that shed light on the decision beyond the simple propeganda reason we are fed.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 12, 2021, 11:50:21 PM
Agreed

I don't know - I think it enhances our understanding of an event by adding a new possibility/interpretation. It's not about right or wrong, is Truman guilty or not. In this case by looking at documents that have, from my undersanding, been seen as a little unusual and confusing and interpreting them literally.

QuoteProof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

I'm not sure about what Tyr's saying - but that level of proof isn't helpful in history surely? I mean if you apply that universally you'd probably be able to excuse some of the worst men in history for their knowledge of atrocities committed by their regimes (though not Stalin - he has a very big paper trail).

From that guy's blog - when drawing up the first list the criteria was: "large urban areas of not less than 3 miles in diameter existing in the larger populated areas... between the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagasaki... [and] should have high strategic value." They also were more interested in cities that hadn't already been leveled by fire-bombing. So Tokyo wasn't considered because of how much it had already been bombed.

The argument from the second committee meeting (dominated by scientists and held in Los Alamos) for Kyoto is striking:

QuoteFrom the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significant of such a weapon as the gadget. ... Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon.

That goes up to Stimson who makes clear he doesn't want Kyoto bombed:

QuoteThen I had in General Arnold and discussed with him the bombing of the B-29's in Japan. I told him of my promise from Lovett that there would be only precision bombing in Japan and that the press yesterday had indicated a bombing of Tokyo which was very far from that. I wanted to know what the facts were. He told me that the Air Force was up against the difficult situation arising out of the fact that Japan, unlike Germany, had not concentrated her industries and that on the contrary they were scattered out and were small and closely connected in site with the houses of their employees; that thus it was practically impossible to destroy the war output of Japan without doing more damage to civilians connected with the output than in Europe. He told me, however, that they were trying to keep it down as far as possible. I told him there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto.

And they did definitely want to show the strength of the new weapon - one reason Hiroshima perhaps went to the top of the list is that it had not been targeted by the air force yet so it would really demonstrate the power of this single bomb. But again from Stimson's diary (and it is a reminder of the constraints on a President that even in June 1945 they might run out of time to go through the Secretary of War's agenda!):

QuoteI told him I was anxious about this feature of the war for two reasons: first, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength. He laughed and said he understood. Owing to the shortness of time I did not get through any further matters on my agenda.

Again it's not about right or wrong - I think that's not a great question. But it's interesting to see what the factors being considered by the targeting committee were and what the different decision makers understood - not least because I do think there is a shift in Truman from being the first President to use this new and innovative weapon, to the last President to use this awesome and terrifying weapon. I think that is really interesting and how that happened for Truman and the other decision makers is striking - everyone says that it's WW2 and cities were destroyed all over. That's true but I don't thnk there's any point when those types of bombing raids are banned by the White House unless they give prior authorisation and making civilian control of those actions very clear. I think that happens because the atom bomb moves from a theoretical weapon to the response of its destruction in practice.

The idea that the US wanted "to show the strength of the new weapon" isn't controversial - that was the entire purpose behind using it.  The question is whether the US wanted to show that strength to demonstrate to the Japanese that resistance was futile, or whether Tyr's mustache-twirling villain scientists wanted to use it because "the war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb."

Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 01:57:31 PM
Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

I think that's quite a big dispute isn't it? Largely around the impact of the Soviet declaration of war (especially as the USSR was the power the Japanese were using to sound out a peace treaty).

Edit: Obviously - again - regardless of the reality there is no way the US would actually know that.

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 07:24:33 AM
If the best you can do is a quote from someone unconnected to the decision who thinks that "the scientists" were the ones who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima (and who is apparently unaware that Nagasaki was also bombed, kinda making his argument moot), then you have no evidence.

Are you suggesting Halsey might have been a bit of a windbag?
The world wonders.

The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 02:51:56 PM
The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 02:09:15 PM

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 01:57:31 PM
Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

I think that's quite a big dispute isn't it? Largely around the impact of the Soviet declaration of war (especially as the USSR was the power the Japanese were using to sound out a peace treaty).

Edit: Obviously - again - regardless of the reality there is no way the US would actually know that.

I don't think that there is any significant dispute amongst serious historians that the Japanese were going to stake everything on a battle to repulse an invasion.  There is a popular misconception that the Soviet DOW shocked the Japanese, but that's false.  The USSR had denounced the non-aggression treaty the previous April and the question was only when they would attack Japan, not whether they would.  And it is also untrue that the Japanese government thought or even wanted the USSR to mediate a peace; that effort was entirely the individual efforts of specific Japanese diplomats in the USSR and quickly was denounced by both the Soviets and their own Foreign Ministry superiors.

The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

Quote from: Tyr on August 13, 2021, 02:59:34 PM

Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 02:51:56 PM
The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

FWIW the atomic bombings likely saved millions of Japanese lives.

Quote from: Tyr on August 13, 2021, 02:59:34 PM

Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2021, 02:51:56 PM
The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

It continues to annoy me that people trot out the nonsense that ending the war immediately didn't save millions of lives, Japanese lives in particular.  The argument that using the bomb staved off WW3 is obvious bullshit.   US possession of the bomb would have been revealed at about the time it became operational whether it was used on Japan or not.

By the time the bombs were used, invasion was pretty much off the table; King and Nimitz had turned against it (due to concerns for how many Kamikazes could potentially contest it) and Marshal was wavering.   Arnold had opposed it all along.

Instead, the USN and USAAF had implemented a new operation, rather grimly named Operation Starvation.  It was a high-intensity port mining operation combined with attacks on Japan's coastal minesweeping forces.  Japan was cut off from the outside (hence their relative lack of concern for losing Manchuria and why they had evacuated 80% of the forces from there to deploy against an invasion of Japan). 

Now, the Big Six were not going to surrender when people started to get hungry.  Not even when they started to starve (olds and youngs would be cut off from food first, because able-bodied civilians were already part of the defense forces).  The surrender would only come when literally everyone was either dead, or so incapacitated by starvation as to be militarily useless.  And even if the Big Six surrendered at that point, how many of those incapacitated people would still be alive after the several weeks it would take for the Allies to bring in food?  Japan would suffer genocidal losses, but the moralists today could say "'well, at least the US didn't use the atomic bomb!" and probably think it worth the trade.

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 05:13:52 PM
The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

I don't know - I understand this is a revisionist take but seems credible and well-reviewed:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022416&content=reviews

I think that there's been a wider shift which has focused more on the USSR's relations with Japan and policy as an Asian power in the 30s and the war. I think there's been an explosion in studies on Soviet-Japanese relations and this might be part of this and I'm not sure how recent it is given that I believe Soviet archive material especially is still dribbling out - but I'm not an expert.

Tyr, why are you stanning for the Japanese lost cause?

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 06:03:06 PM

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 05:13:52 PM
The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

I don't know - I understand this is a revisionist take but seems credible and well-reviewed:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022416&content=reviews

I think that there's been a wider shift which has focused more on the USSR's relations with Japan and policy as an Asian power in the 30s and the war. I think there's been an explosion in studies on Soviet-Japanese relations and this might be part of this and I'm not sure how recent it is given that I believe Soviet archive material especially is still dribbling out - but I'm not an expert.

Actually, Racing the Enemy is well-reviewed in the sense that it has some valuable primary source access, but not so well-reviewed when it comes to the conclusions about why Japan surrendered when it did.  Hasegawa's claim that the Soviet entry into the war was decisive is based solely on the statement to that effect by the Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union (se, for instance, https://middlegroundjournal.com/2013/10/28/review-of-racing-the-enemy-stalin-truman-and-the-surrender-of-japan-by-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-harvard-university-press/ (https://middlegroundjournal.com/2013/10/28/review-of-racing-the-enemy-stalin-truman-and-the-surrender-of-japan-by-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-harvard-university-press/))

Hasagawa's claim also faces the challenge of explaining why the Big Six had their turn-around on the day after Nagasaki was bombed, rather than the day after the USSR declared war.  He says that this was because the Japanese were too shocked on the 9th, but that doesn't seem to be ore than rationalization.

Hasagawa also apparently admits that the Emperor mention the a-bomb in his decision to surrender but not the USSR, but apparently makes no attempt to reconcile this evidence with his Hasagawa's own assertions.

I won't even go into Hasagawa's unsupported* assertion that Truman placed the unconditional surrender demand in the Potsdam Declaration because he didn't want Japan to surrender until the a-bomb was used.  That's just too far out there, and ignores the fact that unconditional surrender had been demanded of all the Axis powers in WW2.


*except by Truman's memoir observation that he thought, and told others around him, that "This is the greatest thing in history."

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:19:18 PM
There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

Even if you don't like the human experimentation angle on the bomb its certain that at the time there was a huge amount of acceptance of collateral damage and levelling half a city just so long as you were knocking out a military target with it.
Terror bombing a purely civilian target on the other hand was quite different.

The war would over soon in large part, if not entirely, because of the atomic bombs.  Without them the military was forecasting (IIRC) horrendous US casualties from the invasion of the Japanese islands.

Other people have mentioned it, but you're talking as if bombing civilians and destroying their homes was some sort of taboo.  Bomber Command had been gutting German cities for years.  The US had been doing the same to Japanese cities.

I've read that the US considered the possibility of detonating the first bomb in an unpopulated area as a warning, but decided against it because of the possibility the Japanese would consider it a bluff, and because the US had so few operational A bombs.

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:19:18 PM
There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

Even if you don't like the human experimentation angle on the bomb its certain that at the time there was a huge amount of acceptance of collateral damage and levelling half a city just so long as you were knocking out a military target with it.
Terror bombing a purely civilian target on the other hand was quite different.

The war would over soon in large part, if not entirely, because of the atomic bombs.  Without them the military was forecasting (IIRC) horrendous US casualties from the invasion of the Japanese islands.

Other people have mentioned it, but you're talking as if bombing civilians and destroying their homes was some sort of taboo.  Bomber Command had been gutting German cities for years.  The US had been doing the same to Japanese cities.

I've read that the US considered the possibility of detonating the first bomb in an unpopulated area as a warning, but decided against it because of the possibility the Japanese would consider it a bluff, and because the US had so few operational A bombs.

You can say that again.

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 07:29:54 PMActually, Racing the Enemy is well-reviewed in the sense that it has some valuable primary source access, but not so well-reviewed when it comes to the conclusions about why Japan surrendered when it did.  Hasegawa's claim that the Soviet entry into the war was decisive is based solely on the statement to that effect by the Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union (se, for instance, https://middlegroundjournal.com/2013/10/28/review-of-racing-the-enemy-stalin-truman-and-the-surrender-of-japan-by-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-harvard-university-press/ (https://middlegroundjournal.com/2013/10/28/review-of-racing-the-enemy-stalin-truman-and-the-surrender-of-japan-by-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-harvard-university-press/))

Hasagawa's claim also faces the challenge of explaining why the Big Six had their turn-around on the day after Nagasaki was bombed, rather than the day after the USSR declared war.  He says that this was because the Japanese were too shocked on the 9th, but that doesn't seem to be ore than rationalization.

Although weren't they effectively on the same day, because the Soviet entry into the war was probably a surprise as it's likely that Sato couldn't communicate with Japan? Sato was informed on 8 August that the USSR would enter the war "tomorrow" on 9 August. The meeting with Molotov was at about 5pm Moscow time and continued for a bit. Sato asked for permission to inform Tokyo before midnight, which Molotov agreed. But Sato didn't clarify which timezone the state of war would start in - the USSR invaded at midnight Transbaikal time (six hours ahead of Moscow). So Sato only had less than an hour from his meeting to wire Tokyo, if the Soviets would let it out in any event. Given that Molotov's declaration said that the Soviet Ambassador in Tokyo would be simultaneously informing the Japanese government - which didn't happen it feels likely. The Japanese only became aware of the war through the invasion along the entire Soviet front at 4 am - and just a few hours before Nagasaki. Not allowing Sato to communicate/using timezones like that does also accord with other behaviour by Stalin and Molotov.

QuoteHasagawa also apparently admits that the Emperor mention the a-bomb in his decision to surrender but not the USSR, but apparently makes no attempt to reconcile this evidence with his Hasagawa's own assertions.

Doesn't that depend on which communication from the Emperor you look at - the communication to the soldiers and sailors which does the opposite. It mentions the USSR but not the A-bomb. I believe Hasegawa's thesis on the Emperor is that the entry into the war of the USSR presents a far greater threat to the imperial throne and household (and raises the risk of Communist revolution as well as territorial losses) and tilts the balance for him towards surrendering to the US. The cabinet secretary's documents also refer to both.

And I think he also quote Kawabe from the command which does give a sense of the double shock effect on Japan:

QuoteWhen the atomic bomb was dropped, I felt: "This is terrible." Immediately thereafter, it was reported Soviet Russia entered the war. This made me feel: "This has really become a very difficult situation."

Russia's participation in the war had long since been expected, but this does not mean that we had been well prepared for it. It was with a nervous heart filled with fear that we expected Russia to enter the war. Although it was a reaction of a man who was faced with the actual occurrence of the inevitable, mine was, to speak more exact, a feeling that "what has been most [feared] has finally come into reality." I felt as though I had been given a thorough beating in rapid succession, and my thoughts were, "So not only has there been an atomic bombing, but this has come, too."

I believe that I was more strongly impressed with the atomic bomb than other people. However, even then, ... because I had a considerable amount of knowledge on the subject of atomic bombs, I had an idea that even the Americans could not produce so many of them. Moreover, since Tokyo was not directly affected by the bombing, the full force of the shock was not felt. On top of it, we had become accustomed to bombings due to frequent raids by B-29s.

Actually, [the] majority in the army did not realize at first that what had been dropped was an atomic bomb, and they were not generally familiar with the terrible nature of the atomic bomb. It was only in a gradual manner that the horrible wreckage which had been made of Hiroshima became known, instead of in a manner of a shocking effect.

In comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock when it actually came. Reports reaching Tokyo described Russian forces as "invading in swarms." It gave us all the more severe shock and alarm because we had been in constant fear of it with a vivid imagination that "the vast Red Army forces in Europe were now being turned against us." In other words, since the atomic bomb and the Russian declaration of war were shocks in a quick succession, I cannot give a definite answer as to which of the two factors was more decisive in ending hostilities.

And Toyoda recorded that while he felt the A bomb was a cause and it wasn't the only cause. The military felt the bomb wouldn't be regularly used (I think correctly, if the war had gone on). He noted that the Soviet invasion was a bigger shock because the military that would happen in autumn and it "became impossible for us to map any reasonable operation plan. Moreover, the peace program which we had so far relied on came to naught [...] I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atomic bombs did more to hasten the surrender." Obviously all of those are memories after the event - and it must have been an incredibly chaotic time just three days and Japan was facing two atomic bombs and massive invasion.

I guess I am an asshole, but this is so tiring.

I have zero confidence that the entire "It was the Soviets!" myth has any basis at all in any honest curiosity about what motivated the Japanese surrender, and is instead absolutely and completely 100% motivated by the desire to make sure the the use of a nuclear weapon be seen as being unambiguously evil, because it didn't actually even do what it was supposed to do anyway.

There is nothing more to this argument then that.

The historical record is pretty simple, and completely obvious. You can read the damn notes about the decision making process of the people who are actually making the decision. This isn't complicated.

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2021, 07:29:54 PM
I won't even go into Hasagawa's unsupported* assertion that Truman placed the unconditional surrender demand in the Potsdam Declaration because he didn't want Japan to surrender until the a-bomb was used.  That's just too far out there, and ignores the fact that unconditional surrender had been demanded of all the Axis powers in WW2.

QuoteIn an attempt to ward off the inevitable disaster, the Axis propagandist are trying all of their old tricks in order to divide the United Nations. They seek to create the idea that if we win this war, Russia, England, China, and the United States are going to get into a cat-and-dog fight.

This is their final effort to turn one nation against another, in the vain hope that they may settle with one or two at a time-that any of us may be so gullible and so forgetful as to be duped into making "deals" at the expense of our Allies.

To these panicky attempts to escape the consequences of their crimes we say-all the United Nations say-that the only terms on which we shall deal with an Axis government or any Axis factions are the terms proclaimed at Casablanca: "Unconditional Surrender."

FDR, Feb. 1943

It is inconceivable that any intelligent statesman in Japan could have any illusion about the possibility of a negotiated peace with conditions in the US in 1945.

And it is completely insane to think that Truman would conceive of such of thing, much less act upon it.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 09:34:57 PM
It is inconceivable that any intelligent statesman in Japan could have any illusion about the possibility of a negotiated peace with conditions in the US in 1945.

QuoteI don't think that there is any significant dispute amongst serious historians that the Japanese were going to stake everything on a battle to repulse an invasion.  There is a popular misconception that the Soviet DOW shocked the Japanese, but that's false.  The USSR had denounced the non-aggression treaty the previous April and the question was only when they would attack Japan, not whether they would.  And it is also untrue that the Japanese government thought or even wanted the USSR to mediate a peace; that effort was entirely the individual efforts of specific Japanese diplomats in the USSR and quickly was denounced by both the Soviets and their own Foreign Ministry superiors.

Although I feel this is wrong on the peace negotiation:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japanese-diplomacy-1945

It was run through Sato in Moscow but on instructions from Tokyo - and Sato was disabusing his superiors of the idea that it would work if all they were saying were "pretty little phrases devoid of all connection with reality". Sato was apparently pretty clear that the only real option was unconditional surrender. But I don't think it can be called an individual effort.

