Warning Leaflets - Nuclear Museum However, the Pentagon and defense contractors such as KBR called the shots in Southeast Asia. Wasn't the U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the real reason they finally surrendered?" All wars are not only bad, they are the same. Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely. Mr. Siegler, What in some cases inspired - and in others, coerced - Japanese men in the prime of their youth to act in such a way was a complex mixture of the times they lived in, Japan's ancient warrior tradition, societal pressure, economic necessity, and sheer desperation. -30-, Mr. Clarke- In a sense, this was the opening salvo of the Cold War," he said. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. The Japanese Surrender in World War II. Nationalists and militarists alike looked to the past for inspiration. They were indoctrinated from an early age to revere the Emperor as a living deity, and to see war as an act that could purify the self, the nation, and ultimately the whole world. He also describes Americas treatment of Hirohito as selfish, with the implication that it was done exclusively to spare Truman and Macarthur the need to apologize for their conduct during the war. By the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was beginning to catch up with the world's great powers, and even enjoyed its own version of the Roaring Twenties, a period known rather more prosaically as Taisho Democracy. I am not familiar with the scholarship of Richard Frank, a non-academic history-writer, but am certainly not impressed by his remarkably evasive and long-winded answer to a straightforward question (why wait only three days before hitting Nagasaki ?) That would be right here: The Bushites,"neoconservatives," and Pentagon generals who urge Americans to continue their illegal war and occupation of Iraq until"we win," are looking out for their own political interests and preparing for the political struggle that lies ahead. 1. Into the month of July, the leaders of the imperial armed forces clung to the idea that as Allied lines of supply and communication lengthened, their own forces would do better on the homeland battlefields. As a soldier, he knew it was his duty to obey orders; and without any orders to the contrary, he had to keep on fighting. Warning Leaflets. Thanks for the reference, Mr. Mutschler (no online link I suppose ? Lieutenant Onoda, by contrast, doggedly refused to lay down his arms until he received formal orders to surrender. Yet, even though nearly 5,000 of them blazed their way into the world's collective memory in such spectacular fashion, it is sobering to realise that the number of British airmen who gave their lives in World War Two was ten times greater. The Bush administration steamrolled any military leader who posed questions about the planning phase to the run up of the Iraq War. Recorded on January 16, 2013 In a 2013 event at Carnegie Council, Ward Wilson, now the executive director at Realist Revolt, says that the Soviet declaration of war and not the Hiroshima nuclear bombing caused Japan to surrender at the end of World War II.An audience member then posits that the Soviets declared war because of Hiroshima. Of course, no news analysis outlet is "always accurate", not even Economist. Despite Japan's conditional surrender, a junior army officer attempted to stage a coup against the government. Japan barely scratched US soil during WWII. General MacArthur would not allow him to be questioned. Conversely, the insurgents will remain active trying to dislodge the US presence. So too did Admiral Takagi Sokichi, an adviser to Konoe and Takamatsu. So it was with Japan's decision-makers trying to end their war of aggression while their subjects faced the real prospect of physical annihilation. ), this strategy would be very appealing. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. It is also true that with the exception of Konoe, no one in the government or even the Court Group ever proposed opening direct negotiations with Washington, though most of them knew that the acting U.S. Secretary of State in summer 1945 was Joseph C. Grew, the former ambassador in Tokyo, a man sympathetic to the emperor and the"moderates" around the throne. Someone who disagreed with all of them, however, might nonetheless use "chickenhawk" just as you do, to describe the cowardly behavior of those running the executive branch of government in Washington DC today when it comes to committing troops abroad. "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads, Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error, Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History, New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans, The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field, Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel, New College Visiting Prof. Out of JobRufo's Public Remarks Suggest Politics the Motive, Recovering the Story of the Empress Messalina After a Roman Cancellation. Go pedal your defeatist nonsense elsewhere please. Since Japan was having such difficulties in China, the reasoning went, its armed forces would be no match for the British. Shouldn't