mikegriffith1 wrote: ↑14 Apr 2019, 17:00It is unfortunate that you present such erroneous arguments with such sarcasm and posturing. Go read Toland's chapter on Japanese peace initiatives in The Rising Sun if you want documented cases of private/back-channel communication between us and the Japanese government.R Leonard wrote: ↑01 Apr 2019, 01:50"Privately informed the Japanese . . ." There's a laugh. Oh, please tell us all how that was to be accomplished? Pick a phone? "this is Harry, can I speak to Hirohito?"
Private communication, indeed, a typical clueless pipe dream. The Japanese were not communicating with the US and vise-versa in case you had not noticed. And as has been pointed out and asked so many times in this thread, just why is it the responsibility of the US to contact the Japanese? The US (and its allies) position was already clear.
Even if we had not already had back-channel discussions with the Japanese that were tracked by high officials on both sides (such as Stimson and Togo), we surely could have easily found a way to contact them privately. If we could make private contact with the Nazi government, including Hitler, to get them not to fire on boats with German POWs on them (which we did), we surely could have done the same with the Japanese--again, even if we had not already done so.
You surely know that the public statements of the Japanese government were very different from what they were saying--and doing--privately among themselves. This has been documented in numerous books. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and quote dozens of pages of material to prove how erroneous your posturing is. I suggest you read the research of Kawamura, Toland, Ham, Hoyt, Brooks, and Hasegawa, to name a few, who have irrefutably documented that by mid-July the emperor had made it clear he wanted the end the war and that the only irreducible condition was the retention of the emperor (i.e., the imperial house).Again you and your learned professor (whose opinion in 2008 means nothing since he had naught to do with the realities of 1945) choose to ignore the overwhelming statements from the Japanese themselves (which old Harry Hopkins was, himself, no doubt, reading) . . . and most of them after that 12 July message you repeatedly bring up when you cry about the Japanese wanting to surrender, that surrender, even with retention of the imperial house, was out of the question. In their own words, Mikey, in their own words . . . come on, you know, Mikey, all those messages you choose not to mention because they negate your precious message of 12 July.
LOL! Oh, yes, and of course the Soviets always kept their word and never went beyond what they said they would do in their declarations! You bet. This is laughable material.Also suggest that you read the Soviet declaration of war with the Japanese in case you have further confusion.
And none of your polemic changes the undeniable fact that the Japanese dreaded surrendering to the Soviets far more than they dreaded surrendering to us. Or do you deny this historical fact as well?
You know, we rightly complain because Japanese militarists and their supporters have sought to whitewash Japanese war crimes, but our militarists and their supporters seek to erase the well-documented fact that Truman ignored clear openings for surrender talks, that Truman's actions greatly helped the Japanese hardliners and hurt the moderates, and that Truman did not need to nuke Hiroshima, much less Nagasaki, to end the war without an invasion.
Mikey, maybe you should re-invent the wheel and read up on what the Japanese were saying in private. We all realize that you’ve no interest in anything which does not support your limited presentation, but you should read up what was happening. Don’t be silly. You really want to cite Toland? Really? Or are you simply repeating what someone else said about how Toland spells it out without actually reading it yourself?
Oh, you did read Toland? Frankly, I am surprised, but, well, gee, ‘back-channels’ indeed . . . after Toland tells us about the comedy in Sweden and all the monkey business in Switzerland, which, bye-the-bye, was totally belied by the content of Magic intercepts (oh, damn, there’s that reading the Japanese mail business again), and the plan to essentially give the Soviets whatever they wanted just to keep them out of the war (and Magic intercepts, and, indeed, the Japanese' official histories, show that the Soviets’ actual intentions were of absolutely no surprise to the Japanese . . they were fully prepared to write off Manchuria and Korea), did you get to this part:
“While these scattered efforts went on, the Japanese militarists completed their final plans for suicidal defense if the homeland – Operation Decision (Ketsu-Go). More than ten thousand planes – most of them hastily converted trainers – had been collected. Two thirds of these would be thrown into the battle for Kyushu; the rest would be reserved to repel any landing near Tokyo. In the face of the bloody lessons of Tarawa and Saipan, the plan was to crush the Americans in the beaches with fifty-three infantry divisions and twenty-fine brigades – a total of 2,350,000 troops. These would be backed by almost 4,000,000 Army and Navy civilian employees, a special garrison force of 250,000, and a 28,000,000 civilian militia. This mammoth force would evolve from the national volunteer military service law for men from fifteen to sixty and women from seventeen to forty-five which had been unanimously passed in the final Diet session. The military spokesmen, whose impressive testimony had ensured passage of the bill, later showed Suzuki and his cabinet a display of the weapons that would be used by the volunteers; muzzle-loading rifles and bamboo sticks cut into spears stacked beside bows and arrows from feudal times.” (page 756)
Do you not find it amusing that Part 8 of Toland’s The Rising Sun which covers the end of the war is entitled “One Hundred Million Die Together”? Wasn’t that to which the Japanese plans boiled down? Yes, yes, I know, the Japanese did not have a population of 100,000,000, and, yes, I know the slogan was, politely, jingoistic hyperbole, but to 1945 Western ears, and from all they’d seen so far across the Pacific for the last three and a half years, it was entirely believable as a plan.