There were intelligent statesmen working for Japan (though from a safe-ish location overseas), but I think it seems that the rest of the statesmen were wrongly thinking there could be some form of negotiated peace. But they weren't from what I can see really setting out what their idea of peace would look like, possibly because they knew surrender was inevitably the only option, so to think seriously of peace would require confronting that and instructions to get the Soviets to mediate were maybe a sort of displacement activity.

Sometimes discussions of these issues seem to miss some basic political facts.

For example, the United States was an electoral democracy.  Its current President - Truman - was perceived as a lightweight and political hack suddenly thrust into a great position of responsibility following the death of the most popular President in American history.  These facts were all known and yet somehow obvious conclusions that follow are missed.

FDR had publicly announced the unconditional surrender policy and repeated the formula for years.  The idea that Harry Truman, after less than 4 months in office, would consider breaking with that policy and offer terms to Japan is bonkers. It would be more rational for a Japanese statesman to bank on an alien invasion taking out the USA than to place their hopes on a change in that policy.  To the extent there were Japanese statesman acting or talking as though such a thing was a viable option, that says more about the dysfunction of Japan's political regime at the moment in time.

As for the A-Bomb, the American public was going to learn about it sometime before Congressional elections in Nov 46 and the next Presidential elections in Nov 48.  If the bomb had not been used in August 45 and the war had continued for months after that, what would the reaction of the US people be when they learned that this powerful weapon was left unused?  What would the families and friends of the soldiers who died in the interim say and think and do?   It is inconceivable that the weapon would not have been used. 

I think a lot of the angst on this comes from what we understand about nuclear weapons NOW.

At the time, the atomic bomb was not that different then what was already available. We killed more people, and did more damage, fire bombing Tokyo a couple months earlier in one night then what happened at Hiroshima. The difference was not in outcome, but rather in effort required. It took hundreds of bombers carefully coordinated with cooperative weather to butcher 100,000 civilians in about the worst way possible with firebombing. It took a couple bombers and one bomb that could be repeated over and over and over again to destroy Hiroshima.

So the idea that there was some kind of difficult moral decision to be made by the men involved is simply not the case. The moral decision had *already* been made that killing massive number of civilians was to be desired. This just did so in a different manner.

We all know that this was the start to something that WAS different in actual kind. We all know that from Hiroshima we would enter a world of MIRVed ICBMS lurking beneath the ocean ready to literally wipe out humanity, and some grotesque concept perfectly and aptly named MAD was the only thing stopping the end of humanity.

Truman might have imagined that, but almost certainly not in any way that matter in mid 1945. I don't even think it was presented to him (IIRC) as  "Hey, we have this really big bomb, should we use it?" Rather it was "Hey, just thought you should know, we have this really big bomb which we will be using...". And why wouldn't he use it? It was going to killa bunch of people really fast and easy instead of with a lot of work, and hopefully that would convince those damn Japanese to finally end this idiotic war.

There wasn't any great moral wailing and gnashing about whether or not to use it. That means that either

a) Doing so was, in the context of the time and the men making the decision, not morally very questionable, or
b) Truman and everyone involved were absolute monsters who just loved to kill as many people as possible and were probably happy there was a global war so they could indulge their mass psycopathy.

Haberdashers gonna haberdash.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 13, 2021, 07:38:23 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 12, 2021, 05:19:18 PM
There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

Even if you don't like the human experimentation angle on the bomb its certain that at the time there was a huge amount of acceptance of collateral damage and levelling half a city just so long as you were knocking out a military target with it.
Terror bombing a purely civilian target on the other hand was quite different.

The war would over soon in large part, if not entirely, because of the atomic bombs.  Without them the military was forecasting (IIRC) horrendous US casualties from the invasion of the Japanese islands.

Other people have mentioned it, but you're talking as if bombing civilians and destroying their homes was some sort of taboo.  Bomber Command had been gutting German cities for years.  The US had been doing the same to Japanese cities.

I've read that the US considered the possibility of detonating the first bomb in an unpopulated area as a warning, but decided against it because of the possibility the Japanese would consider it a bluff, and because the US had so few operational A bombs.

I never said anything about the morality of the atomic bombs. In fact I said that bombing cities was seen as acceptable at the time with precision bombing being a far future dream.

I've read that using the bomb on an unpopulated area was considered too but this doesn't really make sense. They'd already done that in the US and if they drop it on an unpopulated island then who is going to be around to see it? It would serve no purpose. It would also mean missing out on the valuable opportunity to use the bomb against an actual city and be able to properly analyse its damage.
I could be wrong but I don't recall any sources from the time actually proposing an unpopulated target, a quick google and I just find modern people saying it was an option.

The bomb in no way saved vast numbers of American lives. Thats a nonsense. An American invasion of Japan just wasn't going to happen. The timelines just didn't line up for it. At the very least long before America got around to this the Soviets would have landed on Hokkaido and the need to surrender vastly stepped up.
The commonly repeated saving over a million American lives in an invasion thing incidentally is part of the post war propaganda effort to justify the decision to drop the bomb and claim its role as war winning wonder weapon. Its not based on contemporary estimates.

Even sans the bombs Japanese surrender wasn't far off. They were already putting out big peace feelers, the only sticking point was that they wanted to talk (as was the norm) whilst the allies insisted on an unconditional surrender... And it was basically just fear of something happening to the emperor which was Japan's main sticking point there.
Also its notable that when the decision to drop the bombs was made Japan hadn't yet gotten the memo from the Potsdam declaration that unconditional surrender was the only way to end the war. Again this points towards the Americans being really keen to use the bomb rather than it being a weapon of last resort.

If you're going to make the bold claim that the US invasion of Japan was not going to happen, if might be nice to back that up with some sourcing.  Troops were being shipped from Europe to Asia.  There was a massive build up underway in Okinawa of troops and landing craft.  That's a lot of trouble to go to for an invasion that wasn't going to happen.

Similarly with the expected casualties.  Incidentally I've read 500,000 dead and 3 million total casualties.  If you claim this was ex post propaganda a source would be nice.

The Japanese *government* was not putting out peace feelers.  A faction in the government was.  And keep in mind the hawks in the cabinet, without whom the government could not make decisions, were in favor of continuing the fight *after* the bombs were dropped.  It took the totally unprecedented intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock.

That's not a government that was ready to surrender without the bombs.

And you say you're not talking about morality, but what is your claim that the US purposely nuked two cities to jockey for post war advantage?  Morally neutral?

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 13, 2021, 08:39:50 PM
Although weren't they effectively on the same day, because the Soviet entry into the war was probably a surprise as it's likely that Sato couldn't communicate with Japan? Sato was informed on 8 August that the USSR would enter the war "tomorrow" on 9 August. The meeting with Molotov was at about 5pm Moscow time and continued for a bit. Sato asked for permission to inform Tokyo before midnight, which Molotov agreed. But Sato didn't clarify which timezone the state of war would start in - the USSR invaded at midnight Transbaikal time (six hours ahead of Moscow). So Sato only had less than an hour from his meeting to wire Tokyo, if the Soviets would let it out in any event. Given that Molotov's declaration said that the Soviet Ambassador in Tokyo would be simultaneously informing the Japanese government - which didn't happen it feels likely. The Japanese only became aware of the war through the invasion along the entire Soviet front at 4 am - and just a few hours before Nagasaki. Not allowing Sato to communicate/using timezones like that does also accord with other behaviour by Stalin and Molotov.

The Soviet offensive became known to the Big Six, as you say, early on August 9th.  They met that morning (and Suzuki met with the Emperor) but the Big Six was still deadlocked.  The Army even began secretly preparing to declare martial law and take over the government.

QuoteDoesn't that depend on which communication from the Emperor you look at - the communication to the soldiers and sailors which does the opposite. It mentions the USSR but not the A-bomb. I believe Hasegawa's thesis on the Emperor is that the entry into the war of the USSR presents a far greater threat to the imperial throne and household (and raises the risk of Communist revolution as well as territorial losses) and tilts the balance for him towards surrendering to the US. The cabinet secretary's documents also refer to both.

QuoteThe Emperor's radio message noted that "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.   Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."  It did not mention the Soviet DoW.


And I think he also quote Kawabe from the command which does give a sense of the double shock effect on Japan:

QuoteWhen the atomic bomb was dropped, I felt: "This is terrible." Immediately thereafter, it was reported Soviet Russia entered the war. This made me feel: "This has really become a very difficult situation."

Russia's participation in the war had long since been expected, but this does not mean that we had been well prepared for it. It was with a nervous heart filled with fear that we expected Russia to enter the war. Although it was a reaction of a man who was faced with the actual occurrence of the inevitable, mine was, to speak more exact, a feeling that "what has been most [feared] has finally come into reality." I felt as though I had been given a thorough beating in rapid succession, and my thoughts were, "So not only has there been an atomic bombing, but this has come, too."

I believe that I was more strongly impressed with the atomic bomb than other people. However, even then, ... because I had a considerable amount of knowledge on the subject of atomic bombs, I had an idea that even the Americans could not produce so many of them. Moreover, since Tokyo was not directly affected by the bombing, the full force of the shock was not felt. On top of it, we had become accustomed to bombings due to frequent raids by B-29s.

Actually, [the] majority in the army did not realize at first that what had been dropped was an atomic bomb, and they were not generally familiar with the terrible nature of the atomic bomb. It was only in a gradual manner that the horrible wreckage which had been made of Hiroshima became known, instead of in a manner of a shocking effect.

In comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock when it actually came. Reports reaching Tokyo described Russian forces as "invading in swarms." It gave us all the more severe shock and alarm because we had been in constant fear of it with a vivid imagination that "the vast Red Army forces in Europe were now being turned against us." In other words, since the atomic bomb and the Russian declaration of war were shocks in a quick succession, I cannot give a definite answer as to which of the two factors was more decisive in ending hostilities.

He can certainly quote Kawabe, but not to support the idea that the Soviet DoW was the straw that broke the camel's back.  And certainly not to support the idea that the a-bombs were unnecessary (if the US had had a crystal ball that would have told them that the Soviets would declare war two days after the first a-bomb was used).

QuoteAnd Toyoda recorded that while he felt the A bomb was a cause and it wasn't the only cause. The military felt the bomb wouldn't be regularly used (I think correctly, if the war had gone on). He noted that the Soviet invasion was a bigger shock because the military that would happen in autumn and it "became impossible for us to map any reasonable operation plan. Moreover, the peace program which we had so far relied on came to naught [...] I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atomic bombs did more to hasten the surrender." Obviously all of those are memories after the event - and it must have been an incredibly chaotic time just three days and Japan was facing two atomic bombs and massive invasion.

And Koichi Kido stated that "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war" and the secretary of the Cabinet statesd that the atomic bombings were "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war."

He could also quote Togo, who had a meeting with the Emperor on August 8th (so before the Soviet DoW) in which the Emperor stated that the government must find a way to immediately end the war.  The use of the atomic bomb had convinced the Emperor that there would be no invasion and thus no chance to defeat an invasion and enter negotiations with a victory in their hand.  While the Japanese army was convinced that the US could not have many atomic bombs because of the known difficulties in separating U-235 from U-238, the Emperor didn't know this (and the Army didn't know about the numerous plutonium bombs the US was making - twelve such bombs could have been used over the course of 1945).

But all of this just debates which of the two shocks was greater.  None of it supports he argument that "it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack" as Gareth Cook of The Boston Globe argues (presumably, the moral meaning of the Soviet violation of their treaty with Japan is not important).

Quote from: Tyr on August 14, 2021, 04:17:58 AM
I never said anything about the morality of the atomic bombs. In fact I said that bombing cities was seen as acceptable at the time with precision bombing being a far future dream.

I've read that using the bomb on an unpopulated area was considered too but this doesn't really make sense. They'd already done that in the US and if they drop it on an unpopulated island then who is going to be around to see it? It would serve no purpose. It would also mean missing out on the valuable opportunity to use the bomb against an actual city and be able to properly analyse its damage.
I could be wrong but I don't recall any sources from the time actually proposing an unpopulated target, a quick google and I just find modern people saying it was an option.

Using the bomb on an unpopulated target was considered at the time and is mentioned, in fact, by Truman in his memoirs. He quotes the targeting committee as telling him "We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war.  We can see no acceptable alternative to direct military use."  Up your google game.

QuoteThe bomb in no way saved vast numbers of American lives. Thats a nonsense. An American invasion of Japan just wasn't going to happen. The timelines just didn't line up for it. At the very least long before America got around to this the Soviets would have landed on Hokkaido and the need to surrender vastly stepped up.
The commonly repeated saving over a million American lives in an invasion thing incidentally is part of the post war propaganda effort to justify the decision to drop the bomb and claim its role as war winning wonder weapon. Its not based on contemporary estimates.

An invasion of Japan was unlikely, but your assertion that it "just wasn't going to happen" is based on your prejudices, not the historical facts.  The Honshu invasion was still the accepted plan when the bombs were dropped, even though some significant military leaders had turned against it.  I'd rate the chances of an invasion as low, but can't see a justification for an assertion that it was zero.

The "commonly repeated saving over a million American lives in an invasion thing" strawman is commonly repeated, but bears no resemblance to any informed argument on the topic.  The Soviets were not going to be able to invade japan in 1945.  They struggled mightily to invade southern Sakhalin by sea, and were , in fact, being pushed back into the sea when the Japanese surrender came.  A large -scale Soviet amphibious capability was years away.

QuoteEven sans the bombs Japanese surrender wasn't far off. They were already putting out big peace feelers, the only sticking point was that they wanted to talk (as was the norm) whilst the allies insisted on an unconditional surrender... And it was basically just fear of something happening to the emperor which was Japan's main sticking point there.
Also its notable that when the decision to drop the bombs was made Japan hadn't yet gotten the memo from the Potsdam declaration that unconditional surrender was the only way to end the war. Again this points towards the Americans being really keen to use the bomb rather than it being a weapon of last resort.

The Japanese were not, in fact, "putting out big peace feelers" and, sans the bomb, their surrender was a long ways off.  Among themselves (but not to the Allies) they discussed pace conditions, but those included absurdities like no war crimes trials except by the Japanese themselves, no disarmament of the military, no occupation, etc.  Also, it is notable that the Potsdam Declaration changed nothing and introduced no new terms to the Allied demand for surrender.  It was a reiteration of demands long made.  Again, this points towards a faction that is really keen to misinterpret the history of the use of the atomic bombs in order to be able to make feel-good moral judgements about others.

As far as I can tell, and I've read literature from the likes of Gar Alperovitz and other anti-bomb adherents, that you're not really off base berkut. They start with the predicate that the bomb must not have been necessary, and to support that predicate they need to find clear and convincing evidence that other alternatives were less cruel.

Alperovitz advocated for simply doing an endless Naval blockade. The issue that ignores is that, as grumbler mentions, a society hits a certain point of starvation--when basically all food supplies are gone and they can only keep going off of what food they are actively producing, where people start to die of actual starvation. Famines, once they really get going, can chunk out huge percentages of the population. It's not at all crazy to speculate that Gar's preferred method could have reduced the population of Japan by 30% or more, but hey, we'd be able to say we hadn't dropped the bomb.

The Soviet invasion argument is more tortured, because it says that one, Japan absolutely just surrendered because the Soviets invaded--thus meaning our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was pointless and evil; but it also speculates somehow we should have known the Japanese would surrender the moment the Soviets invaded--since the timeline was that we bombed Hiroshima before the Soviet invasion and Nagasaki essentially concurrently to the Soviet invasion. There are two big holes in the argument, one is there is scant evidence to suggest that the Soviet invasion sans atomic bombings would have lead to surrender. There's some contradictory evidence that maybe the Soviet invasion was the final nail in the coffin, but it's impossible to know from real history that it would have been enough without the atomic bombings, because the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had already occurred and was well understood by the Japanese at the point they made their decision. It stretches credulity to believe the specter of even more atomic bombings didn't factor into Japanese decision making, not only does it stretch credulity, it defies some of what we know from the historical record of Japanese deliberations.

The other big hole is assuming the Japanese feared Soviet invasion dramatically more than American invasion. I think that assumes some things, for one the Japanese knew the Soviet naval forces were not very impressive, and the Soviets had much reduced capacity to conduct a large scale naval invasion than the United States. Keep in mind what the Soviet amphibious activities really were--one, a landing in Northern Korea by about 15,000 troops, and another landing in Kuril of about 6500 troops. Remember that Sakhalin Island was actually split between Russia and Japan after the Russo-Japanese War, so Russia was better positioned there because it could build up ground forces on its side of the demarcation line. Thus, Russia activities in both respects, were relatively small. The Soviets had considered invading Hokkaido and called it off, because that was a much bigger Naval and amphibious landing undertaking. While some of the Soviet reticence was that the invasion of Hokkaido would be a blatant violation of the Yalta Agreement--and Truman had already specifically saber rattled that he would have found any Soviet occupation of the home islands unacceptable, it's impossible to deny that the Soviet military planners also were expressing grave doubts about their ability to carry out what would have been almost an Operation Overlord scale naval and amphibious invasion, but with a far less powerful and capable naval force than the combined American/British fleet had in Western Europe. Frankly the Soviet invasion plans were grim, due to their limit in transportation and landing craft the "invasion wave" would actually have to land, have transport ships cross back over, pick up more guys, and then land again. Meanwhile the first wave would be facing pretty terrible fighting. This was in stark contrast to Overlord, while we sent in landing craft in multiple waves, we had 132,000 soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, with another 24,000 who had landed as paratroopers.