Mr. Bix have considered and addressed that evidence? They are surely not conclusive -- no single piece of evidence could be on such a topic -- and they may well contain ambiguous or even contradictory evidence within them. If you have a weapon then you use it. Bix fails to do so, and thereby undermines some of his tangential claims. Read more. I find it hard to believe that anyone can be so naive. Alonzo Hamby, reviewing five books in the Journal of American History - JAH Sept. 1997, pp. In a nation where everyone is armed and none is your friend I would venture to say the forces against the US are closer to 200,000. It put an end to any hope the Soviets would negotiate a favourable surrender for Japan. One of the most common invocations made in the service of "the atomic bombs weren't necessary" argument is that the Japanese offered to surrender well before Hiroshima, and that this was ignored by the United States because they wanted to drop the bombs anyway (for various other asserted reasons). The issue will be debated on Lateline at 10.45pm. The Field Service Code issued by General Tojo in 1941 put it more explicitly: Apart from the dangers of battle, life in the Japanese army was brutal. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa (sp? that Hirohito et al were not self-sacrificing heros who bravely faced up to Japan's defeat, but instead delayers of the inevitable wanting to salvage their own hold on power. Why the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima | CNN Why Did the Japanese Delay Surrendering? | History News Network Japan's Surrender Made Public WWII - HISTORY This is why General Shinseki asked for 350,000 to 400,000 troops en masse at the wars outset. But many months after their surrender, Hirohito, Kido, and Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori placed all blame on the military and claimed that they had been forced to reject the Potsdam terms because they feared precipitating a military coup d'etat which would have threatened their lives and brought about a worse situation than the one they confronted. 8. After all, the United States employed the strategy of letting the Soviets wear down the Germans in Europe before attempting the amphibious landings at Normandy. He says, for example, that fear of surrendering to Russia was the primary factor behind Japans decision to surrender to the US -- more important even than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but he offers no substantiation for this unusual claim. "Some people in the world still do not understand the cruelty of nuclear weapons, and that they are absolute evil. 6.) Bradbury Science Museum/Getty Images In 1939, physicists Albert Einstein, left, and Leo Szilard drafted a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to research atomic bombs before. Why Did Japan Really Surrender in WW2? - Sky HISTORY Within this framework, the supreme sacrifice of life itself was regarded as the purest of accomplishments. Since he also considers the "introduction" (i.e. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you. By David Powers Regardless what historians now say the US truly believed that it would take 2 million troops to subdue Japan a country slightly smaller than California. I also find it odd that the administration was successful in it's attacks on John Kerry (whom I did not vote for) who actually served in combat. "A flash of light and the blast slammed me to the ground and I lost consciousness," she said. 9. Debate over the Japanese Surrender - Nuclear Museum The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. ), but the main issue raised on this page is actually not the much ballyhood evergreen & unresolvable question about whether the 1945 A bomb drops were justified, notwithstanding the efforts of several posters here to make it so, nor the desire of the HNN editors to cast things in that light, nor the money to be made (by Frank etc) recycling old debates. When Emperor Hirohito made his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, and enjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', he brought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that had wracked his country for 14 years. To understand the nature of the wars we are currently engaged in and the wars we will be faced with in the future, I recommend all check out "The Sling and the Stone" by Col. Thomas Hammes, USMC. In those depositions he said the emperor surrendered in order to bring the war to an end and save human lives. If troops pull 12 hour duty that means only 40,000 troops on watch for any half day period. Find out more about how the BBC is covering the. I pity you and your ideoligcal straightjacket. Comparing combats deaths in Iraq to D-Day or 911 is absurd. Enjoining the Japanese people to adapt to the new situation, it left them no room to clarify their leaders' responsibility for repressing their speech and making them fight a reckless war. At least according to Frank, who is a WWII historian, the Magic intercepts do indeed tell us that Truman and his advisors had good reason to believe that Japan had both the will and the means to continue fighting prior to the use of the bomb. Keiko Ogura was eight-years-old at the