raconteur

An April 30, 1946 study by the US War Department's Military Intelligence Division concluded, "The war would almost certainly have terminated when Russia entered the war against Japan."


Truman's own top advisors had urged him in the months prior to Hiroshima to clarify surrender terms to the Japanese assuring that Hirohito would remain as emperor. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed, the Japanese still insisted that Emperor Hirohito be allowed to remain emperor as a condition of surrender. Only when that assurance was given did the Japanese agree to surrender.


In July of 1945, Japan had made overtures to Russia to seek their help in suing for peace.


From November 1944 onward, Japan was subjected to numerous large-scale B-29 non-nuclear bombing raids. When Air Force chief General Hap Arnold asked in June 1945 when the war was going to end, the commander of the B-29 raids, General Curtis LeMay, told him September or October 1945, because by then they would have run out of industrial targets to bomb.


Many US leaders - including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy, War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, to name a few - thought it highly probable that the Japanese would surrender well before the earliest possible invasion, scheduled for November 1945.


It is spurious to assert as fact that obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August was needed to prevent an invasion in November. The reason for the emphasis on a military solution, as opposed to a diplomatic one, may lie in the emotionalism and the desire for revenge that accompanies war. Many found the revenge satisfying, especially quite a few politicians at the time intent on not appearing ‘soft’ on Japan.


Truman reflected this feeling in a radio broadcast to the public on the night of August 9, after an atomic bomb had been exploded upon the men, women and children of Nagasaki: "Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare." However, few, if any, of those Truman was ranting against were in Nagasaki. Of the 40,000 killed immediately, the 30,000 more dead within 6 months and the 70,000 more who died over the next 5 years from radiation, over 80% were women, children or elderly.

Edgewaters

Such decisions simply aren't made to satisfy notions of 'revenge'. I agree with you that they knew Japan would probably surrender once Russia entered the war, and that the bombing campaigns - with or without atomic attacks - would have brought Japan to its knees.

But at the same time, Japan was of an even more divided mind on this than Germany had been when it signed a negotiated surrender in 1918. And we all know where that led. There were 2 principal reasons for the 'unconditional surrender' policy adopted at the Casablanca conference in 1943.

The first was that the Allies did not intend to allow any element among the leadership or population of any Axis nation to harbour the notion that they had been anything less than utterly defeated. There were not going to be any Hitlers later on, claiming that the signatories to a peace had sold their country out and cheated them of victory. Axis populations were going to be made brutally, undeniably aware, without the least shred of uncertainty, that they had completely lost the war and been utterly defeated.

The second reason for the policy was that the Allies didn't want any of their numbers to make separate deals, and they didn't want to get into arguments over deals contained in any negotiated settlement. Thus they had agreed on an unconditional surrender policy, and it was adopted by all the members. By 1945, it would in fact have been a breach of agreement with other Allies for any Allied nation to sign a negotiated peace settlement. As the Casablanca Declaration stated,

"This is their final effort to turn one nation against another, in the vain hope that they may settle with one or two at a time-that any of us may be so gullible and so forgetful as to be duped into making "deals" at the expense of our Allies.

To these panicky attempts to escape the consequences of their crimes we say-all the United Nations say-that the only terms on which we shall deal with an Axis government or any Axis factions are the terms proclaimed at Casablanca: 'Unconditional Surrender.' "

raconteur

Japan’s surrender wasn’t ‘unconditional.’ Even after Hiroshima & Nagasaki, even after it was obvious that they could be bombed with impunity, Japan refused to surrender without the condition that Hirohito remain as emperor. Once this condition was met, Japan surrendered. It was the same condition they asked of America before August 1945, but that request was ignored.

And the US was well aware of the significant role the Emperor played in Japan, and of his increasing dominance of political power at the time, and of the decreasing influence of the ‘hawks.’

But this point was lost on Truman. He appeared to be less concerned with Japan’s surrender than with Japan’s humiliation. Keep in mind this was an era of extreme Oriental racial discrimination in the US, and many (read that as ‘electorate’) in the US felt that the nation had been humiliated by an ‘inferior’ race. Truman seems to have shared this perspective (that of getting even, if not a certain distain of the Yellow man – perhaps it is not ironic his next conflict, so close to the end of all the devastation of WWII, was Korea), as his speech on August 9 demonstrates. Let me ask you; if the President were to say we are about to bomb 40,000 children, would you say, “Great, it’s about time they had to pay for the sins of their parents! Besides, they’re only (enter your ethnicity of choice here)!

IN 1945, Japan bashing was a way to be super patriotic at a time when such bigotry got you reelected. To hell with the innocent – there were no innocent Nips! Just refer to Truman’s 8/9/45 speech.

At the same time, Russia didn’t act on the peace initiatives of Japan’s because they wanted to secure territorial gains from Japan before any peace agreement. At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would join the Allies in the war against Japan in exchange for eventual Soviet control of the southern part of Sakhalin Island and of the Kuriles, despite the fact that this was in conflict with a bilateral non-aggression pact he signed with Japan in 1941. Had Russia acted on the peace initiatives before occupying this still contentious territory, they might not be there today. (Obviously, breaching agreements was not something that much concerned Stalin.)