It is highly unlikely Japan was unaware of how weak the Soviets were at sea, and how difficult a truly large scale amphibious invasion would be for the Soviet Union. I find it skeptical that the Japanese credibly believed the Soviets were going to overrun the home islands when they still thought they had an ability to massively resist and slow down a U.S. invasion of the same, given they knew the U.S. had the world's largest Navy by that point and a massive number of support capacity for doing amphibious invasions.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 13, 2021, 10:10:25 PM
Sometimes discussions of these issues seem to miss some basic political facts.

For example, the United States was an electoral democracy.  Its current President - Truman - was perceived as a lightweight and political hack suddenly thrust into a great position of responsibility following the death of the most popular President in American history.  These facts were all known and yet somehow obvious conclusions that follow are missed.

FDR had publicly announced the unconditional surrender policy and repeated the formula for years.  The idea that Harry Truman, after less than 4 months in office, would consider breaking with that policy and offer terms to Japan is bonkers. It would be more rational for a Japanese statesman to bank on an alien invasion taking out the USA than to place their hopes on a change in that policy.  To the extent there were Japanese statesman acting or talking as though such a thing was a viable option, that says more about the dysfunction of Japan's political regime at the moment in time.

I totally agree - but I think if you're trying to understand Japanese decision makers in the 30s and 40s through "rationality" then you'll get nowhere. It'll just be baffled incomprehension.

And I think it is interesting to see Sato from the semi-safe distance of Moscow confronting the leadership with exactly this.

QuoteAs for the A-Bomb, the American public was going to learn about it sometime before Congressional elections in Nov 46 and the next Presidential elections in Nov 48.  If the bomb had not been used in August 45 and the war had continued for months after that, what would the reaction of the US people be when they learned that this powerful weapon was left unused?  What would the families and friends of the soldiers who died in the interim say and think and do?   It is inconceivable that the weapon would not have been used.

I don't disagree with any of this. If I was saying it shouldn't have been used or wouldn't have been - that's what I'd be seeing. But I don't think that's very interesting. It happened.

What I find more interesting is Wellerstein's point about the importance of Truman to the nuclear taboo - and what caused that shift. And I don't think it was the bomb alone that caused the Japanese to surrender. After Nagasaki there are documents in their General Headquarters that basically it's like fire bombing, as people have pointed out here, and, because it relies on radioactive material, the Americans will probably take a while to get new ones. I think it's the double shock that changes the perspective that they can basically defend the Home Islands and prepare for the inevitable Soviet invasion in autumn, possibly, or spring. I also think a Soviet/communist threat involves Hirohito far, far more. But it's a nexus of factors and I think the idea that it's clear, obvious and monocausal is wrong.

QuoteI think a lot of the angst on this comes from what we understand about nuclear weapons NOW.

I think this is linked to Wellerstein's point that actually attitudes to the bomb shift incredibly quickly - with Truman. So the day after Nagasaki (which he didn't have advance notice of) he issues an order stopping the use the use of nukes (according to Wallace, Truman did frame that in moral terms). After that he sets up rules that clarify that it is under the control of the President as C-in-C, not the military and use of the bomb needs him to sign off.  And, after that, Wellerstein argues Truman is very important in establishing a taboo around nuclear weapons - that they are not normal weapons of war to be used casually. As has been pointed out - that's in the context of a war were cities were destroyed and I don't think every firebombing target list went to Truman for sign off.

So I think that shift is really interesting and as I say it may simpl be Truman seeing the extent of the damage from one bomb and basically that it was different from firebombing and needed to be brought under the White House. Wellerstein's case is possibly that he didn't know (by mistake) the target would be a city, so when he then gets the briefing and the US papers are running stories of 60% of the population were killed (which is wrong) - he behaves exactly like you'd expect the "the buck stops here" guy to behave. He takes responsibility and puts things in place to ensure that doesn't happen again.

QuoteThe Japanese *government* was not putting out peace feelers.  A faction in the government was.  And keep in mind the hawks in the cabinet, without whom the government could not make decisions, were in favor of continuing the fight *after* the bombs were dropped.  It took the totally unprecedented intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock.

Which is exactly Sato's point. He was being asked to help orchestrate peace talks but was not able to even explain what Japanese terms would be because that wasn't even being thought of far less agreed. As he wrote to Togo: "If the Japanese empire is really faced with the necessity of terminating the war, we must first of all make up our minds to terminate the war." But all he got back was "pretty little phrases", which caused him to say the only option is surrender.

And I don't know if it is just divisions in the government or as I say an inability to confront the position they were in because that would lead to concluding the only way out was surrender. As I say I almost wonder if the peace overtures were a displacement activity to avoid confronting reality (including reality about the USSR and Stalin).

QuoteBut all of this just debates which of the two shocks was greater.  None of it supports he argument that "it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack" as Gareth Cook of The Boston Globe argues (presumably, the moral meaning of the Soviet violation of their treaty with Japan is not important).

Sure but I don't agree with his argument - my point is it was the combination of shocks and I'm not sure that either on their own was sufficient.

I'm pretty confident from my readings that Japan would have surrendered at the same point without the Soviet DoW.  Japan had already withdrawn most of the Kwantung Army to defend japan (it was the appearance of those troops in Kyushu that caused the Allies to call off Operation Olympic) and it was cut off from Manchuria by Operation Starvation.  The Japanese knew that the Soviets lacked the amphibious capability to invade japan itself before the next spring (and even then, that the Soviets were FAR more vulnerable to kamikaze attacks than the USN was).

It is true that the Soviet entry into the war eliminated the Soviets as possible intermediaries for peace talks, but since the Japanese had no intention of engaging in peace talks before defeating an Allied invasion, that loss was purely nominal.   The Soviet DoW would embolden the secret communist cells in Japan, but the Japanese leadership was far more concerned with a general breakdown of social order than of a communist uprising.  That breakdown was going to come from the extreme privation that the Japanese people would have to endure in their blockaded and non-self-sufficient islands.

The Soviet DoW may have shocked the Japanese leadership in terms of its timing, but several of them noted that this had been inevitable since the Soviet renunciation of the non-aggression treaty.  That argues against the idea that the Soviet attack somehow unnerved them so much that they gave up.  In my view, it was mere icing on the cake; it changed nothing in the short term, and surrender came about as a result of events that DID change things in the short term:  the events that showed that there would be no Allied invasion and thus no glorious victory to give the Japanese some bargaining room.  Those events occurred in Hiroshima (showing that the US had an atomic bomb) and Nagasaki (showing that the US had multiple atomic bombs and that the Japanese couldn't just absorb the blow of Hiroshima and continue with their strategy of waiting until they'd defeated an invasion).

Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 14, 2021, 04:58:14 AM
If you're going to make the bold claim that the US invasion of Japan was not going to happen, if might be nice to back that up with some sourcing.  Troops were being shipped from Europe to Asia.  There was a massive build up underway in Okinawa of troops and landing craft.  That's a lot of trouble to go to for an invasion that wasn't going to happen.

These are more reasons why it wasn't going to happen than proof it was. Threatening somebody into doing something demands you actually work towards carrying out your threat.
As I said the timelines just don't add up for it ever going ahead:
- The invasion was scheduled to begin in November.
- The Soviets were planning to invade Hokkaido in August.
- The Japanese were already waking up to the fact they were defeated and putting out peace feelers.
If the atomic bombs didn't exist I just can't see the war going on till November.

Quote
Similarly with the expected casualties.  Incidentally I've read 500,000 dead and 3 million total casualties.  If you claim this was ex post propaganda a source would be nice.

You realise you're asking me to prove a negative here?
People today after the war definitely toss around the million dead figure, that is proven.
What isn't proven is that this comes from during the war.

Quote
The Japanese *government* was not putting out peace feelers.  A faction in the government was.  And keep in mind the hawks in the cabinet, without whom the government could not make decisions, were in favor of continuing the fight *after* the bombs were dropped.  It took the totally unprecedented intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock.

That's not a government that was ready to surrender without the bombs.

You might as well say any time any government does anything its not the government but a faction within it.
There were disagreements in the Japanese government for sure. One group even tried to launch a coup to stop the surrender. But the safety of the emperor was paramount...and communists on the mainland are not a very good combination with this priority.

The Soviet invasion was the key factor that got them into position to want to end the war, the bombs merely sped up how quickly to get that done.
Its important not to consider the Soviets as merely another military threat. The Japanese establishment was absolutely terrified of communism and the threat of a people's uprising against them. And not necessarily unjustly either, there was a lot of simmering dissent and communism had quite a bit of popularity in Japan well into the 20th century.
The bombs however presented an excellent bit of propaganda for both sides - the Americans got to claim their wonder weapon had won the war in two shots, and the Japanese got brush aside all their earlier rhetoric of fighting to the death and the fear of revolution and instead claim it was the bomb that did it.

Quote
And you say you're not talking about morality, but what is your claim that the US purposely nuked two cities to jockey for post war advantage?  Morally neutral?

Yes.

A Soviet planned invasion of Hokkaido in August is ridiculous.  Not even the Soviets could think that the war would last that long.  March or April as a planning target is believable.  Even then, it would raise doubts that the war would last long enough to get their amphibious equipment produced, deployed, and the troops trained in their use.

The person putting out peace feelers for Japan was their ambassador in Moscow, Sato, who wrote about how frustrating it was that no one in his government would even consider what terms he should bring up with the Soviets.  You can't make the argument that "Japan was putting out peace feelers" when the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister are forbidding anyone from approaching any outside agencies on the topic.

Quote from: Tyr on August 15, 2021, 04:25:51 PM
You realise you're asking me to prove a negative here?

I'm asking you to provide the evidence you used to come to the conclusion the casualty estimates, such as the one I mentioned, were post war propaganda and not in fact contemporaneous good faith estimates.

QuoteYou might as well say any time any government does anything its not the government but a faction within it.

No I might not.  The hawks in the cabinet had the ability to dissolve the government at any time by resigning, thus preventing the government from making a decision.  And by law the military positions had to be serving members.  This is not a common pattern in world governments.  The Secretary of such and such or the Director of this and that can resign in a huff but it doesn't cause the immediate dissolution of the government.

Quote from: grumbler on August 15, 2021, 06:02:14 PM
The person putting out peace feelers for Japan was their ambassador in Moscow, Sato, who wrote about how frustrating it was that no one in his government would even consider what terms he should bring up with the Soviets.  You can't make the argument that "Japan was putting out peace feelers" when the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister are forbidding anyone from approaching any outside agencies on the topic.

But in that link he was writing that in his cables to Togo who was telling him to work with the Soviets to act as mediators.

Also in a government system like Japan's in the war I imagine plausible deniability was quite important - same with Stalinist Russia. And looking back - especially as we know the Japanese destroyed or doctored records - there's probably a fair amount of reading between the lines (similar again with the USSR).

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 15, 2021, 08:10:12 PM
But in that link he was writing that in his cables to Togo who was telling him to work with the Soviets to act as mediators.

Also in a government system like Japan's in the war I imagine plausible deniability was quite important - same with Stalinist Russia. And looking back - especially as we know the Japanese destroyed or doctored records - there's probably a fair amount of reading between the lines (similar again with the USSR).

Sato says that Togo never gave him any directions on what to talk to the Soviets about, never gave him an indication of what Japan wanted out of any mediation efforts, and never authorized him to actually negotiate anything.   There never was any meeting with the Soviets to discuss mediating in any peace process.  There was just Togo's hope that the Soviets would read his mind from thousands of miles away and ride to the rescue, without the Japanese having to do anything (in large part, of course, because the Japanese government couldn't do anything given the multiple vetoes held by different factions in the Big Six). 

Togo was willing to allow Sato to think that he was important, and certainly didn't want to cut off diplomatic relations with the USSR, but Sato was never given permission to approach the Soviets to mediate a Japanese surrender, or even indicate that the Japanese were willing to consider surrender.  That's not how "peace feelers" are sent. 

I don't doubt that Japan would have been ecstatic to have the USSR negotiate a peace deal.

There is zero evidence that they wanted the USSR to negotiate their unconditional surrender. And of course, they don't need the USSR to do that - all they have to do is just announce it....just like they did.

I wonder why the US didn't test other weapons on Japan, what with them dehumanized and the war was going to end anyway.  The US captured German nerve gas and German rockets.  Surely the US would like a chance to test those on civilians too.

This entire thing about the Commies starting a Communist revolt being the thing that REALLY scared the powers that be is so fucking nonsensical.

I mean...the Americans were literally incernating the country, city by city. The Americans had landed on island after island, and actually invaded a took over an island the Japanese considered a home island.

There were all indications that they intended to invade the rest of the Japanese home islands, and remove the government by actual physical occupation. This wasn't theoretical - it was actually in the process of happening.

But apparently, they were not worried about that - no, they were *terrified* that in maybe another year, some Communists were going to land somewhere, and apparently THAT would be the thing that would cause "the people" to rise up and revolt against the government. And THAT was what the government was afraid of - being thrown out of power by "the people", not by some American soldiers physically occupying their country, or some American plane just catching them in the ongoing bombing raids. Or the people revolting from starvation, or simply being tired of being bombed. The last four years of unremitting war? Pah, its a bother, but as long as we don't have a communist revolt triggered by communist troops landing, we can live with the rest!

And the key to this, of course, relies on the Commies actually LANDING, right? I mean - these supposed Japanese communists all desperate to rise up and overthrow the military government of Japan, the only thing stopping them is that there are not any actual Soviet troops on Japanese soil. THAT is the thing that will make all the difference, such that concerns about the naval blockade, starvation, imminent invasion by the Americans, incendiary bombings and fucking nuclear weapons - none of THAT is of concern, gosh no! The Japanese government can deal with any of those things, just as long as no Soviet troops land on Japan!

Note there isn't any actual evidence of this, of course. There is little or no actual evidence that there was any kind of significant communist organized efforts to overthrow the Japanese government. There wasn't then, nor has there been ever. There is no evidence that this fear motivated anyone to do anything - this is basically completely made up, a "just so" story created to add to the idea that it was the Soviet DOW that REALLY made the difference. There is no historical record of any kind of meaningful Japanese communist movement ready to fight the government. There isn't any transcripts of government planning meetings where they are all talking about how hard they are working to make sure the incipent revolt by the masses is kept down (Oh, and maybe we can give a couple minutes at the end of the meeting to talk about that secondary problem we have of the American kicking our asses back across the Pacific, you know, if we can find the time while dealing with the REAL crisis of 1942-45!)

I've never been a huge fan of alt-hist.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 15, 2021, 07:06:24 PM

I'm asking you to provide the evidence you used to come to the conclusion the casualty estimates, such as the one I mentioned, were post war propaganda and not in fact contemporaneous good faith estimates.

It has been proven. We can see for sure that this figure is commonly used today (post-war). The only way to disprove that would be to provide evidence of it during the war. You can't really produce anything to prove it didn't exist during the war.

Quote
No I might not.  The hawks in the cabinet had the ability to dissolve the government at any time by resigning, thus preventing the government from making a decision.  And by law the military positions had to be serving members.  This is not a common pattern in world governments.  The Secretary of such and such or the Director of this and that can resign in a huff but it doesn't cause the immediate dissolution of the government.

The extent to which the emperor had agency is a massive topic of debate. Regardless what is certain is that legally at least the government served at his discretion. He was the law.
Regardless even before going down this nuclear avenue (damnit...) already pre-postdam the split was more in terms of those who just wanted to surrender at all costs and those who wanted to surrender with reservations. With postdam clearly spelling out the only path, the situation looking ever more hopeless at home and the Soviets at the gate it was likely to swing even more in a pro-peace direction.

Quote from: berkutI don't doubt that Japan would have been ecstatic to have the USSR negotiate a peace deal.

There is zero evidence that they wanted the USSR to negotiate their unconditional surrender. And of course, they don't need the USSR to do that - all they have to do is just announce it....just like they did.

The famous radio broadcast announcing the surrender came after they'd passed notice to the allies via the Swedish (or was it Swiss, can't recall) embassy that they accepted the terms of surrender.
I have no idea whether the broadcast would have been accepted on its own merits, though I'm somewhat doubtful, I think there would need to be some official confirmation via neutral embassies (which the USSR was when they tried going through them).

QuoteThis entire thing about the Commies starting a Communist revolt being the thing that REALLY scared the powers that be is so fucking nonsensical.

I mean...the Americans were literally incernating the country, city by city. The Americans had landed on island after island, and actually invaded a took over an island the Japanese considered a home island.

Thats the thing about evil dictatorships. They tend not to be too bothered about the welfare of their own people. Half of the country could burn as far as they were concerned if it meant they got out of it. Hell, even if they knew there was no way out spite tends to come into play with such people ala Hitler's last days.

As to home islands...Okinawa I guess  you mean? Generally that's not counted as one of the home islands. It was more Japanese than Korea for certain, but still a bit foreign. Not one of the mainland big 4 islands.
The American invasion of Okinawa was a concern for sure. It was an invasion of Japan-proper afterall. But it wasn't anywhere near as big an issue as a landing on the mainland would be.

