4 ms·

The atomic bomb was more of warning and show of force to the Soviets rather than the Empire of Japan. The purpose of the bombs wasn't (just) to get Japan to sur

The atomic bomb was more of warning and show of force to the Soviets rather than the Empire of Japan. The purpose of the bombs wasn't (just) to get Japan to surrender, since they were already near defeat anyway, it was to show the Soviet Union that the US had the wonder weapon already working and that they should back off and fall in line unless they want a piece of that. I think many people miss that part of history.

Pooge 1y ago
> It wasn't to get Japan to surrender, since they were already near defeat anyway I'm not a historian but I've always read that the Japanese government famously did not intend to surrender despite being cornered. They had some operations scheduled for October 1945—they surrendered 1 month before due to the bombs.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  I'm also no historian, but find it difficult to believe this when the firebombings on Japan did more damage than the atomic bombs. The US and Soviet Union would have leveled Japan without atomic bombs anyway. So the US history stories puts the success of the end of the war on the atom bombs, but Japan were defeated anyway, atom bombs or not.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - b112 1y ago
    I agree the outcome was clear. And this was a feudal system with an Emperor, and a culture of extreme adherence to culture. As in, Kamikazis because ordered, honour in death, or killing yourself with your own sword. Not really a culture of capitulation. Most of their cities were already firebombed, as you elude to, some more than once, yet there was still no surrender. Without surrender, a country isn't really done. Leave it be, and they'll arm and rebuild, still at war with you. Invade, and your troops die, for a standing army still existed. Japan also had colonies, islands, resources. And of course without surrender, even if you occupy, now you have insurgents. It's hard to view the world through the eyes of even 80 years ago. War weary, endless soldiers lost already, an unsurrendering Japan, and a way to put an end to it...
    - dotancohen 1y ago
      > Without surrender, a country isn't really done. Leave it be, and they'll arm and rebuild, still at war with you. This is pertinent to understanding today's conflicts as well.
      - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Of course, after surrender, a country can still arm and rebuild, and again be at war with you...
        dotancohen 1y ago
        Are you referring to 1920's Germany in particular?
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      And even with the atomic bomb, and Russia's declaration of war, they still had an attempted coup to keep the emperor from surrendering.
  - jandrewrogers 1y ago
    Massive scale strategic bombing and nuclear weapons are not substitutable from a military strategy standpoint and everyone would have understood the implications of that. Any similarity is superficial. The massive bombing of Japan was a grinding war of attrition that has well-understood limitations and challenges. Military leaders in Japan were perfectly capable of understanding what those campaigns couldn't do, so it came down to a willingness to accept the losses to maintain strategic optionality, which they clearly were. Most of the limitations of strategic bombing campaigns do not apply to nuclear weapons, which is something the Japanese military leadership also understood, though the scope of capability was uncertain (which also probably helped). If the US switched to nuclear weapons instead of conventional bombing campaigns, which was the risk Japanese military leaders had to consider, it takes most of the strategic optionality off the table at which point there is little to gain by continuing.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Two history books, "Code-Name Downfall" by Allen and "Downfall" by Frank point out that the Japanese high command was horrified by the effects of the nuclear bombs, cared a great deal about the loss of life, and were highly concerned that the next target would be Tokyo. So they chose to end it. There's a fair amount of detail and references in those books if one wishes to dig into it. (I say they are "history" books as opposed to "activist" books. The latter are not worth reading.) Some material I've seen claimed that the Japanese leadership didn't know it was a nuclear bomb. The Japanese knew immediately it was nuclear bomb, because they had a nuclear bomb development program themselves.
    - themaninthedark 1y ago
      I think the material that claims the Japanese leadership didn't know what atomic bombs were is some revisionist's attempt to paint the actions and decisions of the time in a bad light. Fortunately, the emperor referenced atomic bombs in his surrender speech so it is fairly clear. "Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation." Japan had no idea how many bombs we had and part of the strategy of using them in quick succession was to give the perception that we hod more than we did. It seems like Tokyo was going to be the next target: Truman had ordered a halt to atomic bombings on 10 August, upon receiving news that another bomb would be ready for use against Japan in about a week. He told his cabinet that he could not stand the thought of killing "all those kids". By 14 August, however, Truman remarked "sadly" to the British ambassador that "he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb dropped on Tokyo", as some of his military staff had been advocating.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        > is some revisionist's attempt Yeah, it was in an activist's writings someone was using as a cite to me. Tells for an activist book: 1. hyperbolic language 2. no discussion of alternative explanations 3. mind reading - "surely so-and-so must have understood that..." and "so-and-so's reason must have been (something nefarious)"
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    I think there was also the shock effect of this one tiny bomb with that much power. And the Japanese didn't know that America only had those two available. They could have had thousands for all they knew. And this is also something that could strike their leadership. You can build bunkers against conventional bombs but for nuclear that's a different ball game
    - dboreham 1y ago
