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A documentary I saw years and years ago would say that this article is not being honest about the Japan memo. The documentary said that Japan used a super-obsc

A documentary I saw years and years ago would say that this article is not being honest about the Japan memo. The documentary said that Japan used a super-obscure word, and that there was a team of translators digging through books who eventually told the president that Japan it means that Japan is both responding and not responding. They're giving a "NULL" answer. In other words it wasn't the words that were mistranslated, but that Japan was using something that doesn't fully translate culturally. E.g. apparently in Japan if you do something unusual while on the train then you may find that everyone around you is suddenly "asleep". They're so embarrassed for you for violating a minor cultural norm that the easiest way to make this better is to pretend to be asleep and that they didn't see it. (I guess I never made such mistakes while there) If you've worked with people from other countries you may know similar things. Like in some countries they say yes to everything. They can't deliver some of the things, but it would be rude to say no. Back on topic: In the end Japan did not answer in time, and "surrender or get bombed, we will end this war now" ultimatum doesn't give room for "No comment. We need more time". Japan didn't say "we surrender". They didn't say "we don't surrender". Not literally. It's more comparable to "Yeah we definitely should hang out some time!". It's not the words that matter there. It's the meaning. And the meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were dying every day.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 8y ago
>Japan didn't say "we surrender". They didn't say "we don't surrender". Not literally. It's more comparable to "Yeah we definitely should hang out some time!". It's not the words that matter there. It's the meaning. And the meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were dying every day. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while the USSR was closing in on Japan from the other side, and they had two perfectly good bombs they wanted to test and send a clear, post-WWII-era message. I wouldn't call dropping two nuclear bombs on civilians (men, women, and children) a concern for the human toll. Not even conventional bombing (which had gone on for a while) was needed at that point, Japan was giving up the ghost and just wanted to save some face.
- mc32 8y ago
  Considering how the USSR carved up eastern Europe and how they treated the local Germans in the east as the war wound down, I think one of the considerations was to not want parts or whole parts of Japan fall to the SU. In other words we didn’t want an eastern iron curtain. There is no way were going to allow the SU a major invasion force on Japanese soil.
  - krapp 8y ago
    That was one of the main motivating factors behind the US decicing to invest heavily in rebuilding Japan's infrastructure after the war... to have a strong and stable capitalist influence in the area.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >and how they treated the local Germans in the east as the war wound down You mean by showing massive amounts of restraint? Nobody would have asked "why" if the Russians had burned most villages and murdered a good chunk of the German civilian population. More than a few people were surprised when the soviets didn't do that. Likewise nobody would have asked why if the US didn't stop at two bombs. Sure a few people would have complained had the Soviets burned east Germany to the ground or the US had continued to atom bomb what was left of Japan but there almost certainly wouldn't have been any serious backlash. The world had seen a lot of death and destruction between 1939 and 1945 (and a decade of depression before that). A couple million more of the people who started the mess likely wouldn't have moved the needle on most people's give-a-shit meter. People care about avenging the deaths of people they know and preventing more people they know from dying far more than they care about civilian casualties of the enemy. Yes I know this is probably uncomfortable to read from your air conditioned office but when your drive to the front takes you through a burnt out village where some of your distant relatives once lived revenge starts looking better and when every page in your high-school yearbook has a couple people who won't ever be showing up to a reunion turning an island into a smoldering rock in order to not have to invade it looks like a really good option.
    - mc32 8y ago
pluma 8y ago
When Japan's emperor recently announced his future resignation, he didn't say "I resign", he talked about his age and deteriorating health. In all likelihood straight out saying "we surrender" would have been inconceivable, especially if the surrender is supposed to be unconditional, potentially with a Nuremberg treatment of the god-emperor. You can blame the culture for not using communication efficiently, but saying a "null" answer to the demands of surrender was sufficient reason to one-up the violence by becoming the first and only country to use nuclear weapons and the first and only country to use nuclear weapons specifically against civilians, is absurd. (To be clear: what I'm saying is that even with a gun to his head, the emperor probably wouldn't have simply said "okay, we surrender", at least no publicly)
- krapp 8y ago
  >(To be clear: what I'm saying is that even with a gun to his head, the emperor probably wouldn't have simply said "okay, we surrender", at least no publicly) But that's what actually happened. The military was afraid the emperor would surrender and launched a coup on the palace, and the record containing the announcement of Japan's surrender had to be snuck out in a pile of laundry. And to be fair, Japan's current emperor can't legally resign or even ask to resign because of restrictions on imperial political influence imposed by postwar law, since abdication would require changing the constitution.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  > You can blame the culture for not using communication efficiently, but saying a "null" answer to the demands of surrender was sufficient reason to one-up the violence by becoming the first and only country to use nuclear weapons and the first and only country to use nuclear weapons specifically against civilians, is absurd. I have trouble understanding why killing a few hundred thousand civilians in a nuclear attack is in some way qualitatively different in a moral sense from killing a few hundred thousand civilians in firebombings. The only difference was tactical: now we can and will kill you with even less effort and risk. The US had bombed out most Japanese cities and countless civilians had died in the bombings. The firebombing of Tokyo alone killed as many as many as 200k, easily the same scale as the nuclear bombings. I think the intense focus on the nuclear bombings is misleading. There was no "one-upping" or escalation. The same level of violence was perpetrated by a new method.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 8y ago