QuoteThere were all indications that they intended to invade the rest of the Japanese home islands, and remove the government by actual physical occupation. This wasn't theoretical - it was actually in the process of happening.

But apparently, they were not worried about that - no, they were *terrified* that in maybe another year, some Communists were going to land somewhere, and apparently THAT would be the thing that would cause "the people" to rise up and revolt against the government. And THAT was what the government was afraid of - being thrown out of power by "the people", not by some American soldiers physically occupying their country, or some American plane just catching them in the ongoing bombing raids. Or the people revolting from starvation, or simply being tired of being bombed. The last four years of unremitting war? Pah, its a bother, but as long as we don't have a communist revolt triggered by communist troops landing, we can live with the rest!

Of course they were worried about an American invasion. Who said they weren't?
If they hadn't been concerned about this then that would change things quite significantly.
Most of their military strength was turned southwards against the oncoming American invasion.

Why do you think the Soviets weren't going to invade for another year? Where are you getting this from? It flies against all evidence.

As to the Japanese fear of revolution... I suspect you don't know too much about Showa era Japan here. It is a problem that this is a story too often told almost entirely from the American perspective.
As said it was a huge factor in Japanese thinking in the mid-20th century. The big thing delaying their surrender was not that they thought they could win but that they wanted to guarantee the survival of the imperial system. Unrest was brewing in Japan and to quote Fumimaro Konoe...

QuoteThus, if it were only a matter of defeat, I think it would not be necessary to be concerned about
the imperial system. More than defeat itself, what we must be most concerned about from the standpoint of preserving the imperial system is the communist revolution which may accompany defeat

QuoteAfter careful deliberation, it is my belief that at the present time events both within and outside the country are moving rapidly toward a communist revolution

The extent to which the unrest over food shortages and general deprivation would have led to a communist revolt is up for debate. But the fear was very real.

QuoteAnd the key to this, of course, relies on the Commies actually LANDING, right? I mean - these supposed Japanese communists all desperate to rise up and overthrow the military government of Japan, the only thing stopping them is that there are not any actual Soviet troops on Japanese soil. THAT is the thing that will make all the difference, such that concerns about the naval blockade, starvation, imminent invasion by the Americans, incendiary bombings and fucking nuclear weapons - none of THAT is of concern, gosh no! The Japanese government can deal with any of those things, just as long as no Soviet troops land on Japan!

So the French resistance didn't exist because they waited until the allied landings to really spring into action on a large scale?

For revolt in Japan there was this factor of lack of outside support for sure. But there was also the factor that the situation was becoming worse day on day. Starvation was rampant. It could be at any moment that the trigger to overcome the imperial programming and set off an uprising would come.

QuoteNote there isn't any actual evidence of this, of course.

Well. Apart from surviving first hand sources from within and around the Japanese leadership.

QuoteThere is little or no actual evidence that there was any kind of significant communist organized efforts to overthrow the Japanese government

There's no evidence of this in post-war America either.
Didn't stop the commies under the bed paranoia.

Ahh, so you are claiming now that the Communist revolters in Japan were similar to the French Resistance. Excellent, now we are getting somewhere!

So I can point to literally thousands of documents talking about the actions of the French resistance long before D-Day. They did all kinds of shit, in fact. Certainly a lot more AFTER D-Day of course, but one would not be surprised that there was a French Resistance on June 5th, for example. In fact, the Allies were in communication and coordination with them, and there are ample source documents showing just that.

Show me all the source documents of the activities of the Japanese Communist Resistance in Japan. They were probably blowing up bridges, maybe killing (or trying to kill) Japanese officials, or doing whatever it is contemporaneous with French Resistance prior to the actual landings in France. Heck, they were probably even in communication with the Soviets! Radio transcripts, carrier pigeon? Gotta be some good stuff here!


I'll wait.

Quote from: Tyr on August 16, 2021, 07:01:41 AM
It has been proven. We can see for sure that this figure is commonly used today (post-war). The only way to disprove that would be to provide evidence of it during the war. You can't really produce anything to prove it didn't exist during the war.

Of course you can.  You could provide a contemporaneous estimate that is markedly lower than the quote unquote post war propaganda estimate.  You could provide a date stamp on the quote unquote propaganda estimate.

QuoteThe extent to which the emperor had agency is a massive topic of debate. Regardless what is certain is that legally at least the government served at his discretion. He was the law.
Regardless even before going down this nuclear avenue (damnit...) already pre-postdam the split was more in terms of those who just wanted to surrender at all costs and those who wanted to surrender with reservations. With postdam clearly spelling out the only path, the situation looking ever more hopeless at home and the Soviets at the gate it was likely to swing even more in a pro-peace direction.

And, as I and several others have mentioned several times, in order to come to this conclusion you have to ignore the fact that even after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped the hawkish faction wanted to continue the fight.  And this was of course after the Soviet Union had entered the war.

Quote from: grumbler on August 15, 2021, 08:41:52 PM
Sato says that Togo never gave him any directions on what to talk to the Soviets about, never gave him an indication of what Japan wanted out of any mediation efforts, and never authorized him to actually negotiate anything.   There never was any meeting with the Soviets to discuss mediating in any peace process.  There was just Togo's hope that the Soviets would read his mind from thousands of miles away and ride to the rescue, without the Japanese having to do anything (in large part, of course, because the Japanese government couldn't do anything given the multiple vetoes held by different factions in the Big Six). 

Togo didn't - the Japanese leadership were incredibly vague in their idea of what they should offer for peace. It was contentious internally - and Sato criticised it quite bluntly. But the "peace feelers" were authorised by the Imperial Household as well as Togo (and the US was aware of it all). There were discussions around the appropriate concessions to the USSR (the North Kurils, North Manchuria, while Japan itself kept or through puppet regimes managed South Manchuria and Korea). These are, of course, less than what Stalin expected from joining the war.

Were they sincere attempts to negotiate a peace - I'm not sure. I think they were utterly detached from the reality/perspective of the allies (including Stalin). But I don't know how much of that is a failure of the Japanese leadership to fully appreciate their situation (and perhaps be a little bit delusional), if it was just an attempt to buy time or a failure to understand the seriousness of the allies. I think they were vague probably counterproductive and in no way a serious effort to end the war - but factually they did exist and I think the why they were so weak is helpful in understanding/explaining the Japanese leadership at that point. As I say I'm genuinely unsure if it was an attempt to postpone doom, an attempt to buy time or just delusional.

And because the Americans had actually broken the cipher was probably influential in stiffening I imagine, already very strong American resolve. But again the leadership was very wrong on this - I can't remember who but there was one Japanese minister I think who was noting in late July that "Churchill has fallen, America grows isolated" and this meant if Japan could just hold on they could negotiate a favourable peace. Utterly wrong-headed (and particularly vulnerable to the shock from a Soviet invasion).

I swear someone on here asked a while ago about what the various plotters against Hitler really thought they could do - did they really think they could negotiate a peace other than surrender. I think the last months of Japan are actually the example of that

QuoteTogo was willing to allow Sato to think that he was important, and certainly didn't want to cut off diplomatic relations with the USSR, but Sato was never given permission to approach the Soviets to mediate a Japanese surrender, or even indicate that the Japanese were willing to consider surrender.  That's not how "peace feelers" are sent.

But the Japanese leadership at that point hadn't reached the conclusion that they needed to surrender.

QuoteThe Japanese *government* was not putting out peace feelers.  A faction in the government was.  And keep in mind the hawks in the cabinet, without whom the government could not make decisions, were in favor of continuing the fight *after* the bombs were dropped.  It took the totally unprecedented intervention of the emperor to break the deadlock.

[A little bit later...]

No I might not.  The hawks in the cabinet had the ability to dissolve the government at any time by resigning, thus preventing the government from making a decision.  And by law the military positions had to be serving members.  This is not a common pattern in world governments.  The Secretary of such and such or the Director of this and that can resign in a huff but it doesn't cause the immediate dissolution of the government.

I would strongly disagree on the "totally unprecedented" intervention of the emperor. This is disputed and on this point the fact that Japanese officials destroyed or fabricated documents is particularly important, but I think the emperor's interventions was characteristic of his pre-1945 role and behaviour.

And your point around the structure of their government - isn't that exactly why the government acted as factions. If there's that strong ability to provoke crisis in a formal cabinet decision-making, doesn't that mean the way you get anything done is by free-lancing and presenting the cabinet with a fait accompli (which the hawks also did). The structure seems designed with the idea that it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

It's difficult to see how the Japanese government could back out of the peace negotiation if the Soviets had accepted it and Prince Konoe - from the imperial household - had travelled as the Japanese mediator to Moscow. However much the hawks opposed it in advance.

QuoteThis entire thing about the Commies starting a Communist revolt being the thing that REALLY scared the powers that be is so fucking nonsensical.

I mean...the Americans were literally incernating the country, city by city. The Americans had landed on island after island, and actually invaded a took over an island the Japanese considered a home island.

There were all indications that they intended to invade the rest of the Japanese home islands, and remove the government by actual physical occupation. This wasn't theoretical - it was actually in the process of happening.

So my point is not the "powers that be" but specifically the emperor and the imperial household who were I think almost entirely focused on saving the position of the emperor and imperial household. I think it begins to clarify (and there are discussions on this - including through the Swiss to protect the position of the emperor) that the imperial structure in Japan has a better chance of negotiating with the Americans. I think the risk of either revolt or a surrender involving Stalin (i.e. not on Potsdam which was vague on the emperor and exploited for that) was too great. That became an obsession for Hirohito in early August - preserving the imperial objects etc and his own role.

Again I can't remember who but there were ministers who say that actually the bombs and the Soviet invasion were shocks, but the biggest driver to surrender for them was the domestic situation. There were growing reports from every governor that people were turning not just against the government but against the emperor and the imperial household.

Similarly Japan wasn't an occupied country or going through an invasion - so there's no equivalence with the French resistance or the Italian or Greek or Yugoslav partisans. But there is evidence of resistance within Japan - I don't think there's much available in English that I know of, but for example about 10% of planes and other war materials coming out of Japanese factories had been sabotaged by organised workers which, I think, is important.

I think that because it does seem to have been organised workers probably suggests that communists were involved - but it is difficult because they are a bit like the German communists. Germany's communists were the dominant communist party in Europe, I think until the PRC the Japanese had the dominant communist party in Asia. They were both banned, they were both very badly hit by Stalin's purges and they both struggled in the post-war. Unlike the German communists there is no Nazi-Soviet alliance so Comintern's policies stay sort of opposed to the government/popular front-ish - and my understanding is that the communists were perceived in the early post-war as the only party that had consistently opposed militarism. Of course this mainly reflects the fact that for most of the 30s right up until 1941, Stalin was far more pre-occupied with the risk from Japan than from Germany.

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 12:36:16 PM
Togo didn't - the Japanese leadership were incredibly vague in their idea of what they should offer for peace. It was contentious internally - and Sato criticised it quite bluntly. But the "peace feelers" were authorised by the Imperial Household as well as Togo (and the US was aware of it all). There were discussions around the appropriate concessions to the USSR (the North Kurils, North Manchuria, while Japan itself kept or through puppet regimes managed South Manchuria and Korea). These are, of course, less than what Stalin expected from joining the war.

But these discussions were all internal Japanese discussions.  None of them amounted to "peace feelers" because none of them were communicated outside the Japanese inner circle (though the US could, of course, read the cables between Sato and Togo).  A discussion of what Japan had to do before initiating peace feelers isn't the actual initiation of peace feelers.

QuoteWere they sincere attempts to negotiate a peace - I'm not sure. I think they were utterly detached from the reality/perspective of the allies (including Stalin). But I don't know how much of that is a failure of the Japanese leadership to fully appreciate their situation (and perhaps be a little bit delusional), if it was just an attempt to buy time or a failure to understand the seriousness of the allies. I think they were vague probably counterproductive and in no way a serious effort to end the war - but factually they did exist and I think the why they were so weak is helpful in understanding/explaining the Japanese leadership at that point. As I say I'm genuinely unsure if it was an attempt to postpone doom, an attempt to buy time or just delusional.

The whole point, though, is that the Japanese had not, in fact, initiated peace feelers and the Allies knew it.  Arguing against the use of the A-bomb because the Jpanese had indicated a desire to surrender is counter-factual.

QuoteAnd because the Americans had actually broken the cipher was probably influential in stiffening I imagine, already very strong American resolve. But again the leadership was very wrong on this - I can't remember who but there was one Japanese minister I think who was noting in late July that "Churchill has fallen, America grows isolated" and this meant if Japan could just hold on they could negotiate a favourable peace. Utterly wrong-headed (and particularly vulnerable to the shock from a Soviet invasion).

The Japanese leadership, from the Emperor on down, was committed to the policy of holding on until they defeated the first American invasion.  That hope was dashed when the US use of nuclear weapons demonstrated that such an invasion would not likely come.  The shock of the Soviet DoW was great, but it created a problem in the more distant future than the US destruction of entire cities at a  time, and even more distant than the starvation and subsequent civil unrest that was being created by the US blockade and Operation Starvation.  The Soviets had only enough amphibious lift (thanks to American aid) for elements of one division at a time.  The Japanese knew that a Soviet invasion of the homeland couldn't come for months.  The Emperor told Togo on the eighth, after Hiroshima but before the Soviet DoW, that Japan now had to surrender. 

QuoteI swear someone on here asked a while ago about what the various plotters against Hitler really thought they could do - did they really think they could negotiate a peace other than surrender. I think the last months of Japan are actually the example of that

Lots of wishful thinking in both cases, to be sure.  But that's hardly a surprise, as we see lots of wishful thinking in situations not nearly so disastrous.

QuoteBut the Japanese leadership at that point hadn't reached the conclusion that they needed to surrender.

They hadn't even reached the point where they thought that they were fundamentally defeated.

QuoteSo my point is not the "powers that be" but specifically the emperor and the imperial household who were I think almost entirely focused on saving the position of the emperor and imperial household. I think it begins to clarify (and there are discussions on this - including through the Swiss to protect the position of the emperor) that the imperial structure in Japan has a better chance of negotiating with the Americans. I think the risk of either revolt or a surrender involving Stalin (i.e. not on Potsdam which was vague on the emperor and exploited for that) was too great. That became an obsession for Hirohito in early August - preserving the imperial objects etc and his own role.

I don't think that the records we have support the idea that the Emperor was focused on preserving his own position (though he was very concerned to get the Imperial relics away to safety - not to make them safe from the Americans, but to keep them save from the Japanese Army); he had, after all, conceded to Togo that he would accept  unconditional surrender before the Big Six vetoed that and added all the stuff about no occupation or war crimes trials et al.  The compromise was the insistence on a surrender not impinging on the Imperial nature of the Japanese government (an insistence that delayed the surrender by a critical four days).  And, in the end, when the US would not offer that guarantee, it was Hirohito personally who intervened and decided that japan would surrender without the guarantee.

QuoteAgain I can't remember who but there were ministers who say that actually the bombs and the Soviet invasion were shocks, but the biggest driver to surrender for them was the domestic situation. There were growing reports from every governor that people were turning not just against the government but against the emperor and the imperial household.

The domestic order situation was certainly becoming dire, but I think that this is another area where the military elements of the Big Six had a huge blind spot.

QuoteSimilarly Japan wasn't an occupied country or going through an invasion - so there's no equivalence with the French resistance or the Italian or Greek or Yugoslav partisans. But there is evidence of resistance within Japan - I don't think there's much available in English that I know of, but for example about 10% of planes and other war materials coming out of Japanese factories had been sabotaged by organised workers which, I think, is important.

That's an interesting claim, especially if it applies to factories in Japan.  Those in Manchuria and Korea had a lot of forced labor and so one would expect numbers like that, but if that was happening in Japan itself then it had to be organized by anti-fascist (i.e. communist) elements.  Can you steer me to your source on this?

Quote from: grumbler on August 16, 2021, 03:00:12 PM
But these discussions were all internal Japanese discussions.  None of them amounted to "peace feelers" because none of them were communicated outside the Japanese inner circle (though the US could, of course, read the cables between Sato and Togo).  A discussion of what Japan had to do before initiating peace feelers isn't the actual initiation of peace feelers.

They had informed the Soviet government and offered to send Prince Konoe as an envoy for the negotiations. Molotov was unimpressed on exactly the lines Sato had expected. I'm not sure when they first raised that with the Soviets but Sato was instructed to seek an urgent meeting with Molotov after Hiroshima to clarify if the Soviets would help

QuoteThe whole point, though, is that the Japanese had not, in fact, initiated peace feelers and the Allies knew it.  Arguing against the use of the A-bomb because the Jpanese had indicated a desire to surrender is counter-factual.

I'm not arguing against the use of the A-bomb or that the Japanese were indicating a desire to surrender.

QuoteThe Japanese leadership, from the Emperor on down, was committed to the policy of holding on until they defeated the first American invasion.  That hope was dashed when the US use of nuclear weapons demonstrated that such an invasion would not likely come.  The shock of the Soviet DoW was great, but it created a problem in the more distant future than the US destruction of entire cities at a  time, and even more distant than the starvation and subsequent civil unrest that was being created by the US blockade and Operation Starvation.  The Soviets had only enough amphibious lift (thanks to American aid) for elements of one division at a time.  The Japanese knew that a Soviet invasion of the homeland couldn't come for months.  The Emperor told Togo on the eighth, after Hiroshima but before the Soviet DoW, that Japan now had to surrender. 