      They had three and the capacity to make about three per month.
- roughly 1y ago
  My understanding is that Japan had agreed to surrender under the conditions that they got to keep their emperor, but the US had rejected that looking for an unconditional surrender*. A lot of the research around that time indicates the drivers for dropping the nukes included both sending a message to the Soviets and the overall cost of the Manhattan project (and an unwillingness to let the war end without “recouping” some of that cost). Whether the Japanese surrendered when they did or surrendered a couple months later, though, Japanese surrender was largely expected at that point. One can argue about the increased cost in terms of lives if the bombs weren’t used, but my understanding is that by that time, we’re talking about shortening the war by maybe months, but certainly not years. (*Worth noting that in the final terms, the Japanese did keep their emperor, but the US was demanding an unconditional surrender as a matter of principle.)
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    > "Whether the Japanese surrendered when they did or surrendered a couple months later, though, Japanese surrender was largely expected at that point." By whom? In actuality, both the US and Japan were planning for a long campaign on the Japanese home islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall. The Japanese intended to prolong fighting as much as possible to force the US to abandon the invasion because of mounting costs and casualties. Even the night before the surrender, some among the Japanese military attempted a coup to prevent it and continue the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
  - InTheArena 1y ago
    Your understanding is incorrect. Even with the atomic bombs and the Soviet entered to the war, the cabinet still split about surrendering. Before that The Japanese had started to talk about a cease-fire, but that cease-fire was expected to include ongoing control of China, Korea, and some of the islands they had taken in the war. In other words it wasn’t a surrender, but rather a let us keep these last little bit bits and maybe we won’t kill you. It was delusional to the extreme. The debate in Washington at this point not if Japan would be invaded or not or would surrender. Operations downfall and Olympus were planned. They were projecting anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 1 million casualties on the US side. No one bothered to do the calculation on the Japanese side, but the Japanese leadership believed that their path of victory was to make it prohibitively expensive in American lives to take the islands and they didn’t care how many Japanese died. You can take a look at the ratios of Japanese dead to American dead on Iwo Jima, the Philippines to get an idea of the bloodbath that that would’ve been. Of course, some Americans were seeing that the Japanese were far stronger on the islands and they anticipated. And we’re pushing for a total naval blockade instead. Japan’s economy and agricultural harvest had already collapsed. A total net naval blockade would’ve killed millions.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  The Japanese government didn’t have any intent to surrender until the emperor at the time asked/told them to. I’m fairly certain that happened after the bombs. Then they suggested they’d surrender if the poition of the emperor was untouched.
  - shakow 1y ago
    Even _after_ the emperor asked to, it was not smooth sailing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
- sbmthakur 1y ago
  Didn't the Soviet invasion of Manchuria also boxed them in? Some Historians(Paul Hamn for once) have said that was the primary reason for the surrender.
  - bell-cot 1y ago
    Oh, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria From the Japanese PoV, imagining that they could hold off the US/UK suddenly ceased to matter. Obviously Japanese armies could not stand against Soviet armies. So - "OMG, who could have imagined the Americans inventing a super-super-duper bomb! I guess we'll have to surrender to them" was a face-saving way to avoid a quick & brutal Soviet conquest & occupation.
    - UncleSlacky 1y ago
      Also, Japan had been hoping that the Soviets would act as a go-between for surrender negotiations with the US, but the Soviet declaration of war on Japan put an end to that possibility.
    - opo 1y ago
      The Soviets could never have done a large invasion of Japan. They had a few ships that the USA had given them as part of Project Hula, but that is nothing compared to what would be needed for a full scale invasion of Japan. They did have plans to possibly attack Hokkaido, but as the wikipedia entry says "Historians have generally considered it unlikely that an invasion of Hokkaido would have succeeded." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Hokkaido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Ho... In comparison, the proposed allied invasion was planned to have 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Even that wasn't considered enough: >...Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
buckle8017 1y ago
The idea that Japan was going to surrender is revisionist nonsense. The US manufactured millions of purple hearts in anticipation of an amphibious invasion. To this day those are the purple hearts used. Nuclear weapons saved millions of lives.
- jleyank 1y ago
  Particularly amongst the civilians in Asia who had suffered over the last 10 years. Ending the war quickly stopped this killing, aside from the Japanese and American + allies lives. And the early bombs were merely efficient ways to level a city. 1 B-29 rather than a few hundred. 16 sq miles of Tokyo got burned down in one night, for example.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    If atomic bombs never developed past what they dropped in Japan it's somewhat likely be used in war commonly. They are large and nasty, yet still require a lot of them for metropolitan areas. It's the civilization enders we developed in the 30 years after that woke us up.
    - InTheArena 1y ago
      I always found this the most interesting aspect of the timing of the bombs. They occurred at the one moment in 20th century where their power could be seen in a way that everybody immediately grasp the outcome of it and that no response was physically possible. They also occurred at the one moment in time in which a multipolar world essentially coalesced to a bipolar world. And the people that use the bomb had every intention of moving towards a true United Nations with use of the bomb governed via the UN. If any of those things change, I think history looks very different
