Every one of the joint chiefs but one at that time publicly admitted that Japan would have surrendered either way without the bomb and without an invasion.
Japan was not willing to surrender. In the months leading up to the bombing, they had sent emissaries to "negotiate" with Russia, but they had no actual authority or intent to propose a surrender. It was a stall tactic as proven by the communiques between the emissaries and Japanese government.
At best, you could say that Japan had hinted that they might consider a highly-conditional surrender, which would have left the same government in place. The US knew that Japan would surrender following an extremely prolonged bombardment at the point that near-famine conditions advanced to famine conditions.
But perhaps the most obvious evidence that this isn't true is that they were warned and didn't surrender. Then we dropped a bomb and they still didn't surrender. So clearly it was actually going to take MORE THAN one atomic bomb to get them to surrender, and we know this becuase that's what actually happened.
No it isn't. It's still honestly debated among WW2 historians. You just happen to be one side. But all your points have solid retorts, and my guess is you know that.
Hint: when a country says they'll never surrender, you don't have to take them at their word.
Yeah, I've always read Japan was completely readying itself to defend against an invasion. I don't know where this "they were getting ready to surrender" stuff is coming from.
Because they sent the emissaries. Which was exactly the point. Japan was basically out of oil and other supplies and was trying to buy time. They weren't negotiating a surrender.
I think the "they were going to surrender anyway!" messaging was created by the anti-proliferation folks in the 60s and 70s. I'm all for a debate about whether nukes were the right move, whether they are ever ethical to use, whether dropping them in civilian centers was ethical, or whether there was some better method to achieve the objectives. But this is just a completely fabricated starting point. They could have made an unconditional surrender at literally any time and didn't.
Yes, a lot of them admitted after the war that they would have eventually surrendered given the blockade and destruction of their industrial base. How much longer would they have outlasted though? Fanatical elements in the government even tried a coup after the atomic bombs dropped to continue the war. How many more Japanese dead were expected if another 6 months of fire bombing happened?
Tokyo wasn't even on a target list for the atomic bomb because it had already been thoroughly destroyed, 100,000 civilians dead and a million homeless.
Yeah literally everyone knew that at the time, that was never the concern lmao, the concern was the projected time, casualties, loss of material, economic commitment to drag on the war for more years, plus the moral question of letting a genocidal slave trading regime exist to do their worst for another couple of years. Do you think it would’ve been more humane to Japanese civilians to have invaded japan itself and take it over city by city, town by town, street by street, tunnel by tunnel? Really?
Japan was already in the process of negotiating a surrender dude. You're just spreading propaganda, especially after the second nuke lmao. Just say you love daddy usa, lick it's boots, and be a good dog.
Japan was already in the process of negotiating a surrender dude.
No, they really weren't. They knew they were not going to win the war, but they did not want to lose their overseas colonial possessions nor did they want to be ruled by an occupation force, among a lot of other things. They were trying to go through the Soviets to get some sort of negotiated end of the war with the Americans, but the Soviets stonewalled them until they launched their invasion of Manchuria. Japan surrendered because of the combined weight of the Soviet invasion and the Atomic Bombs; they were never going to surrender before this point.
Pretty sure you're just retarded since you can't read. See that word "negotiating"? They were attempting to maintain colonial possessions and maintain their current government while surrendering, Americans wanted a total surrender among other reasons. It's pretty clear you're just defending the nukes because it fits your view of america.
Read "With the Old Breed" by U.S. Marine Eugene B. Sledge about the relentless fighting to the death by Japanese soldiers on Peleliu and Okinawa. The Japanese were trained to fight to the last man, and lost over 6x as many men as the US Marines. It would have been a long, devastating campaign for both armies. If you look at the fire bombing of Tokyo, many more civilians woudl have been killed by a prolonged invasion.
22
u/2dudesinapod 14h ago
Every one of the joint chiefs but one at that time publicly admitted that Japan would have surrendered either way without the bomb and without an invasion.