The Emperor says they must not miss the chance to terminate the war "by bargaining for more favorable conditions now". He added that however much they consulted they could not to an agreement and his wish was to "make arrangements" to end the world as soon as possible. I think that is ambiguous at best as to whether Hirohito was accepting surrender at that point - the language of bargaining and making arrangements suggests not, to me.

I think the key moment is the day after when they have the double shock of a Soviet invasion and a second nuke. I think that destroys any illusions, exposes the risk of Stalin at the negotiating table (and again - there's a decade long intense Soviet-Japanese competition, despite the neutrality agreement) and results in Hirohito's decisive influence for unconditional surrender as opposed to previous ambiguities.

QuoteI don't think that the records we have support the idea that the Emperor was focused on preserving his own position (though he was very concerned to get the Imperial relics away to safety - not to make them safe from the Americans, but to keep them save from the Japanese Army); he had, after all, conceded to Togo that he would accept  unconditional surrender before the Big Six vetoed that and added all the stuff about no occupation or war crimes trials et al.  The compromise was the insistence on a surrender not impinging on the Imperial nature of the Japanese government (an insistence that delayed the surrender by a critical four days).  And, in the end, when the US would not offer that guarantee, it was Hirohito personally who intervened and decided that japan would surrender without the guarantee.

Yeah - although again it depends on the interepretation of the US response (a bit like Potsdam there is deliberate ambiguity around the role of the emperor). So Byrnes replied that the emperor and the Japanese government would be subordinate to the Supreme Allied Commander but did not directly respond to the question. It's a clever diplomatic anser that maintains unconditional surrender, but hints that the emperor's position might be saved. I think that response was probably a win for the Japanese section of the State Department - my understanding is the Japanese translators actually softened it further from "shall be subject to" to "shall be circumscribed by". I don't know how decisive a factor that is but it is striking - I also understand it's not clear if that was something some junior flunkies in the Foreign Office were instructed to do by a superior in the peace party or if it was their own initiative.

QuoteThe domestic order situation was certainly becoming dire, but I think that this is another area where the military elements of the Big Six had a huge blind spot.

Yeah in those 4-5 days there was significant public unrest and disorder. I can't remember who but there was a Japanese figure who said that, in a way, the nukes and Soviet invasion had been a blessing because they were reasons to surrender rather than domestic forces - which it's impossible to see not ending in a civil war. And I think from the perspective of many of the leaders who were all about trying to preserve what they could of Japanese nationhood and the imperial household etc - it may not even be that they were afraid of a communist revolt, because any revolt would fundamentally undermine what in their view were the "foundations" of Japan.

QuoteThat's an interesting claim, especially if it applies to factories in Japan.  Those in Manchuria and Korea had a lot of forced labor and so one would expect numbers like that, but if that was happening in Japan itself then it had to be organized by anti-fascist (i.e. communist) elements.  Can you steer me to your source on this?

I can't, sorry. I can't remember where it is - I read it in an essay on Japanese popular resistance and it stuck in my mind because it's so big. But there was also talk about the sheer level of absenteeism in industries in Tokyo which was reaching 40-50% on some days - and part of that may just have been a "success" from massive bombing campaigns. But I think it's also indicative of collapsing domestic support and - combined with the sabotage and the unrest before the surrender - of growing popular resistance to basically dying for a regime that is visibly on its last legs.

And I wonder if that is actually the more likely possibility and counter-factual - that instead of a huge US invasion you get a domestic collapse and the start of a civil war (possibly like Italy or Greece). In that context - though I don't think any of the participants were thinking about this, it's just me spitballing - the USSR is a very big risk even if they can't invade. I think some of the unrest would need to spread to junior officers and soldiers, and I don't know if that was happening as well. But at that point given that Stalin is about to start making aggressive moves in the early Cold War, I wonder how quickly any internal Japanese conflict would just be subsumed. I think the alliance could just about hold while they're both fighting the Japanese state.

The amount of work put in to come up with an alternative history to what actually happened is astounding, and actually a lot more interesting then the details of the actual new mythology, whatever it might be.

It really does speak to the idea that history is a story we tell ourselves, and one that many people are pretty happy to just make it up to suit whatever it is they really, really, really want to believe. The attempt to re-write history to serve a needed narrative, rather then understand it in order to construct a better, more accurate narrative.

Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 09:12:56 PM
The amount of work put in to come up with an alternative history to what actually happened is astounding, and actually a lot more interesting then the details of the actual new mythology, whatever it might be.

It really does speak to the idea that history is a story we tell ourselves, and one that many people are pretty happy to just make it up to suit whatever it is they really, really, really want to believe. The attempt to re-write history to serve a needed narrative, rather then understand it in order to construct a better, more accurate narrative.

I mean my alternative history is hardly a desperately needed narrative (except, for my unfortunate instinct to add a little bit of complication when I can :lol:). I don't have strong fixed opinions on the surrender because I think there are a lot of factors from everything I've read there are contradictions and issues with the record. - which is what you'd expect about a country surrendering. The only thing I would add where I have a strong opinion is more general in that I think we still are probably underestimating the role of Hirohito (less around the surrender and more Japan in the war generally) and that there are gaps and doctored records from that time to protect Hirohito and the role of the emperor. Basically I think Bix is right - but there's probably even more gaps than we realise.

But my main point is we shouldn't rule out things that the records show were being considered at the time in favour of a simple, monocausal explanation - especially if that's been the dominant view for a while. A revisionist argument is almost always worth engaging with because even if it doesn't convince you it should sharpen your perspective.

My instinct is that it was the double shock - it was the Soviet invasion and the nukes together. I think one or the other and - based on what I've read about the Japanese leadership - I think they probably would have found a way to convince themselves that they could re-organise in Manchuria and maybe defend Korea; or that nukes were basically just a new version of firebombing. I think the combination in a really short space of time was psychologically devastating.

I don't know what you think I really, really want to believe :P

I don't think it is you, I think you just find it an intellectually interesting exercise.

I still maintain that the entire story of the Japanese surrender really being about the Soviet invasion is 100% driven by the need to believe that the nukes did not matter. And a good chunk of that is driven by a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to re-write WW2 history to minimize Western participation. And this particular bit of revisionist history is so delicious - the one part of the war the Soviets were not involved in at all, you get to just pretend like none of it actually mattered - turns out the Soviets won THAT war as well!

You are just like someone who finds it interesting to discuss whether the Civil War was really all about tariffs instead of slavery, or maybe we should re-consider whether the Germans REALLY meant to kill 6 million Jews. I mean..."we shouldn't rule out things that the records show...in favor of mono-casual explanations" after all. And most especially if that has been the dominant view for a while! Let's sharpen our perspective on that entire "The South were trying to protect slavery" bit! Surely slavery wasn't the ONLY (or even dominant) reason for the war!

Right?

Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 09:53:15 PMI don't think it is you, I think you just find it an intellectually interesting exercise.

I find the why in history really interesting. Or I enjoy history that I think gets close to explaining the context in which things happen - though there'll be lots of different ways to balance that out and weigh it up and then obviously giving their take on what the balance was (which I might agree with or not).

QuoteI still maintain that the entire story of the Japanese surrender really being about the Soviet invasion is 100% driven by the need to believe that the nukes did not matter. And a good chunk of that is driven by a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to re-write WW2 history to minimize Western participation. And this particular bit of revisionist history is so delicious - the one part of the war the Soviets were not involved in at all, you get to just pretend like none of it actually mattered - turns out the Soviets won THAT war as well!

Maybe - but if the evidence and the sources they're dredging up from Japanese and Soviet records and interesting and important - does that matter? I don't necessarily have to agree with a historian's perspective or argument to think that they're kind of doing something interesting or bringing some new perspective or evidence. But sometimes it does shift your view.

On WW2 more generally I don't really know or care about military history - it's not something I enjoy reading. So I read about the end of the war and the post-war because I'm interested in the Cold War. I've also read about Hirohito, Chiang and Stalin. But aside from those which I wasn't really reading for WW2 alone, the only WW2 books I've really read are Wages of Destruction about the German economy and a book on the Sino-Japanese war - which was very very high level.

QuoteYou are just like someone who finds it interesting to discuss whether the Civil War was really all about tariffs instead of slavery, or maybe we should re-consider whether the Germans REALLY meant to kill 6 million Jews. I mean..."we shouldn't rule out things that the records show...in favor of mono-casual explanations" after all. And most especially if that has been the dominant view for a while! Let's sharpen our perspective on that entire "The South were trying to protect slavery" bit!

Not really for a start because I don't think they are really equivalent. The Truman question I just found fascinating - because all it's doing is reading what Truman wrote literally and asking, what if that's what he meant? On the surrender for me it's closer to why did Stalin launch the purge, or ignore the evidence of an impending German attach (he was still, apparently, more focused on Japan at that point). There's loads of records, there's loads of possibilities - Stalin is a complex figure so it's impossible to know how he weighed it up (but arguably easier than when you have so many players - as in Japan).

But it was a revisionist argument, relying on records from the time, that displaced the dominant narrative that the Civil War was about states' rights or whatever else. Similarly if you think about the Irving trial, it was the historians' evidence of all the records and all the evidence in all their complexity - and every bit of new evidence (for example from Soviet archives) reinforced the point - that built such an overwhelming case to Irving's racist cherry-picking. It wasn't by ignoring facts that didn't fit but by weighing them against others and reaching a conclusion that is, I think, unarguable.

QuoteOf course you can.  You could provide a contemporaneous estimate that is markedly lower than the quote unquote post war propaganda estimate.  You could provide a date stamp on the quote unquote propaganda estimate.

It first emerges in a 1947 Harper's article.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538830

QuoteAnd, as I and several others have mentioned several times, in order to come to this conclusion you have to ignore the fact that even after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped the hawkish faction wanted to continue the fight.  And this was of course after the Soviet Union had entered the war.

I don't get your logic here.
They wanted to continue to fight even after the bombs had been dropped.... yet Japan surrendered.
This sounds like an argument against the bombs single handedly winning the war  rather than in defence of it.

Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 10:16:29 AM
Ahh, so you are claiming now that the Communist revolters in Japan were similar to the French Resistance. Excellent, now we are getting somewhere!

So I can point to literally thousands of documents talking about the actions of the French resistance long before D-Day. They did all kinds of shit, in fact. Certainly a lot more AFTER D-Day of course, but one would not be surprised that there was a French Resistance on June 5th, for example. In fact, the Allies were in communication and coordination with them, and there are ample source documents showing just that.

Show me all the source documents of the activities of the Japanese Communist Resistance in Japan. They were probably blowing up bridges, maybe killing (or trying to kill) Japanese officials, or doing whatever it is contemporaneous with French Resistance prior to the actual landings in France. Heck, they were probably even in communication with the Soviets! Radio transcripts, carrier pigeon? Gotta be some good stuff here!


I'll wait.

:bleeding: :bleeding: :bleeding:

Holy shit. This is amazing.
You completely ignore the bulk of my reply in order to act smart concentrating on an utterly irrelevant throw away line.
I never said there was the equivalent of the French resistance in Japan. This is a new height of stupid. The only reason they were mentioned was to ridicule your idea that if a group isn't actively fighting at every possible moment then it just doesn't exist, those are the only two possible options.

Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 03:33:27 AM

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538830 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538830)

Why did you link to this?

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 10:23:22 PM
On WW2 more generally I don't really know or care about military history - it's not something I enjoy reading. So I read about the end of the war and the post-war because I'm interested in the Cold War. I've also read about Hirohito, Chiang and Stalin. But aside from those which I wasn't really reading for WW2 alone, the only WW2 books I've really read are Wages of Destruction about the German economy and a book on the Sino-Japanese war - which was very very high level.

Unfortunately you can't really understand WW2 without understanding the military piece. Like it's easy to just roll your eyes and gloss over it, but as I said--the Soviet Union had no real capacity to invade Japan. Japan isn't part of the Asian land mass, it's a series of islands. The only islands the Soviets took were 1) an Island they already controlled half of, and could stage troops on and 2) a very small island that only required an amphibious invasion of like 6500 troops. The latter literally stressed the Soviet naval transport fleet beyond its capacity. The planned invasion of Hokkaido, many Soviet war planners felt would actually fail, because they just lacked the naval transport to get enough men onto the beaches rapidly enough.

Hokkaido is one of the smallest and least populated of the "core" home islands. Meanwhile Japan knew the U.S. Navy actually had the resources to land millions of men on Japanese shores. The idea that Japan was afraid the USSR was going to depose the Emperor just isn't reality. The USSR had a better chance of launching a satellite into space in 1945 than overrunning the Japanese home islands. The Soviets hit the very minor islands they were capable of hitting, and started attacking Japanese occupied territory on mainland Asia, but the USSR was not a direct threat to Japan. That's just military fact, not something we have to speculate about.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 17, 2021, 09:12:04 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 10:23:22 PM
On WW2 more generally I don't really know or care about military history - it's not something I enjoy reading. So I read about the end of the war and the post-war because I'm interested in the Cold War. I've also read about Hirohito, Chiang and Stalin. But aside from those which I wasn't really reading for WW2 alone, the only WW2 books I've really read are Wages of Destruction about the German economy and a book on the Sino-Japanese war - which was very very high level.

Unfortunately you can't really understand WW2 without understanding the military piece. Like it's easy to just roll your eyes and gloss over it, but as I said--the Soviet Union had no real capacity to invade Japan. Japan isn't part of the Asian land mass, it's a series of islands. The only islands the Soviets took were 1) an Island they already controlled half of, and could stage troops on and 2) a very small island that only required an amphibious invasion of like 6500 troops. The latter literally stressed the Soviet naval transport fleet beyond its capacity. The planned invasion of Hokkaido, many Soviet war planners felt would actually fail, because they just lacked the naval transport to get enough men onto the beaches rapidly enough.

Hokkaido is one of the smallest and least populated of the "core" home islands. Meanwhile Japan knew the U.S. Navy actually had the resources to land millions of men on Japanese shores.

Its lack of density is a point against its defensibility. This wouldn't be a d-dayesque amphibious landing. There's plenty of places to grab a beachhead. Whats worse is most of Japan's defences were facing the south of the country, even in Hokkaido they were facing an American invasion on the east.

Quote
The idea that Japan was afraid the USSR was going to depose the Emperor just isn't reality. The USSR had a better chance of launching a satellite into space in 1945 than overrunning the Japanese home islands. The Soviets hit the very minor islands they were capable of hitting, and started attacking Japanese occupied territory on mainland Asia, but the USSR was not a direct threat to Japan. That's just military fact, not something we have to speculate about.

There's two separate things here.
The idea that the USSR could actually conquer Japan is rather far fetched. Hokkaido they could overrun quite easily but going beyond there to Honshu would be difficult- even assuming they wanted to do this, their plans for Hokkaido were to seize the north and then let America do the rest of the dying.
That the Japanese believed the Soviets could take over however is very much grounded in reality. As said its a mistake to think in purely military terms here. The Soviets weren't just another invading army. They fed very neatly into the fears of imminent revolution.

Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 03:33:27 AM
It first emerges in a 1947 Harper's article.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538830

That article supports Yi's statement and demolishes yours.

Quote

QuoteAnd, as I and several others have mentioned several times, in order to come to this conclusion you have to ignore the fact that even after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped the hawkish faction wanted to continue the fight.  And this was of course after the Soviet Union had entered the war.

I don't get your logic here.
They wanted to continue to fight even after the bombs had been dropped.... yet Japan surrendered.
This sounds like an argument against the bombs single handedly winning the war  rather than in defence of it.

You really need to learn some history before you try to use historical evidence, and sharpening your reading comprehension skills would also help you avoid saying dumb things like this.

Here's the timeline of significance:

August 6th: Hiroshima bombed.  Big Six are concerned, because Japan's own nuclear project indicated how powerful the bomb was, but hey console themselves that the US can't have more bombs because it is so hard to separate uranium.

August 8th:  USSR declares war.  Big Six doesn't even meet until late Aug 9th to discuss this.  Togo meets with Hirohito, who tells him that the bomb means Japan needs to seek peace.

August 9-10th:  Big Six meet to discuss Hiroshima and the Soviet DoW.  News comes of Nagasaki, meaning that the US has multiple bombs. Hawk faction still wants to fight on until the Four Conditions can be met, Dove faction wants to accept Potsdam with a guarantee of the Emperor's position.  3-3 tie.  Emperor intervenes personally, says to seek peace.  Hawks agree with Dove proposal, and the message is sent to the US via Swiss embassy.  Truman orders a halt to plans to use a third nuke.

Aug 12th:  US responds with reiteration of Potsdam terms, noting that the Japanese people, not the US government, would decide the Emperor's fate and the role of the position.  Bix Six meet and decide that the US response doesn't meet their condition for surrender, so back to 3-3 tie.

Aug 13-14 The Dove faction works on the Hawk faction but get no traction.  US resumes bombing campaign due to lack of Japanese response.  PM reports to Emperor that the Big Six is deadlocked.  The Emperor again intervenes and declares himself satisfied with the US response, citing again the nuclear attacks.  Japan sends message to US accepting Potsdam terms, and the war is ending.