    - philipkglass 1y ago
      The civilization-enders were in mass production a mere 9 years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb Mk-17: produced Jul 1954-Nov 1955 No. built: 200 Blast yield: 15 megatonnes of TNT This is 1000 times the power of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. From 1935 to 1955 you could plot "firepower deliverable by a single aircraft" and see a trend that looks a lot like Moore's Law for mass destruction of life and structures. Edward Teller thought that it was possible to make bombs a thousand times more powerful than the first generation thermonuclear bombs, but fortunately nobody was willing to commit resources to exploring the concept. Merely testing such a bomb on Earth would have been an act of mass destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon)
themaninthedark 1y ago
The emperor of Japan directly referenced the atomic bombs in his surrender speech: "We have considered deeply the general trends of the world and the current situation of the Empire, and We have decided to take extraordinary measures to bring the current state of affairs to an end. We hereby inform Our loyal and devoted subjects." ... "Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization." However there were was a major faction that did not want to surrender and had conspired and committed a coup d'état to prevent it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
lostlogin 1y ago
There was plenty of fight left in Japan. The battle of Okinawa was absolutely horrific and small a scale guide to what invading the homeland would have been. There were 76,000-84,000 allied casualties and 105,000-110,000 Japanese. The civilian death toll was 40,000-150,000. Claiming that lives were saved by bombing cities with nuclear weapons is always going to be a hard one to prove and morally dubious, but it might also be correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > There was plenty of fight left in Japan. After the first dropping, the War Cabinet met on August 9th and concluded in the morning that the US probably did not have the resources to build more than one bomb, and it was decided to keep fighting. Then in the early afternoon they learned of the second dropping. After further debate the War Cabinet voted 3-3 on whether to continue fighting. It took two bombing to get to a tied vote (both of the War Cabinet, and the full cabinet): the Emperor had to be called to break the stalemate. I do not understand how anyone could believe zero bombings would result in a cessation of hostilities. And even after the decision was made, there were still attempts to prevent surrender: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
  - xhkkffbf 1y ago
    The last coup was quite a stretch. They hoped to stop the surrender by stopping the Emperor's message from being broadcast. Crazy. I suppose there were some coups that succeeded because the plotters controlled the news media.
    - throw0101c 1y ago
      > The last coup was quite a stretch. Yes, but it still shows the mindset (of some) in the military. And military action against government wasn't a new thing in Japan either: > Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by 11 young naval officers. The following trial and popular support of the Japanese population led to extremely light sentences for the assassins, strengthening the rising power of Japanese militarism and weakening democracy and the rule of law in the Empire of Japan. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_interwar_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_interwar_Japan
InTheArena 1y ago
This is false. There has never been any historical record at that time that shows that “warning the soviets” was any part of it. In fact, the USA disclosed the bomb to stalin beforehand hand. Anyone who postulated that was not in the chain of command. The Americans still very much believed at this point that the best post wore outcome was an ongoing alliance between the United States and the USSR. It was only after the scale of Stalin‘s ambitions in Eastern Europe became apparent and the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials that it was becoming obvious that there would be an ongoing confrontation. I strongly suggest the recent book on operation downfall, as well as the recent popular works on the last months of the war from the Japanese point of view.
- mannykannot 1y ago
  Prior to the Hiroshima bombing, all that the US had told the USSR about the atom bomb was that they had developed a "new weapon of unusual destructive force" (Truman to Stalin at the Potsdam conference.) As it happens, Stalin knew all about it through espionage, but as the US government was unaware of this, we cannot deduce, from what Stalin had been told by the US government, that the US government's position was that using atom bombs against Japan would have no influence on Stalin's thinking. Furthermore, we have evidence, from the diaries and correspondence of Truman, Stimson and others, that they were concerned about Stalin's territorial intentions, and expressed the hope that the US's demonstration of the atom bomb would curb them. Whether that led to at least a tacit secondary goal, of checking the USSR by leaving no doubt about the US's willingness to use atomic weapons in circumstances it deemed necessary, is an open question debated by historians to this day.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
trueismywork 1y ago
Japan was refusing to surrender even after the first atomic bomb
throw0101c 1y ago
> The atomic bomb was more of warning and show of force to the Soviets rather than the Empire of Japan. [citation needed] This claimed gets brought out every time atomic usage comes up, but are there official US policy documents that date to 1945 that explicitly bring this up as a motivation?
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Significant portion of the field of history is speculation and reading between the lines.
  - throw0101c 1y ago
    > Significant portion of the field of history is speculation and reading between the lines. Government decisions and policies, especially in more modern times, runs on memos. If such options were discussed between departments there would be paperwork.

