Japan Was Already Beaten and Starving When We Dropped Nukes

Maybe the learned ones didn't take the "bait" and avoided the poison. Being an idiot at large I might have taken the bait, but the level of stupidity was breathtaking even to me. I was flabbergasted that someone with such an obvious lack of understanding as to what was required militarily, 76 years ago, has the temerity to lecture on the correct military course of action today. I still say it's an iodine deficiency.

 

Btw, is anyone against the A bomb had been against the kamikaze pilots? And if not, why not? Are they the "green" party of ww2?

 

That’s amazing!

 

I might buy 3-4 books by different authors and different site authors on certain battles. They give often more info and details on the battle and reactions etc.

 

First, let me address a common argument used by Truman apologists, an argument that Takao has cited in this thread. Truman apologists emphasize that the three hardlines on the Supreme War Council (aka Supreme Council for the Direction of the War) voted against surrender at both imperial conferences. Takao claimed that Hiroshima-Nagasaki critics “ignore” this fact. No, we don’t ignore it at all; rather, we point out that those same hardliners voted for surrender after the emperor voiced support for surrender in both of those imperial conferences. In addition, the hardliners in the cabinet, one of whom was Anami, voted for surrender both times after the emperor expressed his support for surrender. And keep in mind that the cabinet had to unanimously approve the vote from an imperial conference for that vote to take effect. If the cabinet did not unanimously approve an imperial conference decision, that decision was null and void. These are facts that Truman apologists routinely ignore when they cite the hardliners’ initial no-surrender votes in the two imperial conferences, just as Takao has done.

Second, it is time to discuss a major study commissioned by Columbia University that found that the nuking of Japan was not the reason Japan surrendered. The study was commissioned by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and was done by Dr. Yukiko Koshiro. She gained unprecedented access to Japanese archives to examine Japan’s relations with the Soviet Union and continental Asia before and during WWII. During her research, she uncovered clear evidence that the Soviet Union’s entry into the war was, by far, the main reason that Japan surrendered, and that the atomic bombings played no more than a minor role in the surrender decision and, even then, only among the moderates, who were already looking for any excuse to end the war. In her highly acclaimed book, Imperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before August 1945 (Cornell University Press, 2013), Dr. Koshiro includes an entire chapter on Japan’s surrender.

Dr. Koshiro’s publisher, Cornell University Press, discusses the access that she was able to obtain:

Through unprecedented archival research, Koshiro has located documents and reports expunged from the files of the Japanese Cabinet, ministries of Foreign Affairs and War, and Imperial Headquarters, allowing her to reconstruct Japan’s official thinking about its plans for continental Asia. She brings to light new information on the assumptions and resulting plans that Japan’s leaders made as military defeat became increasingly certain.

Here are some excerpts from Dr. Koshiro’s chapter on Japan’s surrender:

Official Japanese documents, both military and diplomatic, hardly portray the atomic bombs as a force that compelled Japan’s surrender. . . .

Even at that very moment [one day after Hiroshima], Togo was pressing Ambassador Sato to discuss the special peace mission with Molotov. Togo’s actions did not indicate any urgency to surrender immediately. The atomic bomb itself did not precipitate a Japanese decision to surrender. News of the Soviet attack, in contrast, served as the catalyst for the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War to form within thirty hours a consensus to surrender and to accept the Potsdam Proclamation.

The final log of the top secret war journal, which was resumed on August 9 by Lieutenant Colonel Takeshita Masahiko of the Military Affairs Section, Ministry of War, depicted the Soviet declaration of war against Japan as the decisive reason for an emergency meeting of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War.

Thus approximately twelve hours after the Soviet declaration of war against Japan, the Japanese government was already discussing acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation. At 11:30 a.m., news of the second atomic bomb reached the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. The news of Nagasaki had little impact on the substance of the discussion of the day, which had already been defined by the Soviet declaration of war.

Around 4:00 a.m., August 10, Togo returned to the Foreign Ministry to draft a text of surrender to telegraph to Ministers Shunichi Kase in Switzerland and Suemasa Okamoto in Sweden. Between 6:45 a.m. and 10:15 a.m., five telegrams were dispatched containing Japan’s decision to accept the Potsdam Proclamation, including the interpretation that the “said Declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.” Togo in these communications never mentioned the two atomic bombs as the reason for Japan’s decision to accept the Potsdam Proclamation. MAGIC intercepts of Japanese cables also showed that the atomic bomb was neither mentioned in the Japanese Army General message to Japan’s military attaches in Sweden, Switzerland, and Portugal, nor cited as a reason for the surrender. The first telegram Togo sent to Kase in Switzerland and Okamoto in Sweden at 6:45 a.m. on August 10 simply mentioned Japan’s readiness to accept the Potsdam Proclamation. The second telegram sent to both at 7:15 a.m. specifically mentioned that the failure to bring peace via the Soviet government precipitated the Japanese decision.

The top secret war journal did not mention the second atomic bomb at all in the entry for August 9. From then until August 15, there were only two instances in the top secret war journal on the atomic bomb. (Imperial Eclipse, pp. 236-241, emphasis added)

 

No matter how you sell it, they deserved what they got.

 

Regretfully, you have not addressed the argument...You restated it.

Why did not the peace-loving altruistic militaristic surrender in 1944, when they all agreed that Japand had lost the war?

You have not read Koshiro's work or previous article the book was based on...If you had, you would not bring it up.

Koshiro's opinion is that the Japanese purposely prolonged the war until the Soviet entry. They did this, so that the Soviets would act as a counterbalance to the Americans.

If Koshiro's opinion is correct, it utterly destroys your claim that the blame for Hiroshima & Nagasaki lies only with the Americans. With the Japanese purposefully continuing the war for their own ends, the blame for Hiroshima & Nagasaki lies only with the Japanese.

Too bad, so sad, please try again.

 

Agree...Debunking him is not a challenge, as he does not actually read his own source material. He prefers to cherry-pick via Google, even if his source is contrary to his argument.

 

Well I dunno...

I think it's far easier to start a war than to stop one.

I cite every modern war that has ever been fought from Napoleon onward.

It all depends on the OBJECTIVE (S).

The objective of the Pacific War was to convince the Emperor Hirohito to stop listening to his advisors and bring the war to a halt.

Whatever mechanism achieved that seems to be the subject of debate to this day.

But I'm sure everyone will agree that this above objective was fulfilled.

Did insistence on unconditional surrender prolong the conflict?

That is my only question