Aug 15;  Emperor's radio address to the Japanese nation, announcing the surrender, noting that  "the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb."  Mutiny by some troops is quelled when Minister of War commits seppuku.

So what you need to understand but don't is that "the hawkish faction" did want to continue the war, but couldn't in the face of the Emperor's opposition.  Once you understand that there were factions in the Japanese government, and imperial intervention, you won't again say something as dumb as "They wanted to continue to fight even after the bombs had been dropped.... yet Japan surrendered."

Quote:bleeding: :bleeding: :bleeding:

Holy shit. This is amazing.
You completely ignore the bulk of my reply in order to act smart concentrating on an utterly irrelevant throw away line.
I never said there was the equivalent of the French resistance in Japan. This is a new height of stupid. The only reason they were mentioned was to ridicule your idea that if a group isn't actively fighting at every possible moment then it just doesn't exist, those are the only two possible options.

:lmfao: :lmfao: :lmfao:  Holy shit, this is amazing.  You get offended when someone calls you on a stupid claim, and then call your own claim "a new height of stupid" and pretend that it wasn't you that brought it up!

You are correct that comparing Japanese and French resistance movements is "a new height of stupid," but I'm willing to bet you pile up an even greater height of stupid in the future.

Oh yeah, it would definitely be totally easy to overrun Hokkaido. "Quite easily" in fact.

Everyone who knows anything about the Pacific War knows how easy it is to overrun Japanese islands. Piece of cake. All it takes are a few troops and some like rafts to shuttle them on over, because we know how quickly the Japanese just roll right over when they are in "indefensible" positions.

And you can see how much of a threat the Japanese thought this was as well, after all Tyr just told us that "most of Japan's defences were facing the south of the country, even in Hokkaido they were facing an American invasion on the east."

So obviously their overriding strategic fear was that Soviet invasion, which we know would be trivial to pull off, which is why the Japanese aligned all their defenses away from that axis of threat, even though it was their primary strategic concern for the entire war.

How much experience did the Soviet Navy have in defending against kamikaze attacks?  None of their sixty or so landing craft could survive even a single hit.  Their fifteen warships there had no effective air search radar and only two had air search radar at all. 

It doesn't matter how many defenders there are if no attackers survive the voyage.

There is a reason the Soviet High Command realized that they couldn't invade Hokkaido, and sent the small amphib fleet against the Kuriles instead.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 17, 2021, 09:12:04 AM
Unfortunately you can't really understand WW2 without understanding the military piece. Like it's easy to just roll your eyes and gloss over it, but as I said--the Soviet Union had no real capacity to invade Japan. Japan isn't part of the Asian land mass, it's a series of islands. The only islands the Soviets took were 1) an Island they already controlled half of, and could stage troops on and 2) a very small island that only required an amphibious invasion of like 6500 troops. The latter literally stressed the Soviet naval transport fleet beyond its capacity. The planned invasion of Hokkaido, many Soviet war planners felt would actually fail, because they just lacked the naval transport to get enough men onto the beaches rapidly enough.

Hokkaido is one of the smallest and least populated of the "core" home islands. Meanwhile Japan knew the U.S. Navy actually had the resources to land millions of men on Japanese shores. The idea that Japan was afraid the USSR was going to depose the Emperor just isn't reality. The USSR had a better chance of launching a satellite into space in 1945 than overrunning the Japanese home islands. The Soviets hit the very minor islands they were capable of hitting, and started attacking Japanese occupied territory on mainland Asia, but the USSR was not a direct threat to Japan. That's just military fact, not something we have to speculate about.

Sorry I don't think I've been clear. I don't think the Japanese were afraid of the Soviets over-running the home islands. However as I've said before I don't think the Japanese assessment/understanding of their situation matches a rational assessment from what we know now - and if there is any point in history where sensible people might justifiably over-estimate Soviet strength it's August 1945. Plus they did seem to have concerns of fighting on that many fronts.

The Japanese hope for a negotiated peace would involve concessions with the Soviets. Even these were delusional - they thought that the Soviets would get North Manchuria, the Japanese would get South Manchuria and Korea would be a buffer state. That's with the Soviets as a neutral mediator. Having invaded Manchuria which the Japanese were not prepared for or in a position to prepare a response, that shifted - I think it was Suzuki who said the Soviets would "destroy the very foundation of Japan" by demanding Manchuria, Korea, the Kurils and Hokkaido. While that is kind of delusional - Manchuria and Korea were lost whatever happened - I think that is a reasonable assessment of Soviet demands (at least on the mainland) because I can't think of many examples of the Soviets leaving territory once the Red Army had arrived - arguably except Manchuria which they handed over to Mao (after settling their border) and Korea on the 38th parallel.

The risk to the emperor isn't from the Soviets over-running the home islands but from the fact that once the Soviets are properly in the war Japan will be negotiating with the US and the USSR for the terms of surrender and how the occupation was going to work. It was already in evidence in Europe where, I think the Polish People's Republic had been declared and the occupied zones for Germany had been set out. It isn't the Polish scenario that's the risk for them, but the German and if the USSR has, say, taken over Manchuria and Korea and possibly more it is unlikely that the Soviets wouldn't be at the table. The options I think the Japanese faced weren't be occupied by the Soviets and Americans, or be occupied by the Americans alone - but, rather, surrender unconditionally now and only have to deal with the Americans, or surrender unconditionally later and have the Soviets dictating terms too (even if they aren't occupying the Home Islands).

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 16, 2021, 10:23:22 PM

Quote from: Berkut on August 16, 2021, 09:53:15 PMI don't think it is you, I think you just find it an intellectually interesting exercise.

I find the why in history really interesting. Or I enjoy history that I think gets close to explaining the context in which things happen - though there'll be lots of different ways to balance that out and weigh it up and then obviously giving their take on what the balance was (which I might agree with or not).

QuoteI still maintain that the entire story of the Japanese surrender really being about the Soviet invasion is 100% driven by the need to believe that the nukes did not matter. And a good chunk of that is driven by a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to re-write WW2 history to minimize Western participation. And this particular bit of revisionist history is so delicious - the one part of the war the Soviets were not involved in at all, you get to just pretend like none of it actually mattered - turns out the Soviets won THAT war as well!

Maybe - but if the evidence and the sources they're dredging up from Japanese and Soviet records and interesting and important - does that matter? I don't necessarily have to agree with a historian's perspective or argument to think that they're kind of doing something interesting or bringing some new perspective or evidence. But sometimes it does shift your view.

Of course it matters.

There is always a huge amount of noise in history. The amount of data is immense. There are, by definition, millions of pieces of source material. A lot of it is noise, and trying to figure out what the signal is can, at times, be difficult. Sometimes it isn't that difficult though, because what happened is right there in front of you. You can ask the question "Why did the South start the Civil War?" and the answer is blindingly obvious. The signal drowns out the noise, because they were nice enough to simply tell us, over and over and over again, why they started the war. But there is still a bunch of noise out there. And if you have an agenda, and that agenda is to try to come up with a story to tell that ignores the signal in favor of the noise, then you just go out and ignore the signal, and pick out some juicy noise and say "SEE! I FOUND IT! IT TURNS OUT THE CIVIL WAR WAS ALL ABOUT TARIFFS! I found this "evidence and sources I dredged up from Japanese and Soviet Confederate records that are interesting and important!". Then you follow that on with some Jim Crow laws and maybe a few thousand lynchings to show that your Lost Cause myth really has some good teeth.

That is *exactly* what is happening here. Yes, the motives of the people involved most definitely matter. You can "prove" nearly anything if you are motivated and willing to just pick and choose the data you give credence to. You can "prove" that vaccines are a bad idea - after all, did you know that the vaccine response database has a shitty interface, so it could be the case that the adverse reactions are under-estimated by an order of magnitude! (Yes, that is a real thing - one of the latest vaccine hesitancy excuses is the claim that the website to track adverse reactions is poorly designed. So someone said "It could be that adverse reactions are under reported by an order of magnitude!" So someone noted that there were about 12,000 adverse reactions reported , which MUST be off by an order of magnitude, so apparently we now know that certainly 120,000 people have been killed by the vaccine, and this is being covered up. Look, it's just data! Isn't this interesting and important, regardless of the motives of who is bringing you that data???? ISN'T IT!!!!)

Evidence and records are interesting when they are brought forward to be studied in honest context with OTHER records and evidence. Not when they are brought forward in specific isolation of contrasting information in order to feed an agenda. Indeed, when THAT happens, it is downright dangerous, and is generally used to promote some kind of propaganda or dishonest narrative.

This is an example of the exact same kind of thinking and research that brought us the Lost Cause myth. And that *worked* and contributed to a couple generations of continuing systemic racism. It is the same kind of thinking that brings us Holocaust denial. The same kind of thinking that brings us "well, surely we want our elections to be secure....right? Shouldn't we at least look at those ballots in Georgia while we ignore the fact that every actual legal proceeding was thrown out? You won't look at them???? OMG lets meet on January 6th and have a chat with our government!"

Japanese WW2 leaders were many things, for instance their values and agendas were anathema to what would conventionally be called good governance, but one thing they were not is low-IQ morans. The idea that the Japanese leaders were stupid enough to believe that the Soviet Union was the biggest threat to them in August 1945 is bizarre.

Right, I mean grumbler outlined the actual history of Japan's decision to surrender, which is the well known and understood history that has been known for many decades. Nothing said here about fanciful Communist revolutions springing up in Japan or the USSR easily conquering Hokkaido changes any of that. I'll also note that while Soviet war planners had grown skeptical they could invade Hokkaido, Truman outright told Stalin he would not tolerate a Soviet occupation of any of the home islands. It's possible Stalin would've called that bluff, but I'll note Truman had played a card that aggressively during the fall of eastern Europe, and Stalin was now well aware of the power of the atomic bomb. I'm skeptical the USSR was realistically going to do much more against Japan than it had already done in terms of the home islands.

Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 09:33:23 AM
Its lack of density is a point against its defensibility.

Yes, but the inability of the Soviets to effectively attack it is a point against. 

It'd be like people in 2002 worried about Saddam attacking some small town in Nebraska.  Sure, a Republican Guard division with tanks and air support could wreak havoc against the unprepared farmers of the Bible Belt.  But how are they going to get there, and even if they could manage to teleport their troops and war machines there, how are they going to keep them supplied? 

When you're considering military history, and especially military history in the industrial age, the most important questions that you have to ask are how are your troops going to get where you want them to fight and how are you going to keep them supplied.  When it came to an invasion of the Home Islands, the Soviets didn't have an answer to those questions, at least not in 1945, and probably not even in 1946.  The most profound effect of the Soviet declaration of war wasn't military, but diplomatic.  It forced the moderate faction, who had maybe been willing to consider some sort of negotiated peace, to realize that there would be no peace negotiated through a third party as there had been in 1905.  The choice was between either unconditional surrender or the annihilation of the kokutai by devastating bombardment and invasion. 

Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 09:51:31 AM
There is a reason the Soviet High Command realized that they couldn't invade Hokkaido, and sent the small amphib fleet against the Kuriles instead.

And I think the very early cold war context matters there as well of their only being so many fronts the Soviets could be aggressive on - especially when they didn't have a nuke - and the Americans were comfortable and the Kurils but not Hokkaido. I think it's similar to the motivation to cut a deal on Korea (while also handing Manchuria to Mao - after stripping lots of industry in the traditional Soviet way). And I don't think the Soviets had any illusion about working with the allies any more - unlike some Americans and Brits.

I think that bit of North-East Asia had the potential to be the first real cold war flashpoint but it wasn't.

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 17, 2021, 11:04:56 AM

Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 09:51:31 AM
There is a reason the Soviet High Command realized that they couldn't invade Hokkaido, and sent the small amphib fleet against the Kuriles instead.

And I think the very early cold war context matters there as well of their only being so many fronts the Soviets could be aggressive on - especially when they didn't have a nuke - and the Americans were comfortable and the Kurils but not Hokkaido. I think it's similar to the motivation to cut a deal on Korea (while also handing Manchuria to Mao - after stripping lots of industry in the traditional Soviet way). And I don't think the Soviets had any illusion about working with the allies any more - unlike some Americans and Brits.

I think that bit of North-East Asia had the potential to be the first real cold war flashpoint but it wasn't.

:(  Sorry, I have no idea what you are arguing here nor why you quoted me in your post.  I don't believe that the evidence supports the Soviets not invading Hokkaido because of early cold war context, I believe that the evidence shows that they knew that they couldn't.  Their total amphibious lift capacity was about 6,000 men (provided all of their landing craft were operational) and very little equipment.  They would be utterly open to kamikaze attacks on the transit with none of the assets needed to establish anything like the Big Blue Blanket. 

I agree that there was the potential for conflict between the allies in the Northwest Pacific given the many competing factions trying to become the government of Korea (and the fact that the US head of the occupation forces was a rather hasty individual). 

Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 11:16:50 AM
:(  Sorry, I have no idea what you are arguing here nor why you quoted me in your post.  I don't believe that the evidence supports the Soviets not invading Hokkaido because of early cold war context, I believe that the evidence shows that they knew that they couldn't.  Their total amphibious lift capacity was about 6,000 men (provided all of their landing craft were operational) and very little equipment.  They would be utterly open to kamikaze attacks on the transit with none of the assets needed to establish anything like the Big Blue Blanket. 

Sorry - maybe wrong message - I meant the message from Truman to Stalin on Hokkaido.

QuoteEvidence and records are interesting when they are brought forward to be studied in honest context with OTHER records and evidence. Not when they are brought forward in specific isolation of contrasting information in order to feed an agenda. Indeed, when THAT happens, it is downright dangerous, and is generally used to promote some kind of propaganda or dishonest narrative.

So I've just chosen this bit - I just disagree. I don't think that's what most historians are doing. I think they have an agenda in terms of their own theory or ideology of how they study the past - and that's fine as long as they're transparent about it - but I don't think they're generally bad faith operators drive by politics.

All historians are making a case and have an argument, I think as long as they are up-front with that or engage with the opposing position then it's for you as a reader. I don't think they're doing propaganda or being dishonest - and you can tell the ones that are (the David Irving approach).

And I think part of it is even less propagandistic - I think the bigger risk for historians is that they are faddish and glom onto the latest theory or approach. So I think "global histories" are having a bit of a moment at the minute which has benefits and downsides. But at its best, like any other new approach or theory, I think it can really change your perspective.

Edit: And I think this goes to your point on the Sovietisation of WW2 and also my view that China is a more important bit of the war than I think is generally covered. I think in the immediate aftermath most people were very aware of the importance of the USSR and China. I think both dwindle for a few decades partly, no doubt, as other national narratives are settled and in part because of the cold war (and, frankly, war films) but crucially I also think part of it is that Western academics don't have access to the Soviet archives, a lot of the Nazi archives are in East Berlin and probably the single biggest source for understanding China are the records of people like Stilwell.

In the last 30 years a lot more Soviet and Nazi records have become available and both Taipei and Beijng have started to release (more limited) documents. I think it's impossible for that new information to not transform the perspective on the war. It might well go too far and over-correct, and then there'll be a revision to that approach as well. But all the time through that process our understanding will become more complete.

Except what you just talked about and described is not at all what is happening here.

What IS happening here is exactly that David Irving approach, and you can in fact tell the ones that are - I can tell.

This is not about "all historians are doing". It is about what some non-historians are doing while most actual historians role their eyes and try to get actual evidence and facts across. But as we can tell, a juicy bit of "controversial" bullshit is ever so much "sexier" and "interesting" then the plain old obvious truth.

And yes, I did notice that you "just chosen this bit". You interrogative scalpel is impressive. :P

Lastly, please don't trot out the tired idea that the poor Soviets never got their due amongst historians. That is just simply not true.

It might be true among amateur or the general public, but actual historians of WW2 have long noted and taken as a matter of course the incredible amount of blood and treasure and pain the Soviets invested into protecting themselves from the Nazis. Frankly, war films aren't really part of what historians are actually doing.

New information in the last thirty years has certainly been very interesting. It has not, except among those cherry picking those records, suggested that it was really the USSR that drove Japan to surrender.

Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 03:33:27 AM
I don't get your logic here.
They wanted to continue to fight even after the bombs had been dropped.... yet Japan surrendered.
This sounds like an argument against the bombs single handedly winning the war  rather than in defence of it.

Japan surrendered because the emperor overrode his cabinet.  The emperor overrode his cabinet because of the A bombs.

Quote from: Berkut on August 17, 2021, 01:55:06 PM
Except what you just talked about and described is not at all what is happening here.

What IS happening here is exactly that David Irving approach, and you can in fact tell the ones that are - I can tell.

But that's just crazy.

I got most of this from Herbert Bix's biography of Hirohito, he did tip the hat to Hasegawa as transforming the studies on this point. Both are respectable academic historians (Hasegawa is a Soviet-Japanese specialist so comfortable with both records).

Hasegawa also edited and contributed to a collection of essays on this the end of the Pacific War - including with contributions from other prominent historians who totally disagree with him like Richard Frank, as well as an essay on the historiography by Barton Bernstein, an essay on the cold war context by David Holloway and a contribution from Sumio Hatano that the bomb and the Soviet DOW were of equal importance (but more important to different factions which is what moved things). These are all academic historians engaging in debate with this perspective and I just don't understand how you can dismiss it all as David Irving-like propagandists (other professional historians who were experts on the Thrid Reich or the Holocaust didn't contribute to a book edited by Irving).

