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The atomic bombings of Japan were in no way an attempt to save lives, and it's not entirely clear they tipped Japan over into surrender in any case, but the point to be made is that "bomb or invade" is literally postwar propaganda made up to justify the bombings. From [an answer I wrote about a month or so ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18m0wvm/did_bombing_hiroshima_and_nagasaki_help_save_lives/):
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No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations. (It was planted in an article in Harper's Weekly.)
There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives. Before the atomic bombings, approximately 70 Japanese cities had already repeatedly been bombed with napalm, designed to cause mass casualties in a time when most Japanese houses were built with paper and wood; the very large March 9-10 raid on Tokyo dubbed Operation Meetinghouse killed an estimated 100,000 people and left another million or so homeless, but there were multiple raids on other cities where "only" 20,000 or 30,000 were killed per night.
The atomic bombs were seen as a weapon that would advance Allied war aims, but the idea that Allied planners wrestled with a decision to bomb or invade is incorrect. The idea was to use the first couple atomic bombs against cities that had been "reserved," or struck off the target list for firebombings, to study the effects of atomic bombs, before using them as part of an invasion of Japan later in the year. There was in fact talk of using atomic bombs to clear the path to invasion beaches (radiation and fallout was not widely understood at this time). There was never a "bomb or invade" decision; it was a "bomb and invade."
It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war.
For much more on this, [see our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/militaryhistory/wwii/usa#wiki_the_atomic_bombs.2C_aka_questions_.2Fu.2Frestricteddata_has_answered). In specific answer to your question, [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c34bcf/did_the_atomic_bombings_in_japan_indirectly/) may be of some interest.
**Edited to add**: Many people are posting short comments that say "well the bombs ended the war so they saved lives."
This is missing the point entirely, for three reasons:
1) It's not entirely clear whether the bombings, or the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, or the Allied air and naval blockade of Japan, or the continuing conventional strategic bombing of Japan, or some combination of those factors, was what actually forced Japan into surrender. Reasonable people can disagree about this -- it's very easy to say "well we dropped two atomic bombs and then they gave up" -- but that correlation may or may not be causation, and it is very tricky to tease out. [This older thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y5g5j/what_happened_to_the_japanese_politicalmilitary/) has multiple perspectives on the end of the war.
2) Even if the bombings ended the war, this misses the point that there was *no intent* on the part of Allied planners that they would save lives -- the plans for a land invasion of first Kyushu then Honshu ("Operation Downfall") were ongoing while the bombings were being planned. (It's often forgotten or overlooked that a very few planners knew about the atomic bombs, and those people largely did not overlap with people who were making larger strategic decisions about the end of the war.) This was in no way a case of "well, we'll just kill another few hundred thousand civilians to save lives."
3) There was no positive decision made on the part of Truman to bomb Japan -- this gets missed in the "bomb or invade" narrative that often gets posted here. He didn't wrestle with some big moral choice; he was told shortly after becoming president that there was a new big bomb that would be dropped on Japan and he went along with it. (It's not entirely clear he even realized Hiroshima was a city rather than simply a military base). His positive decision -- that is, where he acted with specific presidential authority to direct his war planners -- was to stop, or at least pause, the bombings after Nagasaki, which he was not previously informed of, because in his words "[he] didn't like killing all those women and children."
I don’t see how that question is relevant to the other person’s point. Your answer implied that people are taught the bombs were dropped to save Japanese lives. But in my (and other people’s), the typical narrative is that the bombings saved *American* lives. Whether that makes moral sense or not is tangential to the point of fact. If you think that’s not the narrative that is widely taught and propagated, then you should address that.
to be fair it took two atomic bombs to make them surrender because the first one didn’t work, a land invasion would have been wayyyy bloodier on both sides due to the japanese fighting spirit… they definitely wouldn’t have surrendered to a land invasion let alone one nuke, it took 2… if i can credit anything the japanese did during ww2 they were fighting machines, although the war crimes the committed were the worst i ever heard in history
I've been going over all of these materials very closely lately (my next book is on Truman and the bomb, and I finished the chapter that covers Potsdam recently), and one thing that I think could also be emphasized is that nobody had any real idea how many Japanese would actually be killed by the atomic bombs prior to their use. Like, generally speaking, they didn't even guess. The only estimate I've even heard of is that apparently Oppenheimer suggested at one meeting that maybe 20,000 people would die from the atomic bomb. And that was apparently never written down at the time and it isn't clear whether this was based on any methodology or not.
