Many people claim that Japan would have surrendered even without America using atomic weapons on two cities. If that's true, then why didn't they surrender after the first bombing? why did it take two, plus Russia's declaration of war, to finally get them to relent?
Thanks for any reasonable insights.
2007-08-09 03:48:06 · 9 answers · asked by American citizen and taxpayer 7 in Politics & Government ➔ Military
Many interesting answers. Thanks!
2007-08-09 04:09:34 · update #1
Okinawa showed us how the fight on the Japan mainland was going to go. Estimates up to 1,000,000 casualties. It would have laid waste to every city and town in the country. My father and his older brother would have been part of the invasion force. Too bad we didn't have the bombs 1 yr earlier.
2007-08-09 03:53:49 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 2⤋
Here's an entire page devoted to the argument about whether or not Japan would have surrendered without the bombings: Alonzo L. Hamby, "The Decision to Drop the Bomb," Journal of American History, Vol. 84, no. 2 (September 1997).
On a personal note, my mother is Japanese and was a preteen during WWII. She told me that her family was issued poison to take in the event Americans invaded Japan. Children were taught in school how to fight soldiers (laughable, but true). It seems to me that if surrender were a viable option, there wasn't any need to provide the families with a means to commit mass suicide.
2007-08-09 11:34:38 · answer #2 · answered by TC 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
I would think that things take time, the bombs were dropped three days apart. is terms of "war" giving up as quickly as the japanese did is farely rare. Remember wars can go on for years and even decades. You also need to take into account any alliances that they might of had, perhaps they held out for support. Remember that the war had been going on since 1941 ( in regards to Japan), 4 years later its continuing and the japanese give up 2 weeks after the first bombing. I would say that is a fairly immediate response.
2007-08-09 10:54:46 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are many accounts which claim Japan had been trying to negotiate a surrender for months before the bombs were dropped but the US would settle for nothing less than an unconditional surrender and Japan wanted guarantees that it could keep its Emperor among other things.
So, we dropped the bombs and got our unconditional surrender and ended up letting them keep their emperor, anyway. Plus we rebuilt their country.
Don't you think we could have gotten them to surrender without the bombs if we had said they could keep their emperor and we'd pay to rebuild their country and we'd pay for their national defense for decades to come and protect them from retribution from Russia, China and Korea???
2007-08-09 10:56:27 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
There have been many books written on this subject, but no definitive answers. I just finished reading one on this history. The Japanese felt the attack on Pearl Harbor was to force us to negotiate a treaty they could live by, and desperately hoped to negotiate an honorable peace. Throughout the end of the war, they simply demanded a few terms before surrender, and our insistence of unconditional surrender was what kept the war going in their eyes. Their hope was Soviets could be a go-between to negotiate this treaty between us, and when they declared war it lost their final hope of getting better terms.
2007-08-09 10:50:52 · answer #5 · answered by Steve C 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
Because Japanese generals didn't even understand what kind of bomb they received.
They thought it's just another "Tokyo raid", so they weren't scared at all.
Only Soviet 19-day blitzkrieg in Manchuria, which effectively cut Japan from Chinese resources, finished the war.
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Try to find Hirohito's letters, they'll explain a lot.
2007-08-09 10:54:09 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
The Japanese were (and still are) very proud people. They simple refused to surrender, even when it seemed hopeless. It was their emperor who finally came to reason and accepted peace (with the help of the Russians, threatening to invade and probably kill every single person [we all know what they did to Berlin, right?])
2007-08-09 10:53:45 · answer #7 · answered by magiscoder 3 · 3⤊ 2⤋
They wouldn't have surrendered. It had to be done, but no one probably understood the long lasting effects of the bomb.
2007-08-09 10:52:24 · answer #8 · answered by ? 7 · 1⤊ 2⤋
They had tried to surrender BEFORE the bombings! Get your facts right!
2007-08-09 10:55:59 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 5⤋