And I do like Toland’s apt description at the beginning of the quoted passage “. . . these scattered efforts . . .” Do you suppose that might be some sort of veiled value judgement?
May I suggest that YOU read Richard Frank’s Downfall in its entirety . . . read it twice, please, before you again mention Toland. I mean, really, Mikey, your writing smacks as that of the leading lights of the Hiroshima Cult’s obvious belief that everyone else in the world is an unread peasant. Academic types, journalists, and Wards tend to do that. Did you not read in an earlier post from Takao to the effect that “this is not our first rodeo”? Do you really think that some of us over the last 50 years have not read BOTH sides, and yea, talked to people on the pointy end of the stick?
You would be sadly mistaken . . . as usual.
Really, the "private statements" from the Japanese? Considering that the powers that were in Japan, the "Big Six," had not a clue that someone was reading their mail, their ostensibly “private” messages, how can you explain away Foreign Minister Togo’s (you remember Togo, one of the “Big Six” who were actually running the show) stating flat out in a message to his ambassador in Moscow, Sato, on 13 July 1945 (this a day after the oft presented “see? The Japanese wanted to end the war” message) which, while reiterating the sentiment import of but a single paragraph from that treasured 12 July message, flatly states:
“His majesty the Emperor, mindful of the fact the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifices upon the peoples of all belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the on and existence of the Motherland.”
That’s quite a qualifier.
And notice he does not, rather, say anything like: “Go to Molotov and tell him to tell the British and the Americans that we would like to capitulate . . . now; now, not next week.”
But, no, he piles it on and then, on the 17th, Togo to Sato, for Sato to present to the Soviets:
“Although the directing powers, and the Government as well, are convinced that our war strength can still deliver considerable blows to the enemy, we are unable to fell an absolutely secure peace of mind in the face of an enemy who will attack repeatedly. If today, when we are still maintaining our strength, the Anglo-Americans were to have regard for Japan’s honor and existence, they could save humanity by bringing the war to an end. If, however, they insist unrelentingly upon unconditional surrender, the Japanese are unanimous in their resolve to wage a thorough-going war.”
And on reading these, just exactly what were the Allies supposed to think? Hmmm? What, that Togo was making some grand jest?
In the real world, when a nation’s foreign minister says something along the lines of “this is the way it is,” to his own people who are on the edge of events, then that is the way it is; plain, unambiguous, and very clear to all. Attempts to feed pablum to the Soviets with one hand while holding a sword behind their backs with the other are painfully obvious. Again, it is 1945, not 2019, what, exactly, were the Allies supposed to think when they read these messages?
Please enlighten us as to what a no surrender position, reiterated over and over in official, and supposedly secret communications, was supposed to mean to the people in the command loop on the Allied side?
And if you want further citation of similar statements (which I seriously doubt, since they are not part of your mantra), I, too, could reinvent the wheel, but, rather, I would suggest that you break out of your matrix and carefully read the message traffic post your treasured 12 July 1945 message. Try this, you can find them in order: http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/librar ... o.htm#1427
The import of those messages is very clear. I’m sorry if your sources, and, thus you, cannot bring yourselves to read and understand the messages; never present them, never respond to pointed reference thereto, but to skip over them or blithely brush them aside. They have been pointed out to you on innumerable occasions in this thread and of which you never even acknowledge their existence, much less comment on same. So, either poor research work there on your part, Mikey, or a complete unwillingness to look at anything outside your half, nay, quarter, story . . . and it shows. I understand you only wish to trumpet your side, but to fail to look at all sides, and to fully grasp and understand the reality of events in the summer of 1945 and the decision making key players decisions as opposed to those outside the loop, or merely hanging on the periphery, with just an opinion, as much as you can through the lens of the summer of 1945 and not 2019, is quite a bit more than just a little disingenuous.
But, hey, that’s the fun part; those of us who do not subscribe to the Hiroshima Cult already know you only tell a quarter of the story.
You do understand how negotiations go, right? Offer, counter-offer, counter-counter offer, and so on. The Allies made their offer through the Potsdam Declaration and even as far back as Casablanca in 1943. It was not their responsibility to come up with some counter-offer in the face of Japanese official silence and intransigence and, indeed, private and official messages to various underlings which reject the Allies offer and, too bad for both senders and recipients, were being read by the Allies.
Any time after Saipan, in the the summer of 1944, the Japanese government, after dumping Tojo, could have approached oh, say, the Swiss, and say in an official message that they wanted to end the war. They knew how to do that because that what they ultimately did after Nagasaki . . . they wasted a whole year, hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, totally destroyed cities, and incipient national starvation from a failed rice crop "look, you can eat acorns"). And, for what?