#3
Post
by Goldfish » 13 Jul 2004, 00:14
I think the main point here is that the Japanese military leadership was still unwilling to surrender. Even after Nagasaki and the Emperor's decision to surrender, military leaders in Tokyo planned to overthrow the cabinet, destroy the Emperor's recorded surrender message, and force the country to continue the war. Only the decision of General Anami to kill himself rather than join the plotters caused the plot to fail.
A lot has been made of the fact that Japan was willing to surrender long before Hiroshima, but it is often forgotten that what Japan wanted was a negotiated surrender that would still leave them in control of Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, Shandong Penninsula and other parts of China, and some other territories captured during the war. They also wanted to maintain their military government. The Allies, especially the Chinese, would never accept this.
The option, therefore, was to force Japan to accept the Potsdam Declaration. This could be accomplished by seige, invasion, or the use of the atomic bombs. In the end, the atomic bombs were the fastest and involved the lowest cost in lives. An invasion could have resulted in the deaths of around ten million Japanese and left large parts of Japan in ruins. A seige could have certainly killed millions through starvation (and the war in other theaters (China, Southeast Asia) would have gone on. The bombs killed 70,000 to 200,000 (less than the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo or the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking) and ended the war right away, allowing relief aid and food to get into Japan and repatriated Japanese soldiers to return quickly to rebuild Japan.
The atomic bombs were horrible weapons and I hope that nuclear and atomic weapons are never used again, but in this case, the alternatives were far worse.