Pooge 1y ago

> It wasn't to get Japan to surrender, since they were already near defeat anyway I'm not a historian but I've always read that the Japanese government famously did not intend to surrender despite being cornered. They had some operations scheduled for October 1945—they surrendered 1 month before due to the bombs.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
I'm also no historian, but find it difficult to believe this when the firebombings on Japan did more damage than the atomic bombs. The US and Soviet Union would have leveled Japan without atomic bombs anyway. So the US history stories puts the success of the end of the war on the atom bombs, but Japan were defeated anyway, atom bombs or not.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- b112 1y ago
  I agree the outcome was clear. And this was a feudal system with an Emperor, and a culture of extreme adherence to culture. As in, Kamikazis because ordered, honour in death, or killing yourself with your own sword. Not really a culture of capitulation. Most of their cities were already firebombed, as you elude to, some more than once, yet there was still no surrender. Without surrender, a country isn't really done. Leave it be, and they'll arm and rebuild, still at war with you. Invade, and your troops die, for a standing army still existed. Japan also had colonies, islands, resources. And of course without surrender, even if you occupy, now you have insurgents. It's hard to view the world through the eyes of even 80 years ago. War weary, endless soldiers lost already, an unsurrendering Japan, and a way to put an end to it...
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    > Without surrender, a country isn't really done. Leave it be, and they'll arm and rebuild, still at war with you. This is pertinent to understanding today's conflicts as well.
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      Of course, after surrender, a country can still arm and rebuild, and again be at war with you...
      - dotancohen 1y ago
        Are you referring to 1920's Germany in particular?
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    And even with the atomic bomb, and Russia's declaration of war, they still had an attempted coup to keep the emperor from surrendering.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Massive scale strategic bombing and nuclear weapons are not substitutable from a military strategy standpoint and everyone would have understood the implications of that. Any similarity is superficial. The massive bombing of Japan was a grinding war of attrition that has well-understood limitations and challenges. Military leaders in Japan were perfectly capable of understanding what those campaigns couldn't do, so it came down to a willingness to accept the losses to maintain strategic optionality, which they clearly were. Most of the limitations of strategic bombing campaigns do not apply to nuclear weapons, which is something the Japanese military leadership also understood, though the scope of capability was uncertain (which also probably helped). If the US switched to nuclear weapons instead of conventional bombing campaigns, which was the risk Japanese military leaders had to consider, it takes most of the strategic optionality off the table at which point there is little to gain by continuing.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Two history books, "Code-Name Downfall" by Allen and "Downfall" by Frank point out that the Japanese high command was horrified by the effects of the nuclear bombs, cared a great deal about the loss of life, and were highly concerned that the next target would be Tokyo. So they chose to end it. There's a fair amount of detail and references in those books if one wishes to dig into it. (I say they are "history" books as opposed to "activist" books. The latter are not worth reading.) Some material I've seen claimed that the Japanese leadership didn't know it was a nuclear bomb. The Japanese knew immediately it was nuclear bomb, because they had a nuclear bomb development program themselves.
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    I think the material that claims the Japanese leadership didn't know what atomic bombs were is some revisionist's attempt to paint the actions and decisions of the time in a bad light. Fortunately, the emperor referenced atomic bombs in his surrender speech so it is fairly clear. "Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation." Japan had no idea how many bombs we had and part of the strategy of using them in quick succession was to give the perception that we hod more than we did. It seems like Tokyo was going to be the next target: Truman had ordered a halt to atomic bombings on 10 August, upon receiving news that another bomb would be ready for use against Japan in about a week. He told his cabinet that he could not stand the thought of killing "all those kids". By 14 August, however, Truman remarked "sadly" to the British ambassador that "he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb dropped on Tokyo", as some of his military staff had been advocating.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      > is some revisionist's attempt Yeah, it was in an activist's writings someone was using as a cite to me. Tells for an activist book: 1. hyperbolic language 2. no discussion of alternative explanations 3. mind reading - "surely so-and-so must have understood that..." and "so-and-so's reason must have been (something nefarious)"
