why did japan Surrender

why did japan Surrender


a) the bomb

b) Russian victory in Manchuria

discuss..

 

atomic bomb photos

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=1 ... tnG=Search

 

Final salvos of World War II
20:20 | 29/ 07/ 2005

MOSCOW. (Makhmut Gareyev, for RIA Novosti.) On September 2, 1945, Japan signed a full and unconditional surrender on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

It marked the end of World War II, which had lasted almost exactly six years and claimed more than 50 million human lives. The Red Army together with Allied troops put the finishing touches to the victory.

The Red Army routed the million-strong Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army, the biggest enemy group in Asia and the Pacific, which had 1,155 tanks, 5,360 artillery weapons, 1,800 war planes, and 25 ships. The Japanese had set up long-term, multi-level concrete fortifications linked by underground tunnels with food and water supplies for several months to come. They were getting ready for incessant fighting.

The Manchurian strategic offensive conducted by the Soviet troops in the Far East from August 9 to September 2, 1945, has gone down as one of the brightest pages of military arts and WWII war history. The operation took place over a front of 5,000 km, and to a depth of 200 to 800 km. The terrain was very difficult, with deserts, steppes, mountains, forests, and marshlands crossed by the great Amur, Argun, and Sungari rivers.

Regardless, the Red Army killed about 84,000 officers and men, took prisoner about 700,000, and lost no more than 12,000 of its own soldiers - less than 1% of its troops involved. Neither the Wehrmacht, nor the Anglo-American allies scored such a success in any operation during World War II.

Some Western scholars explain this outstanding success by pointing to the complete demoralization of the Japanese Imperial Army after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its end as a powerful military force. Moreover, the Soviet Union's participation in the final stages of World War II was not necessary because the troops of the U.S. and its Allies could cope with imperialist Japan alone. Those who make such statements are either deliberately lying or do not know much about the history of World War II.

To begin with, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill repeatedly asked Supreme Commander-in-Chief Joseph Stalin (in Tehran in 1943 and in Yalta in 1944) to provide military help against Japan. Stalin promised to help, and confirmed to new U.S. President Harry Truman at the conference in Potsdam in 1945 that the Red Army would start an operation against the Kwantung Army exactly three months after Nazi Germany signed the surrender. Soviet troops crossed the line of contact with the Japanese Army on the night of August 8.

Military historians know why Washington insisted that the Soviet Union intervene against Japan. In August 1945, Japan had almost 7,000,000 troops, 10,000 planes, and 500 warships in Asia and the Pacific. The Allied armies had only 1,800,000 troops, and 5,000 planes. If the Soviet Union had not joined the war, Japan's strongest Kwantung Army could have concentrated its main forces against the Americans, in which case the war would have lasted at least for another year or two, rather than one month. The U.S. would have lost more than a million people. Pentagon leaders bluntly told President Truman about the situation. It is a fact of history that initially Truman did not see much point in Soviet participation in the war, but it was not difficult for American generals to make him change his mind.

Secondly, the Kremlin was also interested in defeating the Kwantung Army, liberating China's north-eastern districts (Manchuria) and North Korea, destroying Tokyo's military and economic bases in Asia - a bridgehead for attacking the U.S.S.R. and Mongolia - and assisting Chinese patriots to oust the occupants from their homeland.

These goals were fuelled by the Kremlin's desire to take revenge for Russia's disgraceful defeat in the war against Japan in 1905, and to retrieve the lost South Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. In August 1945, I was in the attacking Fifth Army of the First Far Eastern Front, and I remember that almost every soldier was bent on eradicating the disgrace of 1905.

Moreover, the Soviet troops had to ensure the security of the country's borders in the Far East. During the 1,415 days of the Great Patriotic War the country had to keep up to 40 fully-fledged divisions that were so badly needed at the Soviet-German front, all the more so during the decisive battles for Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk. Some Western scholars claim that the Japanese were rather quiet in the border regions, and had no intention of attacking the U.S.S.R. This is not true, either. The Kwantung Army repeatedly staged armed provocations against Soviet troops and violated Soviet land and maritime frontiers, as well as air space. More than a thousand provocations were registered from 1941 to 1945. Japan detained Soviet ships 178 times, and sunk eighteen of them.

What effect did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki produce on the Kwantung Army? The nuclear bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9. Prominent Japanese historian Hattori wrote that on August 10 the Emperor's General Headquarters ordered General Otozo Yamada to "concentrate the main effort against the Soviet Union and to rout the enemy." On August 14, when Tokyo decided to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam declaration of July 26, 1945, and notified the governments of the U.S., U.S.S.R., and Britain, the Kwantung Army still did not receive an order to stop fighting.

It was only due to the rapid offensive by the Soviet air- and navy-supported army, powerful artillery strikes, airborne landing behind the enemy lines, and the scattering of the Kwantung Army into unequal and isolated units, that the troops of Emperor Hiroshito were compelled to lay down arms and surrender after August 20. But I saw myself that some fortified districts near Gradekovo and the Verblyud Mountain continued stubborn resistance even when they were fully encircled even after September 2.