time and only 2.4 kilometres from the hypocentre. Although I use the term chicken-hawk to describe the gutless wonders within the administration I am by no means a dove. It noted that the unwillingness of Allied troops to take prisoners in the Pacific theatre had made it difficult for Japanese soldiers to surrender. For what its worth, Frank is a formidable writer, and the HNN page on him (which should have been about his full book, not just the sound-bite-rich Weekly Standard sensationalized adapation of it) deserves at least a fraction of the comments about his views that are misplacedly piling up here. Mr. Rodriguez, Japan's motivation for surrender and America's decision to use the bomb are related but nonetheless distinct issues, and Bix seems unable to resist conflating the two. But the most extraordinary story belongs to Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who continued fighting on the Philippine island of Lubang until 9 March 1974 - nearly 29 years after the end of the war. Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism? Mr. Richardson, Surrender of Japan - Wikipedia I've heard that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary as Japan was about to surrender, but if they were then how come they didn't surrender after Hiroshima? The troops will likely start heading home in the spring. Although presented in poetic, heroic terms of young men achieving the glory of the short-lived cherry blossom, falling while the flower was still perfect, the strategy behind the kamikaze was born purely out of desperation. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation. So on what grounds do you base your claim that the US presence in Iraq is "illegal"? "Chicken-hawks"? Shahwani actually said 20,000 to 30,000 fighters in a Baghdad speech (Jan 3, just prior to the election). Were the Japanese Going to Surrender Because of the Hiroshima Bombing? when I say "partial exception", I mean to Mr. Ebbitt's post, not to my point about disagreeing with PCism. This was intended for various reasons. Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Washington has believed ever since that the atomic bomb decisively forced Japan's surrender. I have had forum discussions with Mr. Heisler on a few occasions but would never call him a defeatist. According to Blix, it was "militarily unnecessary to do so." He claims for example, that Vietnam and the current war in Iraq were wars of aggression on par with Japans imperial expansion in the years leading up to WWII. Less than two weeks after being sworn in as president, Harry S. Truman received a long report from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. In the last, desperate months of the war, this image was also applied to Japanese civilians. Regards, And during the entire month of June and well into July, when U.S. terror bombing of Japanese civilian targets peaked, he resisted and showed no determination to do so. The point of my original comment was that the Magic decrypts are significant, material and primary sources which arguably contradict Bix's conclusion that use of the A-Bomb was either unnecessary or unjustified. In waging and losing the Vietnam war, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon never once placed the interests of the American or Vietnamese people first. So it was with Japan's decision-makers trying to end their war of aggression while their subjects faced the real prospect of physical annihilation. 6. Oppenheimer: The secrets he protected and the suspicions that followed him No two wars are the same so comparisons are of little value. The same cannot be said of the Special Attack Forces, more popularly known as kamikaze. "So it was with Japan's decision-makers trying to end their war of aggression while their subjects faced the real prospect of physical annihilation." Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered the peculiar and lasting damage done by atomic explosion and radiation. http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=66202#66202. It is odd for me to support an administration who does not have any leaders, other than Don Rumsfield, who served in the military. I disagree with him on many points but we have made a mess of Iraq and to date I surely would not say we are winning this war. Granted both Kennedy and Nixon served. The Dangerous Illusion of Japan's Unconditional Surrender What the Japanese people in summer 1945 called"the government" meant Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro and his cabinet ministers, who headed ministries that were rent with antagonistic factions. David Powers is a BBC correspondent, who advised the BBC team that made the Timewatch television programme about Lieutenant Onoda. Japanese leaders still had to decide whether they wanted to make an immediate decision to surrender under the circumstances. To me, that is quite a large commitment of resources. Hiroshima survivor Keiko Ogura wants people to come and see for themselves. After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. Hiroshima: Atomic Blast That Changed The World Turns 75 : NPR Japan was attempting to use the Soviet Union to mediate a negotiated peace in 1945 (a doomed effort, since the Soviets were already planning on breaking off their non-aggression pact and invading). 