- wkat4242 1y ago
  I think there was also the shock effect of this one tiny bomb with that much power. And the Japanese didn't know that America only had those two available. They could have had thousands for all they knew. And this is also something that could strike their leadership. You can build bunkers against conventional bombs but for nuclear that's a different ball game
  - dboreham 1y ago
    They had three and the capacity to make about three per month.
roughly 1y ago
My understanding is that Japan had agreed to surrender under the conditions that they got to keep their emperor, but the US had rejected that looking for an unconditional surrender*. A lot of the research around that time indicates the drivers for dropping the nukes included both sending a message to the Soviets and the overall cost of the Manhattan project (and an unwillingness to let the war end without “recouping” some of that cost). Whether the Japanese surrendered when they did or surrendered a couple months later, though, Japanese surrender was largely expected at that point. One can argue about the increased cost in terms of lives if the bombs weren’t used, but my understanding is that by that time, we’re talking about shortening the war by maybe months, but certainly not years. (*Worth noting that in the final terms, the Japanese did keep their emperor, but the US was demanding an unconditional surrender as a matter of principle.)
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  > "Whether the Japanese surrendered when they did or surrendered a couple months later, though, Japanese surrender was largely expected at that point." By whom? In actuality, both the US and Japan were planning for a long campaign on the Japanese home islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall. The Japanese intended to prolong fighting as much as possible to force the US to abandon the invasion because of mounting costs and casualties. Even the night before the surrender, some among the Japanese military attempted a coup to prevent it and continue the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
- InTheArena 1y ago
  Your understanding is incorrect. Even with the atomic bombs and the Soviet entered to the war, the cabinet still split about surrendering. Before that The Japanese had started to talk about a cease-fire, but that cease-fire was expected to include ongoing control of China, Korea, and some of the islands they had taken in the war. In other words it wasn’t a surrender, but rather a let us keep these last little bit bits and maybe we won’t kill you. It was delusional to the extreme. The debate in Washington at this point not if Japan would be invaded or not or would surrender. Operations downfall and Olympus were planned. They were projecting anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 1 million casualties on the US side. No one bothered to do the calculation on the Japanese side, but the Japanese leadership believed that their path of victory was to make it prohibitively expensive in American lives to take the islands and they didn’t care how many Japanese died. You can take a look at the ratios of Japanese dead to American dead on Iwo Jima, the Philippines to get an idea of the bloodbath that that would’ve been. Of course, some Americans were seeing that the Japanese were far stronger on the islands and they anticipated. And we’re pushing for a total naval blockade instead. Japan’s economy and agricultural harvest had already collapsed. A total net naval blockade would’ve killed millions.
Aeolun 1y ago
The Japanese government didn’t have any intent to surrender until the emperor at the time asked/told them to. I’m fairly certain that happened after the bombs. Then they suggested they’d surrender if the poition of the emperor was untouched.
- shakow 1y ago
  Even _after_ the emperor asked to, it was not smooth sailing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
sbmthakur 1y ago
Didn't the Soviet invasion of Manchuria also boxed them in? Some Historians(Paul Hamn for once) have said that was the primary reason for the surrender.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  Oh, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria From the Japanese PoV, imagining that they could hold off the US/UK suddenly ceased to matter. Obviously Japanese armies could not stand against Soviet armies. So - "OMG, who could have imagined the Americans inventing a super-super-duper bomb! I guess we'll have to surrender to them" was a face-saving way to avoid a quick & brutal Soviet conquest & occupation.
  - UncleSlacky 1y ago
    Also, Japan had been hoping that the Soviets would act as a go-between for surrender negotiations with the US, but the Soviet declaration of war on Japan put an end to that possibility.
  - opo 1y ago
    The Soviets could never have done a large invasion of Japan. They had a few ships that the USA had given them as part of Project Hula, but that is nothing compared to what would be needed for a full scale invasion of Japan. They did have plans to possibly attack Hokkaido, but as the wikipedia entry says "Historians have generally considered it unlikely that an invasion of Hokkaido would have succeeded." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Hokkaido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Ho... In comparison, the proposed allied invasion was planned to have 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Even that wasn't considered enough: >...Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

