Those people would be wrong as the historical record shows:
> The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know how very difficult building it would be. Therefore, many Japanese and in particular the military members of the government refused to believe the United States had built an atomic bomb, and the Japanese military ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of Hiroshima's destruction.[84] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.[85] American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large supply.[61][86]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Hiroshima,_...
Even after the second bomb there was still some disagreement:
> In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyūshū, had been hit by a second atomic bomb (called "Fat Man" by the United States). By the time the meeting ended, the Big Six had split 3–3. Suzuki, Tōgō, and Admiral Yonai favored Tōgō's one additional condition to Potsdam, while General Anami, General Umezu, and Admiral Toyoda insisted on three further terms that modified Potsdam: that Japan handle their own disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals, and that there be no occupation of Japan.[96]
* Ibid
The Japanese government were still split on how to proceed after two atomic bombs were dropped. They were willing to stop fighting but only under their terms.
If Germany was willing to stop fighting, but only if Hitler and the Nazis were allowed to stay in power (and keep a bunch of territory, etc), would that have been acceptable? Because that's basically what the Japanese were asking for.
People that pretend Japan was going to surrender without the nukes (they barely surrendered with the nukes), are either liar apologists (America bad) or extraordinarily ignorant of what actually happened (they should read a book rather than regurgitating Reddit propaganda).
Comment above quotes Eisenhower giving that opinion. I don’t think he was either of those things.
An odd thing to say, given that he was assigned to the General Staff to assist in long-range planning for both theaters immediately after Pearl Harbor. And it wasn't like being a Supreme Allied Commander kept him in an information bubble in regard to matters outside of Europe.
Eisenhower was neither a Japanese cabinet official,
Did we hear you correctly? Is that even an argument?
Their opinions / conclusion of the situation was wrong.
Just because they executed well in one area, does not mean they assessment in another area was as good. No one's perfect.
If something has no value, why shouldn't it be dismissed / disposed of?
They were outvoted or simply not listened to, you mean.
Otherwise, the argument becomes circular: "Clearly there was no significant possibility that the Japanese Cabinet would have agreed to surrender had not the first two bombs been dropped. As evidenced by the fact that the bombs were dropped, and they did, after all, surrender."
Two atomic bombs being dropped on them was not decisive in getting the Cabinet to decide to surrender. It took the Emperor's involvement to break the deadlock and even then there was a coup attempt to stop the surrender:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
What action(s) with less weight/influence than two atomic bombs and the Emperor could have swayed the Japanese Cabinet? And even those things were only barely over the line:
> When word of the emperor’s decision reached General Toroshiro Kawabe, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army, he noted in his diary that he concurred with another senior general in doubting that the overseas commanders would comply with the emperor’s order. That these officers correctly doubted even an order from the emperor would secure compliance with key parts of the armed forces, was swiftly confirmed by messages from the commanders in China and the Southern Area, declaring they would not comply with the surrender. Their commands mustered between a quarter and a third of all Japanese servicemen. It took Hirohito’s personal emissaries to persuade these commands to surrender.
* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japans-surren...
I write about a conditional surrender as though it would not be accepted by the general public, especially in that time.
Truman would have found his head at the top of a pike if he accepted such terms from any Axis power.
Even so, a military group attempted a coup to stop the surrender the night before - after the emperor's surrender message had been recorded but before it was broadcast.
After the invasion of Okinawa but before the atomic bombs, Japan was a country that was clearly militarily defeated, but not close to surrender.
The Japanese themselves knew that they could not win the war in 1944:
> Rear Adm. Soichi Takagi, who was attached to the ministerial secretariat of the Naval General Staff, made a study between 20 September 1943 and February 1944, of the war's battle lesson up to that time. He conclude that Japan could not win and verbally presented his findings in March 1944 to Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai and Vice Adm. Seibi Inouye. Takagi's study, interestingly enough, was undertaken at the end of the second year of the war--the time beyond which, the Japanese Navy's top command had estimated before hostilities, Japan could not fight a successful war. Takagi's estimate was based on an analysis of fleet, air, and merchant ship losses suffered to date, the serious difficulties in acquiring essential imported materials, the internal confusion in Japan, and a growing feeling among the "intelligentsia" that Tojo should be let out. It seemed clear to Takagi that potential long-range air attacks on the home islands and Japan's inability to import essential materials for production had created a situation which dictated that Japan should seek a compromise peace. In Takagi's view Japan at this time should have envisaged withdrawing from China and giving up both Korea and Formosa as part of the peace terms. His study in any case documented the fears Yonai and others held before the war and lent support to the increasing but still carefully guarded concern of their fellow Jushin that all was not well with Tojo's prosecution of the war.