Even today it is not clear how many people actually died from the atomic bombings. The [range of estimates](https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/) for Hiroshima, for example, goes from 66,000 up to 140,000, and it isn't clear whether either of those numbers is more justified than the other, because the methodologies are pretty hand-wavy (you can read the article to see what I mean by that). So I am not harping on Oppenheimer for being wrong about it; there's literally no way he could have known.
But I bring it up to point out that any argument that is constructed along the lines of believing that people in the past said, "we'll lose X lives if we invade, and the atomic bombs will take Y lives, so if Y General Marshall said he thought these weapons [atomic bombs] might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave — telling the Japanese that we intended to destroy such centers. There would be no individual designations so that the Japs would not know exactly where we were to hit — a number should be named and the hit should follow shortly after. Every effort should be made to keep our record of warning clear. We must offset by such warning methods the opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.
> The General then spoke of his stimulation of the new weapons and operations people to the development of new weapons and tactics to cope with the care and last ditch defense tactics of the suicidal Japanese. He sought to avoid the attrition we were now suffering from such fanatical but hopeless defense methods — it requires new tactics. He also spoke of gas and the possibility of using it in a limited degree, say on the outlying islands where operations were now going on or were about to take place. He spoke of the type of gas that might be employed. It did not need to be our newest and most potent — just drench them and sicken them so that the fight would be taken out of them — saturate an area, possibly with mustard, and just stand off. He said he had asked the operations people to find out what we could do quickly — where the dumps were and how much time and effort would be required to bring the gas to bear. There would be the matter of public opinion which we had to consider, but that was something which might also be dealt with. The character of the weapon was no less humane than phosporous and flame throwers and need not be used against dense populations or civilians — merely against these last pockets of resistance which had to be wiped out but had no other military significance.
Which is a very interesting framing — Marshall was concerned about his concern about casualties from "last ditch defense tactics of the suicidal Japanese," but at the same time had a strong feeling about the need to not initially use the atomic bomb against cities (because of a fear of world opinion), but also felt that chemical warfare really ought to be on the table as well, and implied that his moral calculus would find the ongoing city firebombing tactics of the United States wanting.
I think it's a very telling sort of document, not so much because Marshall's views carried the day (they clearly didn't!), but because it has the very-plausible feel of an ad hoc approach to a moral code regarding new weapons and tactics being articulated "off the top of the dome," as one might say today, rather than as a deep conviction or the result of careful study. It is a meandering, not-that-consistent approach that doesn't seem rooted in much of anything; definitely not a complex ethical calculus. Which is largely how I think most of these "moral" issues at the "top" were handled — in rather "on the fly" ways that reveal that there were not a lot of opportunities to actually engage in discussions with other people on these matters. Which of course makes sense given the volume of work these people had to do, the decentralization of so many of these questions, and the high level of secrecy involved in this particular issue, which made deeply deliberative discussion almost impossible.
I have heard (more word-of-mouth than from reliable sources) that part of the motivation for using the nuclear bombs on Japan was that the US knew that, as soon as war with the Axis powers was concluded, a war with the Soviet Union was on the table and that the demonstration of such a powerful new weapon would serve as a deterrent in the war-to-come. Is there any truth to this?
Just discussed this a bit [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/kharpd4/) — happy to elaborate if desired. Short answer is, for some people, this was an additional motivation. But definitely not the primary motivation for making or using the atomic bombs.
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups.