buckle8017 1y ago

The idea that Japan was going to surrender is revisionist nonsense. The US manufactured millions of purple hearts in anticipation of an amphibious invasion. To this day those are the purple hearts used. Nuclear weapons saved millions of lives.

jleyank 1y ago
Particularly amongst the civilians in Asia who had suffered over the last 10 years. Ending the war quickly stopped this killing, aside from the Japanese and American + allies lives. And the early bombs were merely efficient ways to level a city. 1 B-29 rather than a few hundred. 16 sq miles of Tokyo got burned down in one night, for example.
- pixl97 1y ago
  If atomic bombs never developed past what they dropped in Japan it's somewhat likely be used in war commonly. They are large and nasty, yet still require a lot of them for metropolitan areas. It's the civilization enders we developed in the 30 years after that woke us up.
  - InTheArena 1y ago
    I always found this the most interesting aspect of the timing of the bombs. They occurred at the one moment in 20th century where their power could be seen in a way that everybody immediately grasp the outcome of it and that no response was physically possible. They also occurred at the one moment in time in which a multipolar world essentially coalesced to a bipolar world. And the people that use the bomb had every intention of moving towards a true United Nations with use of the bomb governed via the UN. If any of those things change, I think history looks very different
  - philipkglass 1y ago
    The civilization-enders were in mass production a mere 9 years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb Mk-17: produced Jul 1954-Nov 1955 No. built: 200 Blast yield: 15 megatonnes of TNT This is 1000 times the power of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. From 1935 to 1955 you could plot "firepower deliverable by a single aircraft" and see a trend that looks a lot like Moore's Law for mass destruction of life and structures. Edward Teller thought that it was possible to make bombs a thousand times more powerful than the first generation thermonuclear bombs, but fortunately nobody was willing to commit resources to exploring the concept. Merely testing such a bomb on Earth would have been an act of mass destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon)