* https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
Yet they continued to fight in the hopes of grinding down the US' will to fight and get better terms.
* “It would have been a politically unpopular move domestically”
* “there was no alternative to end the war”
They are both true.
Well, there was another "option". It was for the US to invade the Home Islands and fight against the Japanese:
> In addition, the Japanese had organized the Volunteer Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men aged 15 to 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people, for combat support and, later, combat jobs. Weapons, training and uniforms were generally lacking: many were armed with nothing better than antiquated firearms, molotov cocktails, longbows, swords, knives, bamboo or wooden spears, and even clubs and truncheons: they were expected to make do with what they had.[63][64] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."[65] They were expected to serve as a "second defense line" during the Allied invasion, and to conduct guerrilla warfare in urban areas and mountains.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Ground_forc...
Having the Japanese throw themselves against the US invasion and American troops slaughter them to defend themselves is not a viable "option" in my mind. Perhaps you feel differently.
As to Japanese preparations… I’d you haven’t surrendered and invasion is imminent, then you’re going to do whatever is needed to prepare for said invasion.
> These differences continued to be examined and hope of favorable word from Russia had been all but abandoned when very early in the morning of 9 August the news arrived that Russia had declared war. Although considerable pessimism had prevailed regarding the outcome of the negotiations, the Government was not prepared for war with the Soviets, nor the military capable of any effective counter-plan. Suzuki calculated that he had a choice of resigning or taking immediate positive action, which could be either declaring war on Russia and continuing until the whole Nation was destroyed or accepting the Potsdam Declaration.
* https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
The Japanese were willing to declare war on the Soviets even though they knew they could not win.
Further, they new they could not win in 1944:
> Rear Adm. Soichi Takagi, who was attached to the ministerial secretariat of the Naval General Staff, made a study between 20 September 1943 and February 1944, of the war's battle lesson up to that time. He conclude that Japan could not win and verbally presented his findings in March 1944 to Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai and Vice Adm. Seibi Inouye. Takagi's study, interestingly enough, was undertaken at the end of the second year of the war--the time beyond which, the Japanese Navy's top command had estimated before hostilities, Japan could not fight a successful war. Takagi's estimate was based on an analysis of fleet, air, and merchant ship losses suffered to date, the serious difficulties in acquiring essential imported materials, the internal confusion in Japan, and a growing feeling among the "intelligentsia" that Tojo should be let out. It seemed clear to Takagi that potential long-range air attacks on the home islands and Japan's inability to import essential materials for production had created a situation which dictated that Japan should seek a compromise peace. In Takagi's view Japan at this time should have envisaged withdrawing from China and giving up both Korea and Formosa as part of the peace terms. His study in any case documented the fears Yonai and others held before the war and lent support to the increasing but still carefully guarded concern of their fellow Jushin that all was not well with Tojo's prosecution of the war.
* Ibid
Yet they continued to fight in the hopes of grinding down the US' / Allies' will to fight and get better terms.
There are no sets of facts that support the hypothesis that the Japanese would be willing to surrender without first being beaten down mercilessly. That beating could have been done in the 'traditional' way with troops, or with the atomic bomb. The estimates on the land invasion:
> The U.S. Sixth Army, which would invade and occupy Kyushu, estimated 124,935 U.S. battle casualties, including 25,000 dead, plus 269,000 non-battle casualties (disease, accident, etc.) for Kyushu alone. The JCS came up with an estimate that a 90-day campaign on Kyushu would cost 156-175,000 battle casualties, with 38,000 killed in action. By late July, the JCS was forecasting 500,000 casualties at the high end and 100,000 at the low end. In late July 1945, the War Department provided an estimate that the entire Downfall operations would cause between 1.7 to 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400-800,000 U.S. dead, and 5 to 10 million Japanese dead. (Given that the initial Downfall plan called for 1,792,700 troops to go ashore in Japan, this estimate is indeed most sobering, and suggests many more troops than planned would need to be fed into a meat grinder).