So, if you agree that Truman knew Japan would probably surrender once Russia entered the war, and that the bombing campaigns - with or without atomic attacks - would have brought Japan to its knees, and that the insistence on ‘unconditional’ surrender was conditional on the same condition before the bombings as after, well then what the hell was the reason for bombing those hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children?

Edgewaters

True, but it was the closest thing anyone was going to get to an unconditional surrender. The point of an unconditional surrender was to make the price of peace, for Japan, so high that they would not consent to its conditions until they were aware of the hopelessness of their situation, beyond a shadow of a doubt in the minds of even the most obstinate politician and general. It wasn't an unconditional surrender for the sake of an unconditional surrender.


Not really. July 27 the Japanese leadership met to consider the Potsdam Declaration. Four of the "Big Six" rejected it, and later that day the Prime Minister publicly announced: "the Government ... does not attach any important value to it [the Potsdam Declaration] at all. The only thing to do is just kill it with silence. We will do nothing but press on to the bitter end to bring about a successful completion of the war".

That's less than 2 weeks prior to Hiroshima, and during that period, there was no further communication from the Japanese government regarding the offer. It had been soundly rejected in no uncertain terms. Note that the Potsdam Declaration did not specifically demand the deposition of the Emperor, and in fact, it was only an unconditional surrender on the part of the armed forces - the nature of the civil government, therefore, was open to negotiation.

Also. The Russians did offer to negotiate an unconditional surrender with an exemption on the issue of the Emperor, and Japan flat out refused anyway.

The earlier Japanese offer of surrender was never transmitted to the Americans. The Americans knew of it through intercepted transmissions, and learned of the following exchange, beginning on July 12th, less than a month before Hiroshima.

Japan approached the Russians and stated that Japan wished to surrender but could not accept unconditional surrender. The Russians responded that they would not be able to expect anything less than unconditional surrender (or "closely equivalent thereto"). They further questioned whether these were views held by both the military and the government, or not.

Japan responded with "our war strength still can deliver considerable blows to the enemy ... we are not seeking the Russians' mediation for anything like an unconditional surrender."

Russia responded: "It goes without saying that in my earlier message calling for unconditional surrender or closely equivalent terms, I made an exception of the question of preserving [the Imperial House]."

And then Japan, having just been offering the possibility of keeping the Emperor, said: "With regard to unconditional surrender we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatever."

So it is, in fact, not true that Japan was willing to accept unconditional surrender (exempting the Emperor) at any point before Hiroshima. Moreover, as late as mid-July and only a few weeks before Hiroshima, the Russians were concerned that the military did not share the government's views - something echoed in the Potsdam Declaration itself. And for good reason, given that the Big Six were still in a position to keep the government from even opening negotiations regarding the civil government as late as 10 days before Hiroshima.

EDIT: As far as Roosevelt's racism, I don't deny it, but I don't see any evidence that his opinions of the Japanese, if different, would have resulted in a different outcome, or, that they influenced those decisions. Such notions are pure conjecture, and I don't think it's very well-founded. The Potsdam Declaration was an olive branch, it left the question of the Emperor open to discussion and negotiation, and the Japanese rejected it - as they had rejected a Soviet offer to mediate a surrender that allowed the Emperor to retain his position. There's a fairly consistent pattern here! They seem to have been fishing for what amounted to an uti possidetis ceasefire.

Lucius

There is this from the Institute for Historical Review -

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

'In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers."'

Apparently, no one was inclined to quibble about whether the Emperor's "prerogatives" would have been "prejudiced" by taking orders from MacArthur.

Apparently, some high-ranking US officers were dismayed by the use of the atom bomb. Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations said, "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."

So there's your answer. Submission via starvation. But during the time it would have taken for starvation to have had it's effect, the conventional bombing of Japan would have continued. The exact number of Japanese killed by the conventional bombing would have depended upon how long it would have taken for the starvation to have compelled Japan to surrender. I've been given to understand that death by starvation hurts.

It's complicated. But one thing is simple. Allied POWs were dying (of starvation, etc) in the Japanese POW camps every day the war continued. The reason for bombing those hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children was to end the war "right now."

Edgewaters

Yikes!!! I know it's got a fancy name ... but ... you really need to be more circumspect with your links!!


Not that I'm disputing its account of this particular event, just ... you probably could have found the same thing elsewhere without having to link to a holocaust denial think-tank.

Agreed ... and to end it in a lasting fashion.

Lucius

Yikes. Darn that Google!

raconteur

On August 10, 1945, Brigadier General Leslie Groves reported to the War Department that the next atomic bomb would be "ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August." Truman, however, ordered an immediate halt to atomic attacks while surrender negotiations were ongoing. As the Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace recorded in his diary, Truman remarked that he did not like the idea of killing "all those kids."

Apparently, a little too late, Truman developed a conscience.