themaninthedark 1y ago

The emperor of Japan directly referenced the atomic bombs in his surrender speech: "We have considered deeply the general trends of the world and the current situation of the Empire, and We have decided to take extraordinary measures to bring the current state of affairs to an end. We hereby inform Our loyal and devoted subjects." ... "Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization." However there were was a major faction that did not want to surrender and had conspired and committed a coup d'état to prevent it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

lostlogin 1y ago

There was plenty of fight left in Japan. The battle of Okinawa was absolutely horrific and small a scale guide to what invading the homeland would have been. There were 76,000-84,000 allied casualties and 105,000-110,000 Japanese. The civilian death toll was 40,000-150,000. Claiming that lives were saved by bombing cities with nuclear weapons is always going to be a hard one to prove and morally dubious, but it might also be correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

throw0101c 1y ago
> There was plenty of fight left in Japan. After the first dropping, the War Cabinet met on August 9th and concluded in the morning that the US probably did not have the resources to build more than one bomb, and it was decided to keep fighting. Then in the early afternoon they learned of the second dropping. After further debate the War Cabinet voted 3-3 on whether to continue fighting. It took two bombing to get to a tied vote (both of the War Cabinet, and the full cabinet): the Emperor had to be called to break the stalemate. I do not understand how anyone could believe zero bombings would result in a cessation of hostilities. And even after the decision was made, there were still attempts to prevent surrender: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
- xhkkffbf 1y ago
  The last coup was quite a stretch. They hoped to stop the surrender by stopping the Emperor's message from being broadcast. Crazy. I suppose there were some coups that succeeded because the plotters controlled the news media.
  - throw0101c 1y ago
    > The last coup was quite a stretch. Yes, but it still shows the mindset (of some) in the military. And military action against government wasn't a new thing in Japan either: > Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by 11 young naval officers. The following trial and popular support of the Japanese population led to extremely light sentences for the assassins, strengthening the rising power of Japanese militarism and weakening democracy and the rule of law in the Empire of Japan. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_interwar_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_interwar_Japan

InTheArena 1y ago

This is false. There has never been any historical record at that time that shows that “warning the soviets” was any part of it. In fact, the USA disclosed the bomb to stalin beforehand hand. Anyone who postulated that was not in the chain of command. The Americans still very much believed at this point that the best post wore outcome was an ongoing alliance between the United States and the USSR. It was only after the scale of Stalin‘s ambitions in Eastern Europe became apparent and the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials that it was becoming obvious that there would be an ongoing confrontation. I strongly suggest the recent book on operation downfall, as well as the recent popular works on the last months of the war from the Japanese point of view.

mannykannot 1y ago
Prior to the Hiroshima bombing, all that the US had told the USSR about the atom bomb was that they had developed a "new weapon of unusual destructive force" (Truman to Stalin at the Potsdam conference.) As it happens, Stalin knew all about it through espionage, but as the US government was unaware of this, we cannot deduce, from what Stalin had been told by the US government, that the US government's position was that using atom bombs against Japan would have no influence on Stalin's thinking. Furthermore, we have evidence, from the diaries and correspondence of Truman, Stimson and others, that they were concerned about Stalin's territorial intentions, and expressed the hope that the US's demonstration of the atom bomb would curb them. Whether that led to at least a tacit secondary goal, of checking the USSR by leaving no doubt about the US's willingness to use atomic weapons in circumstances it deemed necessary, is an open question debated by historians to this day.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

trueismywork 1y ago

Japan was refusing to surrender even after the first atomic bomb

throw0101c 1y ago

> The atomic bomb was more of warning and show of force to the Soviets rather than the Empire of Japan. [citation needed] This claimed gets brought out every time atomic usage comes up, but are there official US policy documents that date to 1945 that explicitly bring this up as a motivation?

dotancohen 1y ago
Significant portion of the field of history is speculation and reading between the lines.
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > Significant portion of the field of history is speculation and reading between the lines. Government decisions and policies, especially in more modern times, runs on memos. If such options were discussed between departments there would be paperwork.