8.) "Go pedal your defeatist nonsense elsewhere please." General Douglas MacArthur and Japan's Emperor Hirohito in 1945, a few weeks after Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced effects in Japan and around the world that changed the course of history. 7.) The speed and ease with which the Japanese sank the British warships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, off Singapore just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor - followed by the humiliating capture of Singapore and Hong Kong - transformed their image overnight. 5. The military relief effort in the Far East did not assume the proportions it did in Europe, since no western Allied armies entered China. Japan also lost about 80 percent of its merchant marine in the war in the Pacific. 609 - 614. Yes, I am stating that the only people qualified to make military command and control decisions are those in positions and with experience in actual warfare. This includes an extensive discussion of the decoded Japanese messages and is almost certainly the inspiration for Will Richardsons original comment (#66141) which began the prior thread. From figures of derision, they were turned into supermen - an image that was to endure and harden as the intensity and savagery of fighting increased. I really think it's up to you to cite chapter and verse of Magic, and put it into an overal context, if you think it disproves this position of Bix (a position which is not quite as you described it initially). As tensions with China mount, the U.S. military continues to build up Guam and other Pacific territories placing the burdens of imperial power on the nation . That is a counterfactual argument that cannot be conclusively proven or disproven by reference to the actual decoded intercepts. The truth about the Japanese surrender. : r/history - Reddit Heisler is actually quoting the article on that one Ed. Insurgent troop strength is estimated at 200,000 while the US posts 130,000 strong. Dear Mr. Clark, regardless of how the Magic decrypts are interpreted, they are primary sources relevant to japanese intentions in 1945. The 23-year-old Ichizo Hayashi, wrote this to his mother, just a few days before embarking on what he knew would be his final mission, in April 1945: I am pleased to have the honour of having been chosen as a member of a Special Attack Force that is on its way into battle, but I cannot help crying when I think of you, Mum. With this logic it can be shown that US combat deaths in Iraq are well ahead of combat losses in Vietnam for the 1960 to 1962 period. Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds. Give me a viable link to a relevant article by Frank and I will look at it. He had simply been too frightened to give himself up. How can our leaders know the cost of war if they have never been there? Prime Minister Suzuki, however, ignored their advice because the emperor and the army were not on board. There may be some historical truth buried within his confused description of events, but it is not easily discernible to those not already familiar with Japans interaction with, and attitudes about, Russia. I'm starting to feel a draft after the 2006 election cycle. Of course, if the "Magic" decrypts really seriously contradict Bix, then he should have acknowledged that, even in a short article, but this is not clear to me. Governments that start or end wars of aggression characteristically care little for the safety of their own people. Fortunately (and ironically), for the many Allied soldiers, Japanese and Asian civilians that would have lost their lives during an invasion, Truman and his cabinet did not share this view. Op-Ed: U.S. didn't have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win war - Los Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely different view, regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. All those who start wars are uniformly aggressive leaders who deliberately sacrifice the lives of others in pursuit of their own political aims. The central and west of Iraq where the heavy fighting is underway has estimates ranging between 20,000 and 100,000 fighters. But only the emperor had the sovereign power to resolve the issue. Another reason why the United States dropped the atomic bombsand, specifically, the second one on Nagasaki has to do with the Soviet Union. Indeed, I noted in the first response to this article that Bix has diluted and confused his own argument with pointless asides about America during and even after the war. Please provide the solid numbers of the Iraq security forces you write of. The America That Americans Forget - The New York Times What they place first are their own interests and their own"mission." not including Weekly Standard) ignoring or covering up such a historiographical breakthrough is not high. Japan's Reaction Despite the horror of Hiroshima, there were many in the Japanese government that disbelieved the United States had the technical ability to develop, yet alone transport and drop, an atomic bomb. No wonder Iraq smells like Vietnam revisited. AFP via Getty Images. Bill Heuisler. August 13, 