By the end of World War Two, Japan had endured 14 years of war, and lay in ruins - with over three million dead. Mr. Ryan, Kirkuk and Mosel are off limits to US troops. But, for a scholarly review that tends to support the use of the A-Bombs, will the following do? Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Today, in the era of inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq, the highest U.S. officials who foisted the war on the American people face a similar situation. Other portions of that same forum, I was not surprised to discover, indicate ambiguity within the Magic transcripts re Japanese intentions. Bill Heuisler. Mr. Ryan, This surprises me. Perhaps for the simpleminded, it would be easier just to stick to the broader term hypocrite, as in George W. Hypocrite Bush, Donald Hypocrite Rumsfeld, etc.. 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. I'm starting to feel a draft after the 2006 election cycle. . But for all who participated in the last imperial conferences that produced the surrender decision, kokutai meant a sovereign, politically empowered monarchy based on the orthodox State Shinto view of the state, in which the people existed to assist the imperial destiny. Why is Japan's WW2 surrender still a sensitive subject? The Americans had already destroyed 66 Japanese cities with a massive fire bombing campaign. "To Bear the Unbearable": Japan's Surrender, Part I 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. Mr. Bix's article would be more persuasive if he addressed the conflict between his opinion and what Magic shows. Your contention that Insurgent troop strength is 200,000. Namely, one who would start a war and commit fellow citizens to die in it, but who evaded serving in military combat himself. "Today, in the era of inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq," I find it amazing with the '06 election around the corner the administration is bantering about troop withdrawal. 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and of a healthy discussion here, which is to attack prior comments, not for the shortcomings of their intellectual or historical content, but by developing politically-correct misshapings of vocabulary they use, and then attacking those misshapings. Onoda's grim determination personifies one of the most enduring images of Japanese soldiers during the war - that Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, fears arose that if the United States pursued an unconditional surrender policy in Japan, it would result in a coup against said peace party (and the Emperor) by dominant militarists. Not only did Admiral William Halsey, Commander of the South Pacific Force, adopt the slogan 'Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs', public opinion polls in the United States consistently showed 10 to 13 per cent of all Americans supported the 'annihilation' or 'extermination' of the Japanese as a people. Why doesn't the administration recognize the deaths of our service men. 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 Iraqi Police/Army is in disarray and littered with insurgent spies who relay every movement to the resistance. 609 - 614. But it was also intended to send a message to the Soviets. The Iraqi Police/Army is fairing very poorly. But the Soviet factor carried greater weight in the eyes of the emperor and most military leaders." If troops pull 12 hour duty that means only 40,000 troops on watch for any half day period. Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism? Why Did Japan Really Surrender in WW2? Hirohito's imperial rescript accepting the Potsdam Declaration was recorded and broadcast by radio on August 15. 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. Japan surrendered nine days after the bombing of Hiroshima. Japan's Reaction - Atomic Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm, For the record, I have not claimed that Frank's article resolves anything. It's one of those things that has a . 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. All those who start wars are uniformly aggressive leaders who deliberately sacrifice the lives of others in pursuit of their own political aims. "Some people in the world still do not understand the cruelty of nuclear weapons, and that they are absolute evil. 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. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation. Fighting in isolated pockets is their only effective means to battle a the far superior US forces. 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. 19, No. To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. Why Did the Japanese Delay Surrendering? | History News Network Bix, not "Blix" is the author you quote. After early attempts to flush them out had failed, humanitarian missions were sent to Lubang to try to persuade Lieutenant Onoda and his companions that the war really was over, but they would have none of it. 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. Grateful to Washington and GHQ for protecting Hirohito and preserving the monarchy, Japan's ruling elites never demanded that the U.S. apologize or show contrition for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As expected, the intercept messages (most of which were made public three decades ago) are an ambiguous jumble, but on balance tend to support Franks argument, though not to the extent hyped by him. Comparing combats deaths in Iraq to D-Day or 911 is absurd. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pacific/sfeature/sf_forum_0503.html#a Do not live in shame as a prisoner. The Americans said they took the drastic step to put an early end to World War II and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, but this official narrative is now being overturned. Shahwani actually said 20,000 to 30,000 fighters in a Baghdad speech (Jan 3, just prior to the election). ), 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. They don't have the strength or resources. It was a war without mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in 1945. "We have this incredible new weapon, we have a monopoly on it and we are going to emerge as the strongest superpower. This is not defeatist but is the reality of the moment. 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 US has also failed to understand the Iraqi mindset. 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. WOW! His overall argument is awkward, and he equivocates a bit, but ultimately it seems clear that he is arguing that the use of the bomb was irrelevant, or nearly so. It inflicted a serious body blow, but it was hardly a knock-out punch." Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Could it really be possible that, all these decades later, after so many countless books, films, textbooks and TV documentaries, we've got the final days of World War Two all wrong? 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 surrender of the Japanese was held in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri. 