* https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/di...
The US (Truman and others) concluded that they were not willing to have Allied troops suffer just the Japanese refused to accept the reality that they were beaten. And while the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese from the atomic bombs is regrettable, the lives of several more million Japanese were spared.
Just for context, the invasion of the island of Okinawa just weeks prior had consisted of more than 1,600 allied ships. Japan would have to be a much larger task. Where were the Soviets going to get thousands of ships?
They weren’t really in a position to care any more. I’m fairly certain someone at the top was fairly miffed all their hard won gains were quickly disappearing.
But it does seem strange to say they were not in a position to make a "meaningful" entry by that point, given the order of battle employed in the Manchuria campaign (per WP):
1,577,725 troops
27,086 artillery pieces
1,152 rocket launchers
5,556 tanks and self-propelled guns
3,721 aircraft
Mongolia:
16,000 troops1.5 million was not anywhere near enough. The Soviets fielded 2x that in the Battle of Berlin alone!
I can't alse even imagine the scale of bloodshed that an amphibian landing in the style of Normandy would cost in dead soldiers for a territory the size of japan.
It was also a great bluff for the Americans, because after they used where able to produce 4 bombs. They tested on in the desert, droped 2 in japan they got only one left after that they where saving to clean the beaches for a possible invasion.
At the end of his life nothing angered him more than people trying to say that decision was a mistake. I told him that these advocates weren't alive at the time and thus couldn't understand his point of view. They focus on what horrible destruction it caused and not the price Americans would pay if it had not been used. If there had been a ground invasion of Japan far more people would have died, both Japanese and Americans.
Also, Germany did something very similar near the end of the war, as they got desperate for manpower and fighting moved into their own territory.
[EDIT] Oh, and see farther down the page for, "Civilian losses, suicides, and atrocities". The lived experience of Okinawa (one of only a couple "home" territories for Japan that the US invaded before the bombs) was surely part of why so many expected an invasion of Japan to be a bitter, horrifying bloodbath.
At the time it probably did look like civilians were being turned into defensive soldiers- in the fullness of time, I think it looks more like a desperate and cruel army brutalizing a civilian population, sometimes pushing them into harm's way. I'd also presume that the treatment of the civilian population was worse for indigenous Okinawans-- maybe even today Okinawans can find themselves treated as 'not real Japanese'.
It's been a while since I read 'Embracing Defeat' but I recall its summary of the state of Japan towards the end of the war and a lecturer saying, in effect, that nobody had to invade Japan to cause the deaths of millions, the supply chain (Asian mainland colonies collapsing) / labor (men at all near military age gone to war and many of them dead or captured) / agricultural situation was so dire that the U.S. could have set a blockade and millions of Japanese would have died with 0 fighting.
The counter-argument to the necessity of the bombs is basically that the U.S. knew Japan could not effectively resist and though the U.S. might not have had a way of guessing, the highest levels of Japanese government were already in the process of discussing when and how to surrender right around the time the bombs were dropped. IIRC about the emperor's message of surrender, the bombs may have made it easier for the emperor to preserve face when surrendering, as such weapons make it easier to justify a surrender as a positive action.
That would be very prudish for Japan standarts in wwii.
The things they pulled in China and Indoshina would compete with the worst things that where made in the European Concentration camps.
Theo only reason they did not put Japan in a trial in the style of Nuremberg, was was the location of Japan, closer to the Soviet Union and later China.
If not for that, Emperor Hirohito and many of his followers would find themselfs in the end of a very short rope.
See: Lots of pro-Confederate "history", lots of history from ancient times
To whit, a lot of the quotes being thrown around to support the "Japan would have never surrendered without the A-bomb" seem(at least on my reading) to suggest there was a lot more debate amongst the civilian and military (Japan AND US Navy) higher ups that were assumed at the time, and who knows what would have happened had more diplomatic measures been tried?
Dropping the bombs was a terrible thing but war is even more terrible.
You can believe that if you want of course - but it seems simplistic at best to ignore other factors, such as the planned Soviet entry into the war on August 15. And some believe even that wouldn't have been necessary:
Asked in 1945 for his opinion on dropping the atomic bomb, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower replied: “I was against it on two counts. First the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Roosevelt and Truman, flatly declared that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Even the official US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded unequivocally that “Japan would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”