What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every civilian population center one after another?
Japan never posed serious risk to the US in the first place.
> That's one of the main things that makes it feel hard to justify further mass killing of civilians.
Japan had occupied much of East Asia including large parts of China and was conducting absolutely brutal campaigns of repression.
> What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every civilian population center one after another?
The justification is that as soon as you stop containing them in their island. They would instantly start to go on the offensive again.
Long term containment was considered by the US Navy as an alternative, but it would hardly be less brutal then nukes.
What would you have the US do, simply say, well I guess you learn your lessen and go home. Leave Japan to reconquer East Asia again after a few years?
The nukes were worthwhile to try because they had the capability of totally shifting the political conversation inside of Japan, and they did.
Each attack and action had to be individually considered one after another. If nukes would not have shifted to strategic calculation, potentially another policy would have been attempted.
After World War 1 Germany surrendered. That did not result in a good outcome.
After Desert Storm, Saddam Hussein never invaded Kuwait again. Not that he didn't want to of course, but he was easily contained by a superior military coalition.
Even if they wanted to fight to the last man, the most hawkish Japanese military heads would have considered it infeasible to strike out again after WW2. Before Pearl Harbor they already knew the US was stronger than Japan, and that the gap would only widen as time went on. Japan's confidence was in large part due to the alliance with Germany and the belief that Germany would win the war in the European theater. That opportunity (if you want to call it that) was never going to happen again.
Germany accepted a temporary cease fire and because of that and economic blockade their society collapse throwing them into social revolution. That forced the government to accept unconditional surrender.
> Even if they wanted to fight to the last man, the most hawkish Japanese military heads would have considered it infeasible to strike out again after WW2.
You would be surprised how fast countries can rebound. See Germany and Russia in WW2. Literally everybody in the free world believed that it would be insane to fight another war like that but just 10-15 years after WW1 both countries were hell bent on overthrowing the WW1 world.
And its almost 100% certain that a 'stab in the back' type legend would have developed in Japan too.
And having an enemy that is just waiting for the next opportunity to start a war again, isn't exactly a great strategy in foreign relations.
Which is exactly why the Allied forces agreed to only accept a unconditional surrender.
Most people arguing "Japan would have surrendered anyway" are basing their argument on the Japanese trying to negotiate a conditional surrender.
At the end of the war, Japan had over 1,000,000 soldiers in China alone.
I think in some way Afghanistan is an example of what could have happened if Japan never surrendered: years of insurgency, loss of life on both sides, and maybe after twenty years the USA, having had enough, would have left the country.
I think that in the end it worked better for Japanese than Afghans, although some the latter can boast to have beaten the American.
In Japan its very unlikely to work out anything like Afghanistan. Once the Japan government was defeated, its unlikely you would have seen a popular insurgency in Japan.
And in Japan an island dominated by allied navies such efforts cold not be sustained anyway.
The result could have been "warlord" led militaries seeking to establish their own territories and fighting with others. Not unlike Afghanistan or China in the 1920s and 1930s, or some other failed states around the world.
The wiki quotes him as saying: "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."(https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61....)
Did not stop him doing it to North Korea and he was unable to get WWIII off the ground, thank goodness.
Some redemption for his role in the Berlin airlift. Particularly for passing the job over to one better qualified.
A complex character - I wanted to find a psychopath, but simply a mass murderer.
I can see how that belief is appealing, but from what I know the facts do not really support it and the truth is more inconvenient.
«Nuclear bombing was used not to end the war and save lives, but for ... because ...»
Of course this is clearer in retrospect.
I do agree that after the firebombing talked about here that I don't see a huge change caused by atomic weapons (more efficient ways of dealing mass death than what we were already doing with more effort), but it seems that both sides felt that it did change things. So without having insight that we are not sure of even with the benefit of hindsight, I am not sure I can fault those in charge for thinking this might save lives (Japanese as well as American).
Note: I don't give credit for that sort of thinking to Curtis LeMay; he was just in it to kill the enemy faster (i.e.: a psychopath).