I just find it really weird that there is clearly discussion around this in academic circles and people are saying actually they're only partisan propagandists and, in reality, the debate is settled.

QuoteAnd yes, I did notice that you "just chosen this bit". You interrogative scalpel is impressive. :P

:lol: Law school was costly but did have some benefits :P

QuoteLastly, please don't trot out the tired idea that the poor Soviets never got their due amongst historians. That is just simply not true.

It might be true among amateur or the general public, but actual historians of WW2 have long noted and taken as a matter of course the incredible amount of blood and treasure and pain the Soviets invested into protecting themselves from the Nazis. Frankly, war films aren't really part of what historians are actually doing.

I that's probably fair among academic historians - although I wonder if even then while understanding the eastern front they perhaps underestimated how awful it really just because it was difficult to access the people involved or the records in those state.

But if I'm reading a book then it's chances basically a popular history which helps form the view of the general public - and that is the context you are writing against if you're trying to topple a commonly held perception (like, I imagine in both our countries the central quality of our war struggle :P). That's why I think war films matter - the example that comes to mind for me is the lions led by donkeys view of WW1 in this country.

Initially a lot of the generals from WW1 and especially Haig were incredibly popular with their veterans and perceived as having really done their best for their soldier especially around their welfare and then treatment after the war. From about the 60s onwards there's a trend of really questioning (justifiably) what the point of WW1 was - there's the start of popular culture that basically depicts it as pointless and futile (Oh, What A Lovely War! etc) and there's an incredibly influential history book by a non-professional historian (and future Tory MP) Alan Clark: Lions Led By Donkeys. And that is basically what it argues, that the generals were old-fashioned unwilling to innovate and instead expended huge numbers of British (and imperial) lives with outdated tactics to push forward the frontline by one inch.

From my understanding - and it's not an area that I'm interested in so haven't read much on this - that view is entirely discredited among academic military historians. They write books including some aimed at the general public (e.g. by Hew Strachan) to displace that perception, but it's just become the accepted wisdom for the general public. That's why I think the wider culture matters in terms of when historians are writing.

QuoteNew information in the last thirty years has certainly been very interesting. It has not, except among those cherry picking those records, suggested that it was really the USSR that drove Japan to surrender.

Aren't both sides just cherry-picking the same records to construct their argument though? That's why my own guess is it was probably both - it was the dual shock that's why the records talk about both events so much.

No, I think if you do NOT cherry pick your records, the narrative is pretty straightforward here- I made this point rather specifically in the portion of the argument you decided did not warrant a response.

This is not a case of each side cherry picking - it is a case where one side wants to cherry pick, and the other is referencing the total source. Again - your argument is *identical* in kind to the argument of the Lost Causers, or Holocaust Deniers, or The Election Was Stolen theorists. It is not "both sides".


But hey, if you just find this narrative too delicious to pass on, knock yourself out. I am sure 4 years of constant war in the pacific were all just window dressing to the USSR saving the world from the Japanese who were ready to throw the Americans back, and at the exact same time, totally ready to surrender without the bombs, but only if the Soviets entered the war because absent the Soviets entering the war, they were definitely going to use the Soviets to negotiate a peace....which we know the Americans would reject, making the bombs necessary again.


The entire thing doesn't even make sense. It's starting with a conclusion, then searching for reasons to support it.

The reason that the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' craze caught on when it did was mainly political.  It's not like it was a new sentiment.  Lloyd George had been going on about how every one of Britain's war leaders who wasn't him was mentally defective pretty much since 1915, and he absolutely despised Haig and Robertson for having the strategic clarity to realize that the Western Front was critical.  However, the reason that it became so popular when it did was that British politics was shifting away from the 'English gentleman'.  People lapped up tales about how stupid the gentleman generals were because it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

Are we discussing history or the public's perception of history? The public's perception of history is about as correct as the public's perception of nuclear physics.

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 04:08:08 PM
The reason that the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' craze caught on when it did was mainly political.  It's not like it was a new sentiment.  Lloyd George had been going on about how every one of Britain's war leaders who wasn't him was mentally defective pretty much since 1915, and he absolutely despised Haig and Robertson for having the strategic clarity to realize that the Western Front was critical.  However, the reason that it became so popular when it did was that British politics was shifting away from the 'English gentleman'.  People lapped up tales about how stupid the gentleman generals were because it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

That wasn't a WW1 phenomenon.  That goes back to the Boer War, at least.  Raglan and Cardigan were earlier examples, but not seen as representative.

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 04:08:08 PM
The reason that the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' craze caught on when it did was mainly political.  It's not like it was a new sentiment.  Lloyd George had been going on about how every one of Britain's war leaders who wasn't him was mentally defective pretty much since 1915, and he absolutely despised Haig and Robertson for having the strategic clarity to realize that the Western Front was critical.  However, the reason that it became so popular when it did was that British politics was shifting away from the 'English gentleman'.  People lapped up tales about how stupid the gentleman generals were because it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

Interesting - although there is an irony that the guy who really propagated in his book was in many ways the archetype of an English gentleman: son of Kenneth Clark (of Civilisation fame), prep school, public school, Household Cavalry, Oxford, the Bar, then to the House of Commons as a Tory MP :lol:

And of course that it's lingered so long - Blackadder Goes Forth probably didn't help on that front. But historians have been debunking it for decades to no effect on public perception which is why what is conventional among professional historians always appears as revisionist when it's in a popular history book.

QuoteNo, I think if you do NOT cherry pick your records, the narrative is pretty straightforward here- I made this point rather specifically in the portion of the argument you decided did not warrant a response.

This is not a case of each side cherry picking - it is a case where one side wants to cherry pick, and the other is referencing the total source. Again - your argument is *identical* in kind to the argument of the Lost Causers, or Holocaust Deniers, or The Election Was Stolen theorists. It is not "both sides".

I'm just baffled by this. I don't understand why any of those academic historians with different perspectives with this would engage if they thought that Hasegawa's point was basically the equivalent of Holocaust denial, or how you can see me talking about a debate in the scholarship as like that as well. I don't understand how you can just know that all of those historians - who other historians of the Pacific War engage with in good faith - are actually just bad faith historians and propagandist. Surely that would be something that the other historians like Frank (who vigorously disagrees with Hasegawa. Despite disputing the conclusions and really disagreeing on the points on the Potsdam Declaration and Truman, which grumbler flagged, as not rising above the level of a weak inference - this is Frank on Hasegawa's book:

QuoteThe end of the Pacific War looms as one of the leading controversies in American history.  For more than fifty years—an astonishing achievement--Robert Butow's exemplary Japan's Decision to Surrender reigned as the essential work on political decision making in Japan and the United States.[1]  Other works supplemented Butow, but never entirely displaced him. Racing the Enemy now stands as an absolutely critical work on political dimensions of this passage and I believe it is the first work with a legitimate claim to have eclipsed Butow.  Not only does Dr. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa profit from an enormous body of evidence shielded from Butow's view, Hasegawa stretches the political canvas to include a Soviet Union in vivid hues.  All of this is a sterling achievement that amply justifies this roundtable. [...]
Racing the Enemy will mark a turning point in the U.S. historiography of the end of the Pacific War.  It is the coup de grace to the fundamental premises of the first wave of what has been called "revisionism."  Following a number of prior works and based on such thorough and sound research from Japanese sources, it demolishes the narrative that Japan was near surrender before Hiroshima or that her surrender could have been easily procured with a guarantee about the imperial institution untenable.  At the same time, this work will open new fronts for critical challenges to Japanese and American decision making.  As this roundtable is designed to bring out disagreements and perhaps areas where further scholarship is warranted, I will now turn to those areas.

As I say he totally disagrees with Hasegawa - but that's not how a critic describes a book by a historian who's doing the equivalent of Lost Causing or Holocaust denial. It's why I just don't understand how the conclusion this is settled, undoubted and very clear history.

QuoteBut hey, if you just find this narrative too delicious to pass on, knock yourself out. I am sure 4 years of constant war in the pacific were all just window dressing to the USSR saving the world from the Japanese who were ready to throw the Americans back, and at the exact same time, totally ready to surrender without the bombs, but only if the Soviets entered the war because absent the Soviets entering the war, they were definitely going to use the Soviets to negotiate a peace....which we know the Americans would reject, making the bombs necessary again.

No in terms of my opinion it would be that after 4 years of constant war in the Pacific the Japanese leadership were unable or unwilling to confront their position. This is demonstrated by factions, with the backing of the imperial household, trying to open negotiations without clarifying what Japan's terms would be and imagining in relation to the mediator, terms that were absurdly disconnected from that position (i.e. Japan keeping South Manchuria and a neutral buffer Korea).

The Japanese leadership was driven to face reality by the dual shocks of nukes and Soviet invasion that the only route to peace was through unconditional surrender. This maybe did present a - to quote Yonai's comment - "gift from Heaven" in presenting a justification to move for peace that would got around the dilema of a widespread army revolt for ending the war too soon, or the growing public hostility and opposition to the emperor and the imperial system from not ending the war quickly enough.

I just don't think my "narrative" is what you think it is. And it is just an opinion from very little reading (as I say, mainly Bix) and I can definitely sway back and forth on weighing up those factors. As I've said before I don't particularly have an opinion on the bombs - I struggle to see them as particularly different from the carpet bombing/firebombing that were routinely used in WW2. I could be wrong but I feel like the terror at them was primarily based on their potential and the knowledge that, as humans, we would improve it to the weapons we have now which I think are different from anything else.

A more interesting question: does Trump know that Hiroshima is a city?

Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 04:17:51 PM

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 04:08:08 PM
The reason that the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' craze caught on when it did was mainly political.  It's not like it was a new sentiment.  Lloyd George had been going on about how every one of Britain's war leaders who wasn't him was mentally defective pretty much since 1915, and he absolutely despised Haig and Robertson for having the strategic clarity to realize that the Western Front was critical.  However, the reason that it became so popular when it did was that British politics was shifting away from the 'English gentleman'.  People lapped up tales about how stupid the gentleman generals were because it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

That wasn't a WW1 phenomenon.  That goes back to the Boer War, at least.  Raglan and Cardigan were earlier examples, but not seen as representative.

I'd argue there were important differences.  For one thing, World War One was a more universal experience, and thus more important.  it resonated better with the public.  The other is, as you point out, the contempt wasn't generalized across the entire officer corps or senior officer corps. 

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 05:03:55 PM

Quote from: grumbler on August 17, 2021, 04:17:51 PM

Quote from: Neil on August 17, 2021, 04:08:08 PM
The reason that the 'Lions Led By Donkeys' craze caught on when it did was mainly political.  It's not like it was a new sentiment.  Lloyd George had been going on about how every one of Britain's war leaders who wasn't him was mentally defective pretty much since 1915, and he absolutely despised Haig and Robertson for having the strategic clarity to realize that the Western Front was critical.  However, the reason that it became so popular when it did was that British politics was shifting away from the 'English gentleman'.  People lapped up tales about how stupid the gentleman generals were because it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

That wasn't a WW1 phenomenon.  That goes back to the Boer War, at least.  Raglan and Cardigan were earlier examples, but not seen as representative.

I'd argue there were important differences.  For one thing, World War One was a more universal experience, and thus more important.  it resonated better with the public.  The other is, as you point out, the contempt wasn't generalized across the entire officer corps or senior officer corps.

No question that the WW1 mythos was more significant.  I was just noting that it didn't start with WW1.  In fact, the colonial exploits of the British Army in the second half of the Nineteenth Century was largely seen as a struggle of the geniuses to overcome the bureaucracy and spit-and-polish-worship of the mediocre. 

I wonder if that's also linked to Alan Bennett's observation that the Boer war is the first (in the U.K.) that has war memorials with named individual private soldiers. And possibly a shift from Victorian statuary which was of the generals, often paid for by subscription by their soldiers after the conflict to more public memorials to the soldiers.

Haig is, interestingly, an exception to that because his statue on Whitehall was paid for by subscription of his troops. But it has been the target of people wanting to pull it down for years and years, not for more current controversies but because of his (popular) reputation as "Butcher Haig".

QuoteOh yeah, it would definitely be totally easy to overrun Hokkaido. "Quite easily" in fact.

Everyone who knows anything about the Pacific War knows how easy it is to overrun Japanese islands. Piece of cake. All it takes are a few troops and some like rafts to shuttle them on over, because we know how quickly the Japanese just roll right over when they are in "indefensible" positions.

And you can see how much of a threat the Japanese thought this was as well, after all Tyr just told us that "most of Japan's defences were facing the south of the country, even in Hokkaido they were facing an American invasion on the east."

So obviously their overriding strategic fear was that Soviet invasion, which we know would be trivial to pull off, which is why the Japanese aligned all their defenses away from that axis of threat, even though it was their primary strategic concern for the entire war.

You miss the facts that they had been at war with the US for 4 years whilst the Soviets had until very recently been a neutral nation that was otherwise engaged and the south of Sakhalin had been Japanese territory.

QuoteYes, but the inability of the Soviets to effectively attack it is a point against.

It'd be like people in 2002 worried about Saddam attacking some small town in Nebraska.  Sure, a Republican Guard division with tanks and air support could wreak havoc against the unprepared farmers of the Bible Belt.  But how are they going to get there, and even if they could manage to teleport their troops and war machines there, how are they going to keep them supplied?

When you're considering military history, and especially military history in the industrial age, the most important questions that you have to ask are how are your troops going to get where you want them to fight and how are you going to keep them supplied.  When it came to an invasion of the Home Islands, the Soviets didn't have an answer to those questions, at least not in 1945, and probably not even in 1946.  The most profound effect of the Soviet declaration of war wasn't military, but diplomatic.  It forced the moderate faction, who had maybe been willing to consider some sort of negotiated peace, to realize that there would be no peace negotiated through a third party as there had been in 1905.  The choice was between either unconditional surrender or the annihilation of the kokutai by devastating bombardment and invasion.

When looking at reasons for Japan's surrender however the reality doesn't really matter. As Sheilbh says at the time Soviet strength was massively over-estimated. That Soviet tanks would be rolling down the streets of Tokyo anytime soon we know with the full knowledge of hindsight just wasn't going to happen. But that's not how things looked to the Japanese leaders. This seemed a very real and terrifying threat, especially combined with the belief in simmering unrest (not unfounded) and paranoia of communism.
See also operation sea lion and how seriously it was taken by the UK....

Its besides the point, but to address the tangent, I do think a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido was possible. Many in the Soviet leadership felt it was possible (though yes, others disagreed) and it was mostly diplomatic considerations that led to it being cancelled.
They were hitting Japan in the rear, they would be going up against virtually no defenders. I'm somewhat more questionable the plan would succeed in its entirety, but that they could seize and hold the Soya peninsula is very possible.
This wouldn't be a comparable operation to Pacific island hopping. We're looking at a significantly larger island and very different terrain that would be much more amenable to the Soviets than any Japanese forces that would be redirected that way.
The analogy of Iraq invading the middle of the US doesn't work. We're talking about a major power invading an island 20km from territory they hold, at the sparsely inhabited northern fringe of a pretty linear country.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 17, 2021, 02:31:03 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 17, 2021, 03:33:27 AM
I don't get your logic here.
They wanted to continue to fight even after the bombs had been dropped.... yet Japan surrendered.
This sounds like an argument against the bombs single handedly winning the war  rather than in defence of it.

Japan surrendered because the emperor overrode his cabinet.  The emperor overrode his cabinet because of the A bombs.

Again don't confuse how convenient this was for both sides with the actual reasons. He couldn't very well say in his radio speech to the nation "We've decided to surrender because we're afraid y'all are going to rise up and put my head on a spike". That's really not the time or the place for full honestly.
The process of deciding to surrender was already well under way but since it happened the bomb provided an excellent propaganda excuse; it wasn't any failure on Japan's part to blame, it was that there's this new magic bomb that can destroy the nation.

I'd also question the narrative that the emperor finally emerged from the shadows and overrode the cabinet. This is the way history was written in the aftermath of the war in order to protect the emperor, but it is increasingly thought he was a far more active participant in wartime government than is commonly believed. For instance when Konoe was first given a chance to make his case about the coming revolution in early 1945 it was the emperor who turned down his calls to surrender on the basis that Japan needed just one big victory (and he believed this was definitely possible) so it could make a more favourable peace. A belief that he had lost by summer which led to Japan starting to put out peace feelers.

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 04:35:52 AM
When looking at reasons for Japan's surrender however the reality doesn't really matter.

Hmm...

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 18, 2021, 09:40:15 AM

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 04:35:52 AM
When looking at reasons for Japan's surrender however the reality doesn't really matter.

Hmm...

What?
If you're afraid I'm going to beat you up then it doesn't really matter whether I'm actually capable or not. All that matters is you think I can so you hand over your wallet.

Of all the books I've read on Japan in WW2 no one has mentioned this big Soviet monster under the bed of Japanese leaders. But even if one were to accept that such a monster existed, what would be so special about Hokkaido that the thought of its potential future loss would trigger a surrender?

Quote from: The Brain on August 18, 2021, 10:44:26 AM
Of all the books I've read on Japan in WW2 no one has mentioned this big Soviet monster under the bed of Japanese leaders.

