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Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. Sakhalin was the trigger, and th

by madaxe 13y ago

Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. Sakhalin was the trigger, and their worst fears were confirmed when the soviets raped and pillaged their way through the island, killing some 20,000 civvies. Atrocious. They surrendered because of Stalin and his unending and brutal (and brutalised, the Red Army was not a happy place) cannon-fodder, not the bomb. Nuking two civilian populations was unnecessary, barbaric, and inexcusable, and I'm afraid to say pointless. A fourth grade history student would know exactly what you say. A heavily read historian would say something quite different - or agree. It's pretty divisive, but outside of the US the majority agree that the USSR caused the surrender. Here's a pretty decent source on the topic - have only skimmed it, after writing this and wanting to back up my statements, but it's pretty balanced. http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501 http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501

mpyne 13y ago
> Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. People say this a lot, but no one has clearly explained how the U.S.S.R. would have been able to stage an invasion of the Home Islands of Japan. It's not a matter of simply ferrying a bunch of people over the Trans-Siberian railroad, you also need a navy, sufficient air cover (which if I remember my geography correctly would have almost necessarily meant carrier-borne aircraft), and the logistics to back that all up. Japan knew this just as much then as we realize it now. The Soviet gains after their entry into the war were in China and Korea, not in Japan itself. Their entrance into the war was earlier than expected on the Japanese's part, but they knew the U.S.S.R. would declare war (seriously, you may consider their senior and military leadership stupid, but that stupid?). Likewise the attack on the Kwantung Army in China was surprising in that it came from every direction possible instead of the one direction they expected it from. But they knew the Soviets would attack, and in fact the attack fell while the Kwantung Army was changing positions to better guard the direction they believed the attack would actually come from. So certainly the Soviet attack came as a shock, but it was militarily no more severe than any other setback to the Allies. > but outside of the US the majority agree that the USSR caused the surrender. Don't take this the wrong way, but what does an opinion poll have to do with whether some event actually happened in a given way or not? It either did or did not happen for the causes described. If the rest of the world has better evidence for their belief then point to the evidence, but don't point to an opinion poll as prima facie evidence of something. In the event we have evidence on the Japanese side that the atomic bomb proved a useful "excuse" to permit the Emperor to surrender. The Japanese were clearly ready to fight to the death (just witness the Battle of Okinawa), and that applied just as much against the Red Army as it did against the Americans. So simply changing the uniform of the person holding the rifle wouldn't have significantly affected the strategic calculus when the Emperor had to explain his decision to his people. On the other hand, the atomic bomb was this technological doomsday device that even the most hardened Japanese militant couldn't speak against. You couldn't fight it in the battlefield; you couldn't simply hunker down like a brave citizen and start picking up pieces after the bombs had been dropped, now there were no pieces left to pick up at all. Japan had nothing like it, and as such it gave the Emperor a clear line of reasoning for why he had to (had to) surrender for the sake of his people. It was something completely different and from out of this world, as opposed to a simple Soviet declaration of war.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  > It either did or did not happen for the causes described. Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. But, thanks for the historical analysis here nonetheless.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. Fair enough. But the people with the best understanding of events as they were happening, were those actually making the decisions at the time.... and they decided to drop the bomb. For years after that it's been 'backseat drivers' second-guessing that decision despite their own claims being totally unfalsifiable. While it might be nice to be able to look back on hindsight, no one had a crystal ball at the time, which is why it's inappropriate to pin decisions made in 1945 with the moral qualms of a generation that has never seen world-wide total war.
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as much when he wrote, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger." We don't know if there could have been an alternative that definitively ended the war and cost less lives. Things were winding down at that point anyway. I don't even necessarily feel that dropping those bombs was a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, because it shone a light on the darkness that we are capable of as a species. Maybe those two bombs were all that prevented mutual destruction during the cold war. But as an isolated event, nuking a city is just as horrific as pushing people into ovens - it's really quite comparable, actually - and I think it's best just to say, we did something awful, we thought we had to, it's over now, it won't happen again. Germany did this, for instance. And the only reason that didn't happen for the atomic bombs is because the US "won" the war.

by madaxe 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago

> Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. People say this a lot, but no one has clearly explained how the U.S.S.R. would have been able to stage an invasion of the Home Islands of Japan. It's not a matter of simply ferrying a bunch of people over the Trans-Siberian railroad, you also need a navy, sufficient air cover (which if I remember my geography correctly would have almost necessarily meant carrier-borne aircraft), and the logistics to back that all up. Japan knew this just as much then as we realize it now. The Soviet gains after their entry into the war were in China and Korea, not in Japan itself. Their entrance into the war was earlier than expected on the Japanese's part, but they knew the U.S.S.R. would declare war (seriously, you may consider their senior and military leadership stupid, but that stupid?). Likewise the attack on the Kwantung Army in China was surprising in that it came from every direction possible instead of the one direction they expected it from. But they knew the Soviets would attack, and in fact the attack fell while the Kwantung Army was changing positions to better guard the direction they believed the attack would actually come from. So certainly the Soviet attack came as a shock, but it was militarily no more severe than any other setback to the Allies. > but outside of the US the majority agree that the USSR caused the surrender. Don't take this the wrong way, but what does an opinion poll have to do with whether some event actually happened in a given way or not? It either did or did not happen for the causes described. If the rest of the world has better evidence for their belief then point to the evidence, but don't point to an opinion poll as prima facie evidence of something. In the event we have evidence on the Japanese side that the atomic bomb proved a useful "excuse" to permit the Emperor to surrender. The Japanese were clearly ready to fight to the death (just witness the Battle of Okinawa), and that applied just as much against the Red Army as it did against the Americans. So simply changing the uniform of the person holding the rifle wouldn't have significantly affected the strategic calculus when the Emperor had to explain his decision to his people. On the other hand, the atomic bomb was this technological doomsday device that even the most hardened Japanese militant couldn't speak against. You couldn't fight it in the battlefield; you couldn't simply hunker down like a brave citizen and start picking up pieces after the bombs had been dropped, now there were no pieces left to pick up at all. Japan had nothing like it, and as such it gave the Emperor a clear line of reasoning for why he had to (had to) surrender for the sake of his people. It was something completely different and from out of this world, as opposed to a simple Soviet declaration of war.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
> It either did or did not happen for the causes described. Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. But, thanks for the historical analysis here nonetheless.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. Fair enough. But the people with the best understanding of events as they were happening, were those actually making the decisions at the time.... and they decided to drop the bomb. For years after that it's been 'backseat drivers' second-guessing that decision despite their own claims being totally unfalsifiable. While it might be nice to be able to look back on hindsight, no one had a crystal ball at the time, which is why it's inappropriate to pin decisions made in 1945 with the moral qualms of a generation that has never seen world-wide total war.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as much when he wrote, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger." We don't know if there could have been an alternative that definitively ended the war and cost less lives. Things were winding down at that point anyway. I don't even necessarily feel that dropping those bombs was a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, because it shone a light on the darkness that we are capable of as a species. Maybe those two bombs were all that prevented mutual destruction during the cold war. But as an isolated event, nuking a city is just as horrific as pushing people into ovens - it's really quite comparable, actually - and I think it's best just to say, we did something awful, we thought we had to, it's over now, it won't happen again. Germany did this, for instance. And the only reason that didn't happen for the atomic bombs is because the US "won" the war.