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Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

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Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#61

Post by waps »

Animats wrote: post #9

Recommended reading: "Japan's Longest Day", the nonfiction book, not the movie or novel (Review: http://www.warbirdforum.com/end.htm ). This was written in the 1980s by a group of Japanese historians who interviewed almost everyone still living who had been directly involved in the decision to end the war. The key thing to understand is that nobody was firmly in charge. The 6-member Supreme War Council, with represen…

From the article

> Their concern was not so much whether to end the conflict, but how to end it while holding onto territory, avoiding war crimes trials, and preserving the imperial system.

Shows again how leaders think. The factors, probably in order of importance :

1) Holding on to territory : Retaining the power structure itself (I would argue that this is typical of extreme nationalists governments. Our politicians would never sacrifice themselves to save the United States, but the Japanese emperor and other leaders probably would have)

2) Avoiding war crimes trials : Not getting personally convicted (ie. personally remaining in power, this certainly seems a consideration of US politicians)

3) Preserving the imperial system : Retaining the power of the system over it's territory/subjects

Safety and welfare of their subjects isn't even mentioned.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#62

Post by jeffdavis »

htns wrote: post #16

Hundreds of Japanese cities were leveled by firebombing. Having a town nuked every few weeks was not such a big consideration against that background. If only they had trucked on for a few more months we wouldn't have to read these articles.

There's a difference between "leveled" and "nuked", especially before guided weapons existed.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#63

Post by herendin »

the_watcher wrote: post #48

Interesting. Perhaps I need to actually read Hasegawa's work, but this piece skips over a pretty important possibility (to me): that while the atomic bombs did not, on their own, convince the Japanese to surrender, they may have been major factors in the Soviets deciding to enter the war on the side of the Allies.

They could have been a factor, but the Soviets also had an agreement with the Allies that they would declare war on Japan before August 9. They declared war a few minutes before midnight on August 8

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#64

Post by FeeTinesAMady »

iand wrote: post #53
chaostheory wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as I've already mentioned it deserves more thought than just two sentences when you're trying to sell the idea that nuclear weapons are not deterrents to large scale wars. So far modern history has already disproved Hasegawa's opinion. Ever since the advent of global ballistic weapons, we have yet had another major world war besides conflicts here and there. They have kept the peace.

World wars are uncommon whether we have nuclear deterrents or not, after all we had none before 1914. However we have had major near decade long regional conflicts and many wars by proxy between nuclear powers. While it's persuasive to think that nuclear weapons have prevented world wars, there isn't much evidence to support that idea.

While it is true that there weren't any wars called World Wars before 1914, what really distinguished those wars was the weapons technology and the massive devastation that resulted from that. Human nature does not change as quickly as technology does, though, and if you define a world war as a war that involved all the major powers of the time, there were in fact four wars in Europe before that that involved all the great powers of the time in two rival alliances: the Thirty Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War of 1756-63, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

With that in mind, that makes world wars considerably more commonplace. Given the timing between the six world wars, we're in a definite lull. Nuclear deterrence is likely the major reason for that.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#65

Post by moo »

tomohawk wrote: post #40
moo wrote: post #14

The imminent Soviet invasion of Manchuria surely played a role in the U.S. decision to use the atomic bomb, end the war quickly to end the prospect of post war Soviet occupation of Japanese held territory.

At the Potsdam Conference (24 July) Truman told Stalin that the US would use nukes against Japan as a goad to get Stalin to enter the war against Japan. It appears to have worked.

Churchill is quoted as saying the U.S. wanted the Soviets out of the war. At the Tehran Conference in Nov 1943 and at the Yalta Conference in Feb 1945, Joseph Stalin had agreed to declare war on Japan three months after Germany would be defeated. Stalin was told something at Potsdam because the Soviets were still allies, but not that the weapon was atomic.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#66

Post by crazychrome »

help me to interpret this: amongst 60 comments of this article, nobody mentioned China despite the fact China had fought against jp for 8 years (since 1937, or 14 years since 1931) and (arguably), pinned down jp Army, given the original jp's plan was "conquer China in 3 months".

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#67

Post by hga »

cbd1984 wrote: post #57
nabla9 wrote: post #4

August 6: bombing of Hiroshima August 7: 1. Japanese nuclear scientists determine that the bomb was indeed nuclear device. 2. Imperial Navy estimates that US has only one or two more bombs and Japan could endure the attacks. August 9: 1. bombing of Nagasaki 2. USSR declares war to Japan & Manchurian Strategic Offensive started. 3. Hirohito worried because USSR declared war and held an Imperial conference that authori…

> Even after Hirohito made the personal decision to surrender, the intention was to continue the war if the kokutai (Imperial institution and national polity) would not be preserved. And here's where I don't understand the reasoning: Did they seriously think the kokutai would have been preserved if they had fought on? Did they seriously think the Allies would have allowed Japan to continue as it had? It seems the mos…

They're still using Purple Hearts from the first batch MacArthur ordered, which was 1/4 of what he expected to need. And he didn't believe the solid intelligence that revealed Operation Olympic, the initial invasion of the home island Kyuushuu, was not going to work (too many divisions moved to that island, 6,000 or so kamikazes (an underestimate) would be ready and would not have to navigate all the way down to Okinawa ... many people don't know that the Battle of Okinawa was the single most expensive in lives for the US Navy...).