I have no idea what books you've been reading but it sounds very strange they wouldn't mention this. Its one of the basic facts in understanding the mindset of the Japanese leadership. Its pretty standard to the far right no matter where you find them.

QuoteBut even if one were to accept that such a monster existed, what would be so special about Hokkaido that the thought of its potential future loss would trigger a surrender?

It is one of the home islands and its just a short distance from Honshu. its loss would be a pretty major blow.
But I never said the thought of its loss would trigger a surrender.
What did in actual history trigger a surrender was the thought of the Soviets invading Japan and the threat of workers revolution against the imperial system.

How were the Soviets expected to land a massive invasion force?

It is inconceivable that instead of the 100% real American destruction of Japan that had been ongoing (for which the atomic bombs were just icing on the cake) what made the Emperor give up was the 100% fictional ability of the Soviets to threaten the Japanese homeland.

Quote from: The Brain on August 18, 2021, 10:44:26 AM
Of all the books I've read on Japan in WW2 no one has mentioned this big Soviet monster under the bed of Japanese leaders. But even if one were to accept that such a monster existed, what would be so special about Hokkaido that the thought of its potential future loss would trigger a surrender?

Hokkaido was symbolic only (the US had sunk the train ferries that shipped Hokkaido coal to Honshu), but symbolically important enough that the Japanese dedicated the Fifth Area Army to its defense. The army wasn't huge like the Third Area Army on Honshu because there were few landing spots and no enemy nearby with the capability to invade.

The Soviet Pacific Fleet commander thought he could take Hokkaido with six regiments, landed two at a time, with three days between landings.  Presumably, he was making up shit like that to sound good to Stalin.  The fleet commander's superiors patted him on the head, told him to keep making his mud pies but to take no action unless told to do so, and used his forces elsewhere.

Quote from: Tamas on August 18, 2021, 11:12:37 AM
How were the Soviets expected to land a massive invasion force?

It is inconceivable that instead of the 100% real American destruction of Japan that had been ongoing (for which the atomic bombs were just icing on the cake) what made the Emperor give up was the 100% fictional ability of the Soviets to threaten the Japanese homeland.

Remember that to the Tyrs of the world, the fact that there s no evidence whatsoever for their conclusions, and that no analysis of any of the existing evidence can make it fit their conclusions, just means that history was re-written after the fact the hide the truth, and only the Tyrs of the world know it.

That's how wartime estimates of up to half a million US combat deaths mean that it "is proven" that the actual claimed estimates were a million deaths, and therefor untrue.  That's how the Emperor's documented intervention in the Big Six deliberations must be a lie concocted after the fact, because maybe he intervened in prior decision-making.

It's hard to get your mind twisty enough to believe that kind of crap, but for some people it seems that the sacrifice is worth it.

Tyr, this is getting stupid.  If the fear is that the Soviets could land on Hokkaido unopposed and trigger a revolution then the logical response is to send soldiers to Hokkaido. You are making an enormous leap from "fear of communism" to a speculative motivation for surrender.  Too make this leap you need statements by the main actors or people very close to the main actors that this was what they had on their minds.  Instead you have the opposite: examples of the major players claiming that something else was the deciding factor.


Japan's own actions severely undermine your claim.  They were in the midst of arming civilians to fight the Americans.  That's not something you would do if you believed the the civilians would use those weapons against you.  The blockade around Japan is much more likely to trigger an uprising than an communist invasion.

Quote from: Razgovory on August 18, 2021, 11:53:08 AM
Tyr, this is getting stupid.  If the fear is that the Soviets could land on Hokkaido unopposed and trigger a revolution then the logical response is to send soldiers to Hokkaido. You are making an enormous leap from "fear of communism" to a speculative motivation for surrender.  Too make this leap you need statements by the main actors or people very close to the main actors that this was what they had on their minds.  Instead you have the opposite: examples of the major players claiming that something else was the deciding factor.

The Soviets declared war on the 9th of August catching the Japanese by surprise.
They did already have significant forces watching the Soviet border- however these were defeated very quickly indeed.
Hokkaido was some way beyond the border. Given the war its common sense that there wouldn't be many Japanese forces in position to defend against an invasion from Japanese Karafuto prefecture.
Had things dragged on then undoubtedly forces would have been redirected against the coming Soviet invasion. However there's so many unknowns and things to consider in this alternate history scenario.

There's no leap or speculation at all. I've already provided a prominent quote that sums up this strain of thought on the Japanese side. From Fumimaro Konoe, who took these concerns to the emperor in early 1945:

QuoteRegrettably, I think that defeat is inevitable. What I shall say is based on this assumption. Defeat will be a blemish upon our imperial system, but public opinion in Great Britain and the United States up to now has not gone so far as change in this imperial system(of course there are extremist opinions among some, and it is difficult to gauge what sort of change may take place in the future). Thus, if it were only a matter of defeat, I think it would not be necessary to be concerned about the imperial system. More than defeat itself, what we must be most concerned about from the standpoint of preserving the imperial system is the communist revolution which may accompany defeat.

QuoteJapan's own actions severely undermine your claim.  They were in the midst of arming civilians to fight the Americans.  That's not something you would do if you believed the the civilians would use those weapons against you. 

With bamboo spears.
It was a propaganda exercise rather than anything of actual military utility.

QuoteThe blockade around Japan is much more likely to trigger an uprising than an communist invasion.

Yes.

Quote from: The Brain on August 18, 2021, 10:44:26 AM
Of all the books I've read on Japan in WW2 no one has mentioned this big Soviet monster under the bed of Japanese leaders. But even if one were to accept that such a monster existed, what would be so special about Hokkaido that the thought of its potential future loss would trigger a surrender?

I brought that up over an dover again, but the "IT WAS THE SOVIETS!!!" faction doesn't want to address anything like that.

US troops physically occupying Tokyo and the Imperial Palace? That's a concern for sure!

Soviet troops teleporting to Hokkaido? OMG SURRENDER NOW!!!!!

And the argument that the Japanese, of all people, were simply unaware of how difficult it is to mount and supply a naval invasion is...I am not sure how to even respond to that.

It is, again, this willfull attempt to simply ignore the effort and sacrifice made by the USA and her allies over four years of war. If you just create this story that the Soviet could and would just stroll into Hokkaido, why, you also then get to ignore the incredible amount of effort the US expended to create the largest navy the world has ever known with a *massive* logistics tail to allow them to land divisions of men and marines on enemy shores. Apparnetly all of that, like the A-Bombs, were simply not necessary. Yet another example of how it was really all just the USSR.

It's just...ugggh.

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 04:35:52 AM

QuoteYes, but the inability of the Soviets to effectively attack it is a point against.

It'd be like people in 2002 worried about Saddam attacking some small town in Nebraska.  Sure, a Republican Guard division with tanks and air support could wreak havoc against the unprepared farmers of the Bible Belt.  But how are they going to get there, and even if they could manage to teleport their troops and war machines there, how are they going to keep them supplied?

When you're considering military history, and especially military history in the industrial age, the most important questions that you have to ask are how are your troops going to get where you want them to fight and how are you going to keep them supplied.  When it came to an invasion of the Home Islands, the Soviets didn't have an answer to those questions, at least not in 1945, and probably not even in 1946.  The most profound effect of the Soviet declaration of war wasn't military, but diplomatic.  It forced the moderate faction, who had maybe been willing to consider some sort of negotiated peace, to realize that there would be no peace negotiated through a third party as there had been in 1905.  The choice was between either unconditional surrender or the annihilation of the kokutai by devastating bombardment and invasion.

When looking at reasons for Japan's surrender however the reality doesn't really matter. As Sheilbh says at the time Soviet strength was massively over-estimated. That Soviet tanks would be rolling down the streets of Tokyo anytime soon we know with the full knowledge of hindsight just wasn't going to happen. But that's not how things looked to the Japanese leaders. This seemed a very real and terrifying threat, especially combined with the belief in simmering unrest (not unfounded) and paranoia of communism.
See also operation sea lion and how seriously it was taken by the UK....

Its besides the point, but to address the tangent, I do think a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido was possible. Many in the Soviet leadership felt it was possible (though yes, others disagreed) and it was mostly diplomatic considerations that led to it being cancelled.
They were hitting Japan in the rear, they would be going up against virtually no defenders. I'm somewhat more questionable the plan would succeed in its entirety, but that they could seize and hold the Soya peninsula is very possible.
This wouldn't be a comparable operation to Pacific island hopping. We're looking at a significantly larger island and very different terrain that would be much more amenable to the Soviets than any Japanese forces that would be redirected that way.
The analogy of Iraq invading the middle of the US doesn't work. We're talking about a major power invading an island 20km from territory they hold, at the sparsely inhabited northern fringe of a pretty linear country.

The Japanese were aware that Soviet sea power was limited.  And the Japanese knew the importance of seabourne supply to any army, let alone one that was going to be waging an aggressive war.  They also knew the difference between a land war (the kind they fought in China, and were able to keep supplied) and amphibious warfare (the kind they fought in the Pacific, and were strangled by).  The Japanese had real experience with these problems.  The Soviets did not, and had no solutions for the problems that they were going to face.  The Japanese also had enough information about Soviet forces to know that they didn't have those solutions. 

Either you haven't thought about how a Soviet invasion would go or you're operating from a standpoint of religious faith in the Red Army.  Maybe you're thinking about how they beat the Germans.  But how are the Soviets going to invade an island and occupy it when they don't have any tanks, artillery, transport, ammunition or food?  And because the Soviet sealift capacity was so small, any force they could land would be heavily outnumbered by the two Japanese divisions tasked with holding the island.  Even with the poor state of supply in Japan in 1945, they'd still be better off than the Soviets in that situation. 

Just waving around the term 'great power' doesn't actually do anything.  As strong as the Soviets were, their strength was built in a way that focused on the immediate problem, the war with Germany.  They weren't equipped yet to fight Japan, and building that capacity was no small thing.  Look at how long it took the Allies, with vastly greater capabilities, to put together the equipment and expertise needed for Torch.  The Soviets couldn't even invade the Kuriles without American naval and logistical support, which would not be available for any operation against Hokkaido. 

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 12:14:56 PM
Given the war its common sense that there wouldn't be many Japanese forces in position to defend against an invasion from Japanese Karafuto prefecture.

But we know that there were two divisions in Hokkaido, which were more than adequate to deal with whatever the Soviets could land, especially once the Soviets ran out of supplies. 

The Japanese, when they made the decision to surrender, actually thought that they were doing very well against the Soviets.  The Kwantung Army was holding off the Soviet Fifth Army and believed that that was the only force they were facing.  The reality that the Soviets had launched a huge right hook from the Transbaikal was unknown to them, though this force would eventually crush the Kwantung Army. 

QuoteA key factor influencing events this day [Aug 9-10] and for some time thereafter was Tokyo's ignorance of the dimensions and progress of the Soviet onslaught.  This sprang directly from the Kwantung Army's drastically erroneous initial estimate of the Soviet forces in eastern Manchuria [3 div and 3 tank brigade versus the reality of 15 divisions and 8 tank brigades].  Moreover, during August 9 the Kwantung Army and Tokyo had no inkling of the huge Soviet mechanized thrust into western Manchuria.  No wonder that on that afternoon Imperial general headquarters stated that "the scale of these attacks is not large."

(Frank, Downfall, p. 289)

We need to keep in mind what was known to the Japanese at the time of the decisions.  Later recollections would be colored by the knowledge that the Soviets were attacking Manchuria in overwhelming numbers (and quality, for that matter, given that half the Kwantung Army was made up of hastily-recalled reservists and the Soviets were deploying well-trained and equipped forces).

The records seem to show that shock of the Soviet DoW wasn't so much the military aspect (Japan had already written off Manchuria and the Kuriles/Sakhalin) but the abrupt puncturing of their fantasy that the Soviets would ride to their rescue and force some kind of compromise peace a la the Portsmouth Treaty.

Quote from: Neil on August 18, 2021, 12:53:44 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 12:14:56 PM
Given the war its common sense that there wouldn't be many Japanese forces in position to defend against an invasion from Japanese Karafuto prefecture.

But we know that there were two divisions in Hokkaido, which were more than adequate to deal with whatever the Soviets could land, especially once the Soviets ran out of supplies.

Especially when kamikaze attacks would wipe out the Soviet invasion force before it arrived.

There is a reason the Soviets deployed their amphibious forces out of range of the kamikazes.  They had no defenses against them.  Dunno why the Soviet fans don't even acknowledge this.

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 12:14:56 PM

There's no leap or speculation at all. I've already provided a prominent quote that sums up this strain of thought on the Japanese side. From Fumimaro Konoe, who took these concerns to the emperor in early 1945:

QuoteRegrettably, I think that defeat is inevitable. What I shall say is based on this assumption. Defeat will be a blemish upon our imperial system, but public opinion in Great Britain and the United States up to now has not gone so far as change in this imperial system(of course there are extremist opinions among some, and it is difficult to gauge what sort of change may take place in the future). Thus, if it were only a matter of defeat, I think it would not be necessary to be concerned about the imperial system. More than defeat itself, what we must be most concerned about from the standpoint of preserving the imperial system is the communist revolution which may accompany defeat.

You really don't see it, do you?

Quote from: grumbler on August 18, 2021, 01:29:56 PM

Quote from: Neil on August 18, 2021, 12:53:44 PM

Quote from: Tyr on August 18, 2021, 12:14:56 PM
Given the war its common sense that there wouldn't be many Japanese forces in position to defend against an invasion from Japanese Karafuto prefecture.

But we know that there were two divisions in Hokkaido, which were more than adequate to deal with whatever the Soviets could land, especially once the Soviets ran out of supplies.

Especially when kamikaze attacks would wipe out the Soviet invasion force before it arrived.

There is a reason the Soviets deployed their amphibious forces out of range of the kamikazes.  They had no defenses against them.  Dunno why the Soviet fans don't even acknowledge this.

I'm being generous and assuming that the Soviets achieve some sort of surprise that allows them to minimize their losses on their way to the beaches.  But yes, even in that best case situation, they're going to lose everything and be unable to land further troops or supply anything that they landed. 

Incidentally on Frank, one interesting point is that in his discussion of Racing the Enemy, says it has convinced him of the central importance of Hirohito#s invervention:

QuoteThus, Hirohito took the first indispensable step on the path to Japan's surrender: he became the legitimate authority to make the political decision that the war must end.  Racing the Enemy convinces me that Hirohito's sacred decision, not the atomic bombs or Soviet intervention, was the single most shattering blow to the leaders of the "war party."  One popular Japanese historian, Hando Kazutoshi, maintains that Soviet entry killed any hopes of the politicians for a negotiated end to the war while the atomic bombs finished the military's vision of a fight to the finish. [31]  I believe Hasegawa concurs with the first part of this formulation.  In Downfall, I concurred with the second part of Hando's formulation insofar as the senior officers in Tokyo were concerned.  I believed those senior officers recognized that with atomic bombs, the U.S. would not need to attempt to invade and if there was no invasion, they really had no strategy other than national suicide.  [32]  Racing the Enemy, however, convinces me that the emperor's intervention takes primacy even above the atomic bombs in collapsing the will of the militarists in Tokyo.

I actually quite like that formulation by Kazutoshi - but if Hasegawa is correct as Frank now thinks it focuses attention less on the other parties in the Japanese government and more on what was the motivation for Hirohito's intervention. Of course I'm not sure if that's correct.

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 18, 2021, 02:22:16 PM
Incidentally on Frank, one interesting point is that in his discussion of Racing the Enemy, says it has convinced him of the central importance of Hirohito#s invervention:

QuoteThus, Hirohito took the first indispensable step on the path to Japan's surrender: he became the legitimate authority to make the political decision that the war must end.  Racing the Enemy convinces me that Hirohito's sacred decision, not the atomic bombs or Soviet intervention, was the single most shattering blow to the leaders of the "war party."  One popular Japanese historian, Hando Kazutoshi, maintains that Soviet entry killed any hopes of the politicians for a negotiated end to the war while the atomic bombs finished the military's vision of a fight to the finish. [31]  I believe Hasegawa concurs with the first part of this formulation.  In Downfall, I concurred with the second part of Hando's formulation insofar as the senior officers in Tokyo were concerned.  I believed those senior officers recognized that with atomic bombs, the U.S. would not need to attempt to invade and if there was no invasion, they really had no strategy other than national suicide.  [32]  Racing the Enemy, however, convinces me that the emperor's intervention takes primacy even above the atomic bombs in collapsing the will of the militarists in Tokyo.

I actually quite like that formulation by Kazutoshi - but if Hasegawa is correct as Frank now thinks it focuses attention less on the other parties in the Japanese government and more on what was the motivation for Hirohito's intervention. Of course I'm not sure if that's correct.

I got that same impression from Frank's Downfall:  that the emperor's personal intervention was what made the die-harders accede to surrender.  When the Emperor said that the US response to the August 10th Japanese request for conditions satisfied him, there was no way forward for the war party. 

Obviously, my point all along is that it is clear that, to the Emperor, the a-bombs were the key, since they made a US landing unnecessary and a Japanese face-saving battlefield victory impossible.  Kido and Togo are pretty clear on this, as is the actual message the Emperor sent out to the nation.

Soviet entry into the war was indeed instrumental in convincing the peace party to abandon conditions for peace.