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| mornelithe said: By the way, for those making the claim that the Japanese were about to surrender prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I suggest you look up the story of Hiroo Onoda (Also, Private Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Shoichi Shimada and PFC Kinshichi Kozaku) . These soldiers were ordered to the Lupang Islands in the Philipines and ordered to hamper enemy attacks on the island. He was also ordered to neither surrender, or take his own life. Hiroo, finally stood down on March 9th, 1974, after his former commander Major Yoshimi Taniguchi brought orders, relieving him of duty. Philipino villagers, had attempted over the years to inform them of the surrender of Japan, but the soldiers believed the communique's to be fakes. It was a terrible war, and we saw the price that's paid when people assume they have a living deity on their side. It relates to the problems with divine command theory. I do not say this to justify anything, I've no idea what choice I would've made, and I'm glad I'm not in a position to have to make those decisions. |
Communications weren't exactly like they are today...
There is a lot of evidence that the bombs did not affect the end of WW2, yet they might have prevented WW3.
http://classroom.synonym.com/evidence-japan-going-surrender-10861.html
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
etc
In short, after the first bomb the Japanese didn't react, Russia declared war, Japan discussed surrender, second bomb dropped.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/
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. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation.
Both the American and Japanese public have clung to the idea that the mushroom clouds ended the war. For the Japanese, Hiroshima is a potent symbol of their nation as victim, helping obscure their role as the aggressors and in atrocities that include mass rapes and beheading prisoners of war. For the Americans, Hiroshima has always been a means justified by the end.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.