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. Dear Mr. Clark, Mr. Bix's article appears to rely heavily on his paper "Japan's Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation" in Diplomatic History, Vol. Getting back to the article as to why Japan delayed surrender is that the militarist truly believed the Japanese mainland was well enough fortified to prevent being overrun. With defeat imminent, Japan's leaders feared that without the imperial house, the state and their own power would be devalued and diminished in the eyes of the people, and that the state would ultimately disintegrate. On the question of USSR entering the war, I do not see what relevance Japan troops in Korea or China had once America decided to start nuking the Japanese mainland. What they had really feared was the destruction of their entire framework for rule. 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. Even assuming your interpretation of the decoded Japanese messages is correct, I cannot locate the supposed "conflict" between this and Bix's article. Preserving their conservative system of rule with the emperor at the apex was their ultimate end; war termination their political means." I now see the Republicans attack Paul Hackett an Iraqi Vet running for an Ohio congressional seat with the same vigor. 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. 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. Despite Japan's conditional surrender, a junior army officer attempted to stage a coup against the government. Former prime minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro, former foreign minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, the emperor's brother, Prince Takamatsu, and their respective secretaries and advisers all fell into this category. According to Blix, it was "militarily unnecessary to do so." According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. 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 this point in time the US commitment in Iraq is a small fraction of the resources used to fight WWII, which was my point. The Comparison of Napoleon's Russian campaign is only to open the discussion as to why the US is not changing our tactics to combat the insurgents more effectively. Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, were permitted to return to their homes. Life for Hirohito After the War. Most historians agree the official version from the US government that the bombs were dropped to force an early surrender and saved up to a million American lives from a bloody invasion is far too simplistic. As my 2nd post stated - I was commenting on the authors pros, not Mr. Heisler's. But your quote does not prove the earlier claim by Richardson in his post. So on what grounds do you base your claim that the US presence in Iraq is "illegal"? This was intended for various reasons. Firstly, there was a serious concern that if . On that final point, see for example HNNs reprint of David Kennedys Time column (here http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/13429.html): Although some Japanese were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Domestic political considerations drove Japan's decision-makers. 2rascallydogs 7 min. Leaders of an imperialist state in the process of going down to defeat in war invariably behave this way. "Regardless of what historians now say" Only some historians say that this was not a valid basis for the use of the bomb on Japan. This article first appeared at Japan Focus and is reprinted with permission. And these historians are driven by ideology (US = bad) and must ignore a mountain of evidence to maintain this point of view. Bix argues in explicit terms that "the war was all but over" and that the dropping of the bomb was "militarily unnecssary." "The troops will likely start heading home in the spring." The troops will likely start heading home in the spring. Through much of World War II, Allied bombers would sometimes drop leaflets warning of impending bombing of a city. Today, in the era of inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq, the highest U.S. officials who foisted the war on the American people face a similar situation. Heisler - The UN has given its approval to the US presence in Iraq, as has the Iraqi and US governments. The term "chickenhawk" contains no general implication whatsosever concerning which sort of people "are fit to make war decisions". He had simply been too frightened to give himself up. The declaration was made at the Potsdam Conference near the end of World War II. -30-, Mr. Clarke- The New York Times, which gave us a glowing review of Amring America? Are we reading the same article ? 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. 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)? For surrender to the Soviet Union would surely have doomed the monarchy, whereas the Potsdam Declaration, which Truman had deliberately prevented Stalin from signing, held out the slim possibility of maintaining it. I think he pretty much hits it right on the head. But by this time Japan had virtually no oil, its cities were in ruins and its navy and naval air capability virtually non-existent. To survive in the jungle of Lubang, he had kept virtually constantly on the move, living off the land, and shooting cattle for meat. That would be right here: They were permitted to maintain such industries as would sustain their economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those which would enable her to re-arm for . "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." "I woke up, it was dark and everyone was crying.". In early 1941, General Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, reported that one of his battalion commanders had lamented, 'Don't you think (our men) are worthy of some better enemy than the Japanese?'. How can our leaders know the cost of war if they have never been there? 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. Not only were there virtually no survivors of the 30,000 strong Japanese garrison on Saipan, two out of every three civilians - some 22,000 in all - also died. They did not surrender after the first atomic bomb due to the amount of time it usually would take to officially declare surrender, which in this case would have been a bit longer considering japan was not so keen on surrender. I have long wondered why Truman, once he had the bomb and had decided to use it, still bargained with Stalin to get what at that point was a militarily useless and absurly late nth hour declaration of war from the USSR. Comments on your post: Bix fails to do so, and thereby undermines some of his tangential claims. Selfless sacrifice, for whatever purpose, was present on all sides in the conflict. his position that most of Japanese big shots were not eager to throw in the towel prior to Hiroshima. 