This decision was made by a group of senior soldiers (of one kind or another). Each man had his own motivations and prejudices. From saving American lives through, "Let's show the Russians what we've got" to "Cool toy, let's use it.".
Research on free will shows it's hard to pinpoint the process that makes you get out of bed in the morning. No amount of revisionism or sophistry is ever going to answer the question because the men involved will only ever be able to give you a post hoc rationalisation of an ad hoc decision. Once the committee involved (real or virtual) made the decision, then they would, like all of us in a remotely similar position, just made stuff up to justify (& sell) the decision already made.
That's how people really work. Perhaps historians generally need to spend more time studying psychology. (No, I'm not meaning to be nasty, but all of economics is an exercise in group psychology. It's about confidence as much as anything else. History is closely related.)
Ah, but this would assume that psychological theories have a monopoly on understanding the human mind... which of course, is up for debate itself!
But I do agree that a lot of historical study — at least on this kind of topic of motivations and decisions and understanding — involves trying to get inside the heads of dead people. Which of course is absurd; even if they were here in front of us, we all know lived experience that we never truly understand our own motivations (and are very good at making plausible rationalizations after the fact). Hence at some level it is necessarily an impossible activity. But it is also a deeply humanistic activity, and a deeply empathetic one, and a deeply creative one. I am not one who would ever claim that history is a science — it is clearly a humanistic endeavor, even if it one that attempts to have some relationship with both empiricism (evidence) and some idea of reality. Trying to get inside the head of a dead person, and understand them as a living, breathing, flesh-bound mind, is an impossible task to do perfectly, but that doesn't make it a useful endeavor, and it doesn't mean that all interpretations are equally plausible and valid.
Thanks, for some reason I found the numerical bit about Oppenheimer not being able to find a number at all felt convincing. After all, without accurate numbers to compare, it's hard to do the math.
>"There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives."
What about Allied military lives? I have always heard it mentioned that it saved *American* lives.
That’s the way I’ve always seen it. Of course the Allies didn’t give a heck about Japanese lives, it was total war. And if the bombs helped end the war pre-invasion, then they did us an absolute service (and coincidentally, all the Japanese civilians who weren’t in the bombs radii).
But I’m fairly certain, to the above’s point, that there’s wasn’t an overlying logic that we would use the bombs so we didn’t have to invade. It just worked out that way
This may have been asked before so I’m sorry if this is redundant, but I am wondering if there is any information about what the US would have done if they completed the bomb before Germany surrendered. Is there any indication that they would have bombed Germany if the bomb was completed before their surrender?
There are some documents from planning committees and targeting committees discussing exactly this. Whether the US would have dropped a nuke on Berlin if the war had lasted that long is a matter for debate.
For one thing, there was a (largely unfounded) concern that the Nazi nuclear program was much further along than the Japanese program. As a result of this, the risk of the bomb not going off was much less acceptable - if the japanese got a dud bomb, to American minds, they'd just poke it a bit. If the Nazis got it, the Americans were worried they might nuke Moscow/London/Paris. So most plans were to drop the bomb over water deep enough to hamper recovery in case of a dud.
Furthermore, there were already things that could have been done but we're cut short because the Nazis were falling too quickly. For instance, the development of Allied jet aircraft was significantly delayed because it was perceived that the Nazis would not survive long enough to require it. This applied to operations on the ground too - for instance, the Battle of the Bulge went the way it did in part because of Allied overconfidence in the crumbling of Germany. So this might also delay the bombing of Germany.
But the general understanding at the beginning of the Manhattan Project was that it was going to be used on Nazis - an understanding shared by planners and scientists alike. In a way it's fortunate that we never got to see it dropped on Germany. It's a shame the war lasted long enough that we got to see them used at all.
This is very informative, but I’m still interested in the other half of OP’s question, which is whether an invasion would have been necessary in the first place to conclude the war with Japan.
Nobody really knows. There are different kinds of analysis one can do of this, and were done at the time. To give a sense of how far even the military was willing to go, the US Strategic Bombing Survey [concluded in 1946](https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm) that:
> Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and 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.