Those planning Operation Downfall, the overall one to capture the home islands (well, the regime would fell after the 2nd invasion of the main island), who didn't know about the Manhattan Project were planning to make liberal use of chemical weapons. Those who did ... well, if the 2nd bomb failed, there's a very good chance future production would be reserved for Olympic, with up to 8 of them being used....

As for their strategy, they started the war with an assumption that we weren't tough enough to see it through. It's said that the truth didn't sink into the IJNavy until we lost 2 Rear Admirals (2 stars) in a single night action off of Guadalcanal, in a body of water that earned the name Ironbottom Sound, so many USN and IJN ships were sunk there.

So when it came to the home islands, they hoped they could make it expensive enough we'd give up before the regime fell. Even after we'd firebombed all their major urban centers minus Kyoto (politically critical for the Emperor) and the 4 a-bomb targets and alternates....

It's a very good thing for the world everything came together in that August and they surrendered. And if I had a time machine, I'd never ever try to change anything in history going up to that point, the horror of those a-bombs, even if each caused less loss of life than the first Tokyo firebombing (in only it and one other attack did everything come together including the weather and winds).

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#68

Post by hga »

pmoriarty wrote: post #54
jihokoo wrote: post #22

Maybe Hasegawa's interpretation has new implications regarding nuclear deterrence theory, but not how the author suggests. The idea that the nuclear bombings were not decisive factors in Japan's surrender does not mean that nuclear weapons do not serve as a deterrence. Nuclear weaponry advanced so much in the aftermath of WW2 that now nuclear countries can literally reduce entire nations to pixie dust. And the potent…

"the potential of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all but guarantees that nuclear countries will never attack each other for fear of nuclear escalation." I would feel a lot more secure in the efficacy of MAD if war was rational in the first place. History shows it is anything but. It hasn't even been 100 years since the last nuclear weapon was used offensively, but already the world has come dangerously close to s…

You are absolutely right to be skeptical about MAD, the invention of genius civilians like Robert Strange McNamara who also brought up the horribly fought Vietnam War, the previous generation F-35, the M16/M4, etc. etc. etc.

The Soviets never bought into it, and rightly judged us to be utterly evil to target their children in their homes instead of military targets like we'd done prior the the early '60s.

As you implicitly note, we can be sure nuclear weapons will again be used in anger. Although the dangers from a false flag operation are potentially less than you think, in that each weapon has a radioisotope signature which tells you everything from its design to where the fissionable materials came from. So we'd know who manufactured it, or so I gather and believe from my study of all this (born when Eisenhower was still president, I'm a child of the cold war with e.g. my mother's Civil Defense Block Mother sign a dozen feet from me).

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#69

Post by hga »

FeeTinesAMady wrote: post #64
iand wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World wars are uncommon whether we have nuclear deterrents or not, after all we had none before 1914. However we have had major near decade long regional conflicts and many wars by proxy between nuclear powers. While it's persuasive to think that nuclear weapons have prevented world wars, there isn't much evidence to support that idea.

While it is true that there weren't any wars called World Wars before 1914, what really distinguished those wars was the weapons technology and the massive devastation that resulted from that. Human nature does not change as quickly as technology does, though, and if you define a world war as a war that involved all the major powers of the time, there were in fact four wars in Europe before that that involved all the…

In terms of "massive devastation", scaled for population, I strongly suspect the Thirty Years War will give either World Wars a run for their money in the area over which they were fought. It certainly left very deep scars that were felt up to WWII....

Echoing your point, the Napoleonic Wars ended 99 years before the start of WWI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo The precursor wars which very much were an input into WWI ended less than 45 years before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War (and I'm in the camp that primarily blames France for initiating WWI).

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#70

Post by hga »

iand wrote: post #50
the_watcher wrote: post #48

Interesting. Perhaps I need to actually read Hasegawa's work, but this piece skips over a pretty important possibility (to me): that while the atomic bombs did not, on their own, convince the Japanese to surrender, they may have been major factors in the Soviets deciding to enter the war on the side of the Allies.

You mean enter the war against Japan? USSR were already on the Allies side fighting the Nazis in Europe.

But after a very sharp action which the IJArmy lost very badly, commanded in part on the other side by an obscure Soviet general named Zhukov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Zhukov who unlike his two counterparts managed to avoid the 1941 purge), they signed a neutrality pact, reaffirmed after Operation Barbarossa, that they scrupulously observed. Being faced with another even more bloodily minded opponent certainly didn't hurt the surrender decision.
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