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. U.S. combat losses in the battle of Okinawa were approximately 12,520 killed and over 33,000 wounded. Another reason why the United States dropped the atomic bombsand, specifically, the second one on Nagasaki has to do with the Soviet Union. In any case, I am not yet persuaded that the intercepts are as clear cut about Japanese determination to fight as you and Richardson are ready to believe. The south is controlled by 25,000 to 50,000 men under control of various warlords. How can our leaders know the cost of war if they have never been there?" I am afraid the answer to the question raised by Mr. Richardson at the outset of this thread remains unclear: Were the Japanese ready to surrender before the first bomb was dropped ? Mr. Siegler, Bringing troops home as part of standard rotation and shipping them back out is NOT HOME IN THE SPRING! And you might want to pick up a paper before you start talking about your imagined desire by Bush to hang around in Iraq much longer. It is not my intention to refute Mr. Bix's thesis, but to point out that his failure to address pertinent evidence weakens his argument. America believed the shock and awe of the devastating power of the new bombs would force Japan into surrender, but experts say inside Japan it was viewed differently. 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. By this time Tokyo was already a smoldering heap from months of fire bombing. Professor Cole wrote, "General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, head of Iraqi intelligence, estimated on Monday that the force strength of the guerrilla insurgency was about 200,000 men. This rule does indeed make off-limits your prior litanies on the subject of "chickenhawks", "neo-cons" and "traitors". Oh, pardon monsieur! Certainly I don't intend to go web fishing there for an unlinked article. 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. The Bush administration steamrolled any military leader who posed questions about the planning phase to the run up of the Iraq War. It implies a consistency and integrity that does not exist. ""Unite . Of the 100 units planned by Don Rumsfield only 3 are fully operational to date. In the end, Stalin got a bunch of territory for doing nothing militarily in the East. Prime Minister Suzuki, however, ignored their advice because the emperor and the army were not on board. 4.) In fact, two days after the Council agreed to surrender, a Japanese submarine attacked the Oak Hill, an American landing ship, and the Thomas F. Nickel, an American destroyer, both east of Okinawa. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa (sp? 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. Truman and Byrnes introduced nuclear weapons into modern warfare when it had been militarily unnecessary to do so. This site is open to all points of view. 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. Not all of us who question the modus operandi in Iraq are against the use of our military in protecting US interests. Find out more about how the BBC is covering the. 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 . In a sense, this was the opening salvo of the Cold War," he said. Background Allied landings in the Pacific Theatre of operations, August 1942 to August 1945 By 1945, the Japanese had suffered a string of defeats for nearly two years in the South West Pacific, India, the Marianas campaign, and the Philippines campaign. "insurgency strength is estimated at 200,000." Read more. Why didn't the Japanese surrender after the first bombing of Hiroshima Their object was to reorganize the state, stamp out criticism of the military, and silence liberals and socialists. But for the record the US has spent $800B on this current effort. Magic Diplomatic and Magic Far East radio intercept decryptions contradict Mr. Bix's opinion that the japanese were ready to surrender before Truman approved the use of the A-Bombs. Were the Japanese Going to Surrender Because of the Hiroshima Bombing? The leaflets often told civilians to evacuate, and sometimes encouraged them to push their leaders to surrender. The problem of historical consciousness that today clouds Japan's relations with Asian neighbors began with the emperor's surrender rescript. The other enduring image of total sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship. In the days immediately following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese military did not publicly respond, still holding on to their four conditions for ending the war: preservation of the imperial institution, leaving demobilization in the hands of Japanese headquarters, no foreign occupation of the Home Islands, Ko. Mr. Richardson is thus quite correct to fault Bix for failing to address this information in his article. It is sad that some live in an pipe dream altered reality while our troops are being killed daily. The US is constructing massive, permanent bases in Iraq. 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. For top-quality history, I prefer the book reviews in the New York Times or Economist, for example, or the academic journals. Japan Surrenders; World War II Ends - HISTORY Although 911 was a thoroughly planned military attack it's aim was not the invasion of the US mainland. Just can't help but point out a rather obvious point of difference here in your fallacious analogy. " This is wrong. Although I use the term chicken-hawk to describe the gutless wonders within the administration I am by no means a dove. "To Bear the Unbearable": Japan's Surrender, Part II Instead we have 130,000 troops of which 40,000 are logistics, administration and medical support leaving 80,000 troops to combat. A truthful, public post-mortem on both Hirohito's"green light" for war in 1941 and his true role in the surrender process was never conducted. As a student of military history I can site numerous errors in US war planning that has put our troops in this position. Hirohito, counting on the success of the Foreign Ministry's peace overtures to Moscow, resisted facing reality and never acted resolutely. This survey had surprising results, Japan emperor's WWII surrender speech audio master released, Thailand's Move Forward party moves to curb Senate power after old guard blocks party's PM candidate. What a disappointment. I am not sure that Bix has things quite right either, and I agree that he conflates too many points in an unclear way in this article, but the tangential attempts to criticize his argument in these comment postings here do not hold water, at least so far. Against overwhelming US firepower they would not stand a chance on a conventional battlefield. But if, as appears to be the case, they can be reasonably interpreted to support the Truman administration's unwavering claim that they felt they had no choice but to use the bomb, then anyone who seeks to challenge that position must account for them. This is only the beginning of a major global war as the US and Israel set site on Iran and Syria. 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. 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.
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