Duncan_M wrote: ↑21 Jan 2019, 23:59
I don't believe either of these are correct, at least according to Richard Frank's book Downfall, in which he describes the Supreme War Council/Big Six meeting immediately after Nagasaki and were still split on surrender, with half, including all the military ministers, still leaning towards a proposed cease fire settlement that included the following stipulations, which Frank referred to as the "Four Condition Offer:"
They are both correct. The US Mil Intel also wrote "The Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies. Russia's early August entry into the war
would almost certainly have furnished this pretext, and would have been sufficient to convince all responsible leaders that surrender was unavoidable".
As were others July 8 the U.S.-British Combined Intelligence Committee completed a formal "Estimate of the Enemy Situation." This document included the following assessment:
"We believe that a considerable portion of the Japanese population now consider absolute military defeat probable. The increasing effects of sea blockade and the cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, which has already rendered millions homeless and has destroyed from 25% to 50% of the builtup areas of Japan's most important cities, should make this realization increasingly genera"l.
The Committee also stressed the judgment that:
"An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat".
This was the same view held in Japan, "As a result of Russia's entrance into the war, the Empire, in the fourth year of its [war] endeavor, is faced with a struggle for the existence of the nation". Is the reason why they offer to surrender.
Britain's General Hastings Ismay, chief of staff to the minister of defence, summarized the conclusions of the above U.S.-U.K. intelligence study for Prime Minister Churchill in this way:
"When Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor"
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, concluded that "in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost:
"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary."
Eisenhower, Mandate For Change
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'.
Downfall is full of such errors. It ignores what the Japanese said, it ignores what the US code breakers knew what they said and when they said it. exampleAugust 2 MAGIC report suggested the `unanimous determination' of top leaders in Tokyo that Japan should seek peace.""While the Japanese were awaiting an answer from Russia, there occurred the disastrous event which the Japanese leaders regarded as utter catastrophe and which they had energetically sought to prevent at any cost--Russia declared war upon Japan and began moving her forces into Manchuria."
The study went on to state:
"The Emperor and the advisors immediately surrounding the throne had come to a decision to end the war as early as 20 June 1945 and by 9 August, the date of Russia's entry into the war, were actively attempting to carry out this decision...The Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were Brigadier General Carter W. Clarke, the army officer in charge of preparing the MAGIC summaries in 1945, stated in a 1959 interview, that "we brought [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and then when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs." which in part was why
https://www.garalperovitz.com/about-gar/ wrote his book some years later that does use what the US knew and when they knew it,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decision-Use-A ... 067976285X
Gars book is now a required reading text in UK education.
https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/z8y82hv/revision/5 Franks Downfall still sells well in the USA, as it expresses a a popular viewpoint. Many states follow that viewpoint, in teaching, but not all.
UK Official history of the Pacific war
"The Russian declaration of war was the decisive factor in bringing Japan to accept the Potsdam declaration, for it brought home to all members of the Supreme Council the realization that the last hope of a negotiated peace had gone and that there was no alternative but to accept the Allied terms sooner or later."
Duncan_M wrote: ↑21 Jan 2019, 23:59
As for the rest of that posting, was that copied from somewhere else online? I could have sworn I read the exact wording written years ago in some blog devoted to ant-war sentiments or some such site.
Its all to be found in Gars book. Your prob thinking of Doug longs website which ive used over the decades. Or refering to how its taught in some states inthe USA and generaly in ROTW.
https://carolinaasiacenter.unc.edu/file ... n-Plan.pdf
In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
Admiral William Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1945 and a close personal friend of Truman, wrote in his 1950 memoir "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." (p.3, _The Decision_) Leahy had urged Truman on June 18 to clarify the terms of unconditional surrender so as to provide an Emperor guarantee, and on July 16 had urged the British Chiefs of Staff to get the prime minister to push the issue with Truman.
Writing in the third person, U.S. Fleet commander in chief Ernest J. King stated in his 1952 memoir the belief that regarding the choice of the bomb or invasion, "the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials." (p.327)
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz in September 1945, according to The New York Times, "took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombings and Russia's entry into the war." In October, Nimitz stated, "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into war." Nimitz's widow later recalled that he "always felt badly over the dropping of that bomb because he said we had Japan beaten already." She recalled direct statement by Nimitz that "I felt that that was an unnecessary loss of civilian life...We had them beaten. They hadn't enough food, they couldn't do anything." (pp.329-330)
The commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Hap Arnold, stated in his 1949 memoir that "it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." Arnold's deputy, Lt. General Ira Eaker, later stated that "Arnold's view was that it was unnecessary. He said that he knew the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision and Arnold did not feel it was the military's job to question it." Eaker added that Arnold had told him that while the Air Force under his command would not oppose the bomb's use, "it is not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the necessity of a land invasion." (p.335)
General Carl Spaatz also recalled in interviews given in the 1960s his unease with the use of the bomb in 1945, stating "That was purely a political decision, wasn't a military decision. The military man carries out the orders of his political bosses." Spaatz recalled his view that a demonstration of the bomb over Tokyo Bay would have been appropriate as opposed to dropping the bombs directly on a city (as well as the view that even the continued threat of conventional bombing might well have been enough to induce surrender). Spaatz's 1945 recommendation of a demonstration drop is corroborated by an interview with associate Glen Martin. (pp.343-345)
Although Air Force General Curtis LeMay later bobbed and weaved quite a bit on his stated opinion of Hiroshima in subsequent years, in September 1945 LeMay publicly declared that the bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war" and that "The war would have been over without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb." In November 1945, LeMay added that it was "obvious that the atomic bomb did not end the war against Japan. Japan was finished long before either one of the two atomic bombs were dropped..." (p.336)
On August 15, 1945, Major General Claire Chennault, founder of the Flying Tigers and former Army Air Forces commander in China, told _The New York Times_ "Russia's entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end and would have been so even if no atomic bombs had been dropped..." (pp.335-336)
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.