2020, 12:40 PM. I am not an expert on this historical episode, but as nearly as I can make out (see above), Bix thinks that nuking Hiroshima DID lead to the Japanese surrender, but that there were alternative paths for reaching the same result without use of nukes. The New York Times, which gave us a glowing review of Amring America? I will nonetheless consider it as a possibility, but am not going to take the undocumented opinions of a few HNN posters as a definitive conclusion without some better substantiation, nor will I do their homework for them in trying to evaluate their questionable case. The article itself is generally quite excellent, by the way, and most of other comments about here rife with many other instances of confusion and misattribution. Why didn't the Japanese surrender after the first bombing of Hiroshima if they were on the verge of surrendering? http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/13482.html Instead, the atomic bomb served as a tool to bring the war in the Pacific to a close sooner. If you believe he has a case, it would be "lazy or mindless" to foist the job of documenting that case on those YOU want to convince of it. To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. Adding a zero to numbers of the enemy is bad enough, but telling the world the US military is incompetent becomes disgraceful. It was a classic piece of understatement. Firstly, there was a serious concern that if . Bix must address that conflict or he is being imperfectly frank with his audience. Interesting how, as you build your straw man, you omit the count and contributions of the Iraqi security forces and how their numbers, commitment and effectiveness has grown over the past 6 months. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. As for the Magic intercepts, an excellent article on this topic by Richard Frank is currently posted on the Weekly Standard website. WW2 "The Hiroshima bomb. Some people in the world still do not understand the cruelty of nuclear weapons and that they are absolute evil. In the early morning hours of August 10 they made their decision and over the next four days crafted the myth that the emperor had saved the nation by his heroic intervention in favor of peace. http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=66141#66141: It is unclear at what point Hirohito abandoned the illusion that his armed forces remained capable of delivering at least one devastating blow to the enemy so that his diplomats could negotiate a surrender on face saving terms. It is just as nonsensical for a historian to entirely dismiss a source because of perceived bias as it is to entirely accept a source without consideration of bias. 7) The 'Mighty Mo'. The US is STILL "in" Baghdad and the Iraqi Police/Army is making steady progress with NO shortage of recruits. The Japanese Surrender in 1945 is Still Poorly Understood Bringing troops home as part of standard rotation and shipping them back out is NOT HOME IN THE SPRING! Kirkuk and Mosel are off limits to US troops. It was a war without mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in 1945. The problem of historical consciousness that today clouds Japan's relations with Asian neighbors began with the emperor's surrender rescript. And, by the way, congratulations on your pointless dig at Mr. Ryan for his typo on Bix's name. Second, Japan's armed forces had to comply with the government's surrender. As my 2nd post stated - I was commenting on the authors pros, not Mr. Heisler's. I had no idea that the rules of debate limited me to ONLY commenting on posts made in regard to articles under which they appear. Typically an occupying force should hold a 10 to 1 numerical advantage over it's foe. The America That Americans Forget. 50,000 higher than Saddam's Republican Guard in the "good old days", and all this strength without the benefit of a robust and secure logistical network (think Vietnam)? I believe in a strong, well trained and well equipped military but a military that is used with discretion, has well defined operational objectives and uses maximum force when required. Tomiko Matsumoto was 14 when an atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. But six months of intensive U.S. terror bombing of the Japanese civilian population had forced him, the Court group, and the government to take into account not only their huge losses of men and materials, but also food shortages and the growing war-weariness of the Japanese people. These people had many reasons to bring the lost war to an end short of Japan's further destruction and unconditional capitulation to the Anglo-Americans. My main point above was to deflate one of the many abuses of semantics and of a healthy discussion here, which is to attack prior comments, not for the shortcomings of their intellectual or historical content, but by developing politically-correct misshapings of vocabulary they use, and then attacking those misshapings. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Academic historians seem to have been been slow to react to an important work by a non-academic, and I expect to hear more about this book in the future.
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