>Japan didn't say "we surrender". They didn't say "we don't surrender". Not literally. It's more comparable to "Yeah we definitely should hang out some time!". It's not the words that matter there. It's the meaning. And the meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were dying every day. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while the USSR was closing in on Japan from the other side, and they had two perfectly good bombs they wanted to test and send a clear, post-WWII-era message. I wouldn't call dropping two nuclear bombs on civilians (men, women, and children) a concern for the human toll. Not even conventional bombing (which had gone on for a while) was needed at that point, Japan was giving up the ghost and just wanted to save some face.

mc32 8y ago
Considering how the USSR carved up eastern Europe and how they treated the local Germans in the east as the war wound down, I think one of the considerations was to not want parts or whole parts of Japan fall to the SU. In other words we didn’t want an eastern iron curtain. There is no way were going to allow the SU a major invasion force on Japanese soil.
- krapp 8y ago
  That was one of the main motivating factors behind the US decicing to invest heavily in rebuilding Japan's infrastructure after the war... to have a strong and stable capitalist influence in the area.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >and how they treated the local Germans in the east as the war wound down You mean by showing massive amounts of restraint? Nobody would have asked "why" if the Russians had burned most villages and murdered a good chunk of the German civilian population. More than a few people were surprised when the soviets didn't do that. Likewise nobody would have asked why if the US didn't stop at two bombs. Sure a few people would have complained had the Soviets burned east Germany to the ground or the US had continued to atom bomb what was left of Japan but there almost certainly wouldn't have been any serious backlash. The world had seen a lot of death and destruction between 1939 and 1945 (and a decade of depression before that). A couple million more of the people who started the mess likely wouldn't have moved the needle on most people's give-a-shit meter. People care about avenging the deaths of people they know and preventing more people they know from dying far more than they care about civilian casualties of the enemy. Yes I know this is probably uncomfortable to read from your air conditioned office but when your drive to the front takes you through a burnt out village where some of your distant relatives once lived revenge starts looking better and when every page in your high-school yearbook has a couple people who won't ever be showing up to a reunion turning an island into a smoldering rock in order to not have to invade it looks like a really good option.
  - mc32 8y ago

pluma 8y ago

When Japan's emperor recently announced his future resignation, he didn't say "I resign", he talked about his age and deteriorating health. In all likelihood straight out saying "we surrender" would have been inconceivable, especially if the surrender is supposed to be unconditional, potentially with a Nuremberg treatment of the god-emperor. You can blame the culture for not using communication efficiently, but saying a "null" answer to the demands of surrender was sufficient reason to one-up the violence by becoming the first and only country to use nuclear weapons and the first and only country to use nuclear weapons specifically against civilians, is absurd. (To be clear: what I'm saying is that even with a gun to his head, the emperor probably wouldn't have simply said "okay, we surrender", at least no publicly)

krapp 8y ago
>(To be clear: what I'm saying is that even with a gun to his head, the emperor probably wouldn't have simply said "okay, we surrender", at least no publicly) But that's what actually happened. The military was afraid the emperor would surrender and launched a coup on the palace, and the record containing the announcement of Japan's surrender had to be snuck out in a pile of laundry. And to be fair, Japan's current emperor can't legally resign or even ask to resign because of restrictions on imperial political influence imposed by postwar law, since abdication would require changing the constitution.
Amezarak 8y ago
> You can blame the culture for not using communication efficiently, but saying a "null" answer to the demands of surrender was sufficient reason to one-up the violence by becoming the first and only country to use nuclear weapons and the first and only country to use nuclear weapons specifically against civilians, is absurd. I have trouble understanding why killing a few hundred thousand civilians in a nuclear attack is in some way qualitatively different in a moral sense from killing a few hundred thousand civilians in firebombings. The only difference was tactical: now we can and will kill you with even less effort and risk. The US had bombed out most Japanese cities and countless civilians had died in the bombings. The firebombing of Tokyo alone killed as many as many as 200k, easily the same scale as the nuclear bombings. I think the intense focus on the nuclear bombings is misleading. There was no "one-upping" or escalation. The same level of violence was perpetrated by a new method.