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> You do realize that Japan did not surrender after the complete and utter destruction of Hiroshima. Were you hoping I wouldn't check the dates? Hiroshima was

> You do realize that Japan did not surrender after the complete and utter destruction of Hiroshima. Were you hoping I wouldn't check the dates? Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, Nagasaki on the 9th, and Japan surrendered on the 15th. It took them 6 days after the 2nd bomb (and Soviet declaration of war) to surrender, but the 2nd bomb dropped 3 days after the 1st. Diplomacy takes time. If the US had dropped 10 nukes in 3 days, would you have said "Japan did not surrender after the 9th nuke - clearly the 10th was warranted"? And nothing you wrote disproves that the Soviet declaration of war alone would have been enough for surrender, while the whole article is full of accounts indicating unconditional surrender was at hand (let alone conditional surrender). Just saying "nu-uh" won't make the article go away. Not to mention the bombs could easily have been delayed by a week to check.

eska 6y ago
The US was afraid that the first bomb wouldn't explode properly because of its high failure rate. If the first use of this super weapon had been a dud, they feared that this would feed into Japanese propaganda, and a second bomb wouldn't have the same shocking effect anymore. Since they were unable to produce many of these bombs for months, the first two had to do.
waynecochran 6y ago
History books of are replete in their description of Japan's attitude towards surrender. They certainly would have surrendered by the end of the year, but the casualties for Japan (and China and the US) would have been horrendous. Concerning the bombing of Hiroshima I'll quote an excerpt from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan’s supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan’s desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki. As horrific as the bomb was, it put a decisive end to the war. Everyone, especially the Japanese, avoided a massive slaughter (and starvation) that was coming.

eska 6y ago

The US was afraid that the first bomb wouldn't explode properly because of its high failure rate. If the first use of this super weapon had been a dud, they feared that this would feed into Japanese propaganda, and a second bomb wouldn't have the same shocking effect anymore. Since they were unable to produce many of these bombs for months, the first two had to do.

waynecochran 6y ago

History books of are replete in their description of Japan's attitude towards surrender. They certainly would have surrendered by the end of the year, but the casualties for Japan (and China and the US) would have been horrendous. Concerning the bombing of Hiroshima I'll quote an excerpt from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan’s supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan’s desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki. As horrific as the bomb was, it put a decisive end to the war. Everyone, especially the Japanese, avoided a massive slaughter (and starvation) that was coming.