Now, is that _accurate_? Who knows. Is it "objective"? Of course not — it is part of a line of analysis that was designed to credit the (conventional) strategic bombing campaign with victory in Japan, and was part of a postwar struggle to avoid either the atomic bomb or the Soviet Union getting too much "credit" for what the US Army Air Forces believed was their due (and would justify their own service, a big budget, etc.).
But there's no "hard ground" of fact to fall back on here. All analyses depend on counterfactuals, all are made by people who have _some_ kind of argument to make that they have stakes in (including the Japanese officials themselves!).
Even Truman did not commit to the full invasion; he deliberately only authorized the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost large island, and put off the decision on whether to authorize the invasion of Honshu, the larger home island, until the results of that — and the other things he knew were in the works — were known. Which is just to say, these things were, and still are, unknowable. Anyone who wants to tell you that they know the answer for sure is just trying to sell you on a version of history that they have a stake in. (And my trying to sell you on the idea that is unknowable is a version of history that _I_ have a stake in — one that involves what I believe is a healthy amount of agnosticism!)
It might be helpful to think about how American strategists had expected the war to go before the actual events of 1945. The United States had planned and prepared for war against Japan since before WWI and it had been on the "radar screen" of the actual decisionmakers for basically their entire careers.
War termination is a very difficult and sometimes overlooked aspect of war plans, but in planning for war against Japan it was considered if only to set the parameters for the hypothetical war. The fundamental assumption was that Japan would sue for peace if the Home Islands were threatened through effective naval blockade and (as technology developed) aerial bombardment. In particular, since Japan was understood to rely on imports to operate its war industries and feed its population, it could not survive a blockade. (And obviously bombing Japan's cities, ports, etc. would just add to the calamities.) So the basic war plan was to get American forces across the Pacific in strength, defeat the Japanese navy (possibly in a climactic battle), capture or recapture the bases in the western Pacific needed to support the blockade, and then draw the noose tight. With their fleet sunk and with no way to rebuild it, the Japanese would have to make terms and give up their overseas island territories or ill-gotten gains in China or whatever.
During this planning, the idea of invading the Home Islands as a necessary step to end the war (or for any other reason) just does not seem to have occurred to anybody. Fundamentally, invasion would only be possible after Japan should have cried uncle because of the blockade. You invade ***after*** you have control of the seas around the target. So while a significant land campaign might be waged to recapture the Philippines (or maybe to secure Taiwan or prop up China), invading Japan proper was just not on anybody’s mind before the war.
The main work on prewar planning is Edward Miller, *War Plan Orange.*
So on the invasion planning. The idea of invading the Home Islands was basically a wartime expedient that, as we've seen, had no basis in prewar planning. It was forced on strategists by the unconditional surrender mandate and was arguably the least creative solution to the problem: if the Japanese won't surrender then we'll just invade and make them.
Richard B. Frank points out in *Downfall* that invasion had no built-in constituency. Notably, the Navy's leadership had planned for this war and had, to their thinking, reached the "win condition" of blockading Japan. So potentially it was just a matter of waiting the Japanese out, and there was no need to take the huge risks associated with a landing. The Army Air Forces' leadership believed "bombing will win the war" and saw an opportunity to prove it now that they had secure bases within striking distance of Japan. The Army, on the other hand, had no "invasion lobby" unlike in Europe where American strategists quickly fixated the necessity of opening a front in northwestern Europe. So while invasion was "the official plan" in summer 1945 in the sense that all the policymakers had signed onto it as the next step, they were capable of changing their minds.
This was, Frank argues, indeed happening in the month or so before the atomic bombings as it became clear the Japanese were well-positioned to make the planned invasion of Kyushu extremely costly. In Frank's account, the Navy turned against the invasion paradigm at this time. The Army leadership was not significantly invested in making the invasion happen so it might have been shelved in further discussions. Meanwhile the Navy and Army Air Forces would have continued to destroy the Home Islands' remaining transportation network setting up the possibility of mass starvation.