It should be emphasized that the Manchurian strategic offensive demonstrated not only the Red Army's increased power by the end of the war, but also the outstanding military skills of its commanders. It is enough to mention the rapid transfer of 400,000 troops, over 7,000 artillery guns, 1,100 planes from the West to the East in 136,000 railway carriages. The Japanese intelligence service did not even notice this transfer, despite a powerful network of agents in the Far East.

The Soviet command also planned to start an offensive on the Japanese positions on the night of August 8. The head of Fifth Army intelligence (the Japanese also had a Fifth Army) reported to General Yamada about the impending attack. The general wrote on the report: "Only an imbecile can dare start an offensive in the Maritime Territory in August, when the rain never ends, and all roads become unfit for the movement of troops."

But the Soviet Union launched an offensive and won. This was an arduous victory. Tanks and artillery guns got stuck in tons of mud. Cavalry units could barely move. Kilograms of mud stuck to soldiers' boots and horses' legs, but the troops advanced faster than the army did on the Soviet-German front even in the dry summer.

Much credit also goes to the Chinese peasants. Nobody asked them to help but they did so of their own free will. The Japanese had driven them to such a state that they literally carried by hand our armored vehicles so that we could oust their worst enemies from their land.


ria is the russian government news source

 

>If the Soviet Union had not joined the war, Japan's strongest Kwantung Army could have concentrated its main forces against the Americans, in which case the war would have lasted at least for another year or two, rather than one month.


two words

TOKYO NEXT


your opinions?

 

the bomb, Japan had already showed it's ability to fight to the death and knew that America didn't have the heart for that type of total war.

However to continue the war when America could just pick a city and remove it from the map with a single plane and bomb would have been futile.

FNG

 

i agree on the bomb

 

Japan surrendered because they couldn't continue the war. Not only did the lack the resources, the food and manpower to withstand a siege of Japan itself, but there was also the A-Bomb. Cause and trigger.

 

I think Japan would have continued to fight for each square foot of land with spears and rocks if necessery.

Seeing the defence and assault on Berlin, I have no doubt that Japanese society which was more rigid would have fought on to the very bitter end. It's gets to the point where the leaders have nothing to lose and the population are just pawns in their plans.

The japanese population were also unswayed in their devotion to their rulers which the germans didn't quite have

FNG

 

I disagree with the first part of that assessment. The battles in the Pacific were exactly that kind of total war. No quarter was given on either side.
Operation Olympic / Downfall(invasion of Japan) was on schedule and going to happen no matter what number of casualties were predicted.

 

I'll stick my neck out here and make the daring statement that it was possibly a combination of the two events... :-?

 

Hi.

Loosing Manchuria wasn´t a major problem for the japanese forces in August 1945. Due to the siege of the home islands no troops or materiel could be sent to Japan or Mandchuria and the war in China was definitely lost.

The Kwantung Army lost it´s best troops during 1943/44 as they were sent to Burma and China. In August 1945 only second or third line troops and reserves remained in Manchuria.

Japan prepared for a defence on the continent and awaited the attack on the main islands. The most modern equipment and good trained men waited for the allied landing forces.

The two bombs turned the tide against the japanese military and lead to a "quick" end of the war. Maybe they saved live and health of millions........ :evil:

Yours

tom!

 

As much as the Japanese propaganda portraited the Americans as barbaric invaders. The emperor and members of the council knew what the conquering Russians did to the Germans, and so when it came to the point of choosing a conquerer, there was no doubt which side they would prefer. Sure the two A bombs were devastating, but it wasn't until the Red Army annihilated the Kwontung army in a lighting campaign that the Emperor realized he better call it quits before his Island of the sun overrun by Mongolian hordes. Germans had the same mentality at the end of the war.

 

They were doing the same to the countries they conquered, so they probably didn't expect any less from anyone who beat them in the end.

 

Response

I would say the bombs did the job. I will also say that the Russian invasion of Northen China pushed the Japanese further into surrendering.

 

Right about that, they got what they deserved. Can't believe they are still distorting the facts in their history books.

 

hard to say , the soviets did kick arse in an emphatic fashion and the
quantung army was a prestigious unit ,
but hardly relevant to the japannese who burned in their cities ,
the raid on tokyo killed more people than the A bombs combined
curtis le may , commander of the air force was engaged in the total
burning of everything and then some more , just to be sure !!
there is no doubt than the U.S. forces would have had a nightmare of a
time fighting on japannese soil , the first piece of it taken by the U.S. was
called sulfur island , iwo jima , and the extrapolation for the whole of the
home islands ran into one million U.S. casualties plus

on the other hand the new japannese government was looking desperatly
for a way out and had been sending peace feelers to anyone who would
listen ,
it came down to saving face , vague promises as to the moral position
of the emperor and the two A bombs came in very handy .

:-? :-?

 

Do you have a source for this figure? I haven't seen anything over 400,000 estimated American dead; mind you, that is still more than the Americans lost during the entire war up to that point.

 

I have heard of the 1 million estimate also - but can't remember where...

 

casualties figures for WW2 are one dead , three evac. wounded
it's the number bandied about in history books , seems about right

 

The direct invasion of Japan was code-named Operation Olympic if I recall.
They estimated one million casualties.

Tim