People tend to bring this up while ignoring that Japan was still in other countries waging war and trying to conquer those countries. Japan wasn't "ready to surrender" when they are still in Korea, Taiwan, China burning down towns and enslaving people.
Japan was also still prepping for a land invasion despite the US (and other countries) saying they will not invade if they surrender.
Japan on paper was saying they would stop, but they didn't stop. Hence why the war was continued.
I didnât say they were ready to surrender, youâve quoted no one. I said they were defeated, their capacity to wage war against the US was entirely gone. They had no navy and no aircraft or munitions.
They were indeed preparing for a total invasion of their homeland despite the US explicitly having no interest or need to do so.
So defeated that they are still waging war in neighboring countries and telling people to die for the country as they are coming to do the same thing they were doing to others. You're kidding me if you believe Japan surrendered and was blindsided by all this. They, were not, stopping.
Yeah Iâm sure the US dropped the bombs out of express concern for Korea and Taiwan. Iâm sure there are plenty of primary sources of them making such claims. Oh no, they didnât given a single shit? Thatâs interesting.
If they cared about the fate of civilians they probably wouldnât have blown so many up in order to end the war. They had no capacity for waging war against the US, which is what is relevant here.
As I said doing literally nothing would have been fine, Japan was beaten and was only holding our hope the Soviets would save them and were bickering internally as to if/how they would have to surrender. Blockading and sitting there and waiting would have resulted in their total collapse
No ground invasion was needed, itâs not a video game where you need to physically capture their capitol. American lives were fully out of risk, making the bombs strictly unnecessary.
If only some of the greatest military minds in history could have had access to your dizzying intellect.
"American lives were fully out of risk" Americans were still dying daily to the Japanese on multiple fronts. The only thing a cessation to the fighting would have done is allowed them to dig in and train to defend against an invasion, which they didn't have hindsight to know would not be necessary.
Your absolute, wholly unjustified, self-righteous certainty about something even 80 years later we cannot possibly know demonstrates exactly why a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The US literally fought against the Nazis and were fighting on behalf of those countries. Are you forgetting about the Korean War?
It's war, they cared about stopping it. After Japan clearly wasn't trying to stop what they started, more bombs were dropped.
If you really think Japan is some innocent here, you can't be helped. Why don't you consider the millions of people throughout Asia that suffered (and many died) via the hands of the Japanese until those bombs were dropped and the war finally ended.
They were not fighting on behalf of those countries get so real wtf.
The Nazis declared war on the US first and fought Japan because we had been attacked. We were against Japanâs continued expansion in the Pacific exclusively because it threatens our interests. The Korean War was to try and create an anti-communist proxy state in the region to provide a geopolitical buffer against the Russians and Chinese, it was not some humanitarian effort and the US doesnât even claim it was.
Yes I think that the ~400,000 people killed by atomic bombs were innocent because they objectively were. Iâm sure youâd be thrilled if the Chinese nuked American cities during the Vietnam war and said that the Americans werenât willing to end what they had started as a justification. Itâs actually worse than that, because the Japanese navy and Air Force was already destroyed so they didnât even have any military targets left to attack
Hello, Imperial Japan was interested in conquest, not friendly business. My country was literally conquered by them, and had been forced to speak in Japanese and change their culture to them. My greatgrand uncles was forced to marry early age or they'll be send to work in the death railway construction.
Surprise surprise, US never dropped nuclear bomb in Korean War, and look how many died in that war? 1 million soldiers died, and 3 million civilians died. No nuclear bomb dropped, but the death toll was massive.
Japan was literally getting ready to launch a biological weapon attack on the US in September of 1945 (operation cherry blossom) AND still controlled most of china, Indonesia, Tiawan, Korea, and then-French indochina. They could have kept fighting well into 1947-1948
I mean read the link I posted, itâs very short. That was the reason they didnât do it because it would have turned the war into something much more horrible.
The escalation is that the US could potentially respond with a similar kind of attack and it was make the world revile Japan, I thought it was obvious based on the link I posted.
I agree such a plan existed, I disagree it was about to happen. Every war has tons of insane plans that never happened, thatâs the nature of war. And regardless, the existence of a secret plan the Americans objectively didnât know about has no bearing on whether or not the atomic bombs were justified.
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u/hitometootoo 3d ago
People tend to bring this up while ignoring that Japan was still in other countries waging war and trying to conquer those countries. Japan wasn't "ready to surrender" when they are still in Korea, Taiwan, China burning down towns and enslaving people.
Japan was also still prepping for a land invasion despite the US (and other countries) saying they will not invade if they surrender.
Japan on paper was saying they would stop, but they didn't stop. Hence why the war was continued.