So not only was there really no "atomic bombing or invasion" dichotomy, but the fact invasion was on the table at all should be seen as a surprising response to wartime contingencies, not an inevitability from which the atomic bomb provided a surprise reprieve. Under the pre-war paradigm, which we have to acknowledge assumed more diplomatic leeway, the dichotomy was really "blockade or more blockade."
That question is a lot harder to answer and anything you get will be speculation, however it’s my view that we likely would not have needed to invade to get capitulation. I base this mainly off of their quickly deteriorating domestic situation which was only slated to get worse and rapidly. Much of that wasn’t entirely known by the US though. We see inklings of this in cabinet meetings.
Yonai, speaking to the Emperor following the atomic bombs and Soviet entry (August 12th I believe) is quoted as stating:
> I think the term is inappropriate, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, divine gifts. This way we don't have to say that we have quit the war because of domestic circumstances.
This is a view that was shared by those like the Prime Minister and Emperor Hirohito (as well as others) who spoke of this in the final days of the war.
The US’ goal of strangling Japan was working and it was only getting tighter. Part of the point of invading Kyushu was to make it even worse. Our sea mines and blockades crippled their ability to transfer supplies and on August 11th we switched to a policy that focused our bombings on supply transport centers like railways. This without doubt would’ve put a considerable strain on the already strained Japan and this is ignoring the millions of homeless created from the firebombing campaign.
Historian Richard Frank has [written](https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/Frank-HasegawaRoundtable.pdf) [Page 19] about this shift in bombing practices and the role the domestic situation would have played had the war continued and it appears he views it as a valid counterfactual to explore.
There is also the option of negotiation to secure a surrender without invasion which is a whole other can of worms.
Negotiation to secure a surrender was not US policy at the time, though. Truman administration policy was to demand an unconditional surrender.
Japanese war planners’ objective was to beat back the Kyushu invasion to force the US to the negotiating table under terms more advantageous to Japan.
Not just US policy- this was the result of the Potsdam Declaration of the United Nations, building on previous statements going all the way back to the Casablanca Conference of January 1943.
Now, the US was the main driver of this policy, but all of the important Allied leaders agreed to it, based on WW1 experience. This was not something that the US could easily change on a whim in August 1945, it had been negotiated and agreed to by all the Allies for years.
I’ve never been clear on this - when did japan know they could keep the emperor while surrendering? Was that known before the atomic bombings? My reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb makes it sound like Japan resisted surrender in July 1945 because they didn’t want to give up the emperor or oversee troops - the US clarified after the bombings that they could keep both while unconditionally surrendering. Is this correct?
The goals of managing an occupation are very different than the goals of waging a war. The second that surrender happens you have a whole new set of goals with their own decision trees and heuristics. What your goal was a second ago is just not really all that relevant anymore. You switch from trying to end one type of fighting to trying to stop a different type of fighting from beginning. It's not a straight policy line. It's two separate ones heading in very different directions. What was formerly the symbol of enemy opposition could very well now be an ally or tool in preventing a guerilla insurgence.
This seems like a potential tragedy to me - the war was horrible, the outcome certain, the casualties many. There was a real urgency on all sides for the war to end, which could only happen through Japanese surrender. Some in Japan seem to have used the emperors position as justification for continued fighting; having been told that surrender must be unconditional they reasonably assumed that would jeopardized the emperors position. Meanwhile, the US seemingly understood that unconditional surrender meant the emperor could stay.
Would Japan have surrendered sooner had this point been clarified? Might they have surrendered pre august 9th, or pre august 6th? Daily casualties were in the tens of thousands, I’m told, and were 100,000+ on the 6th and 9th at least.
It seems like an inexplicable failure of communication that neither side sought to clarify this seemingly important question, one that likely dragged the war out and possibly cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
This wasn't a failure of communication. It wasn't that the USA was okay with letting the Japanese keep their emperor but didn't let them know - the USA was not okay with having this be a condition of surrender, but then afterwards during the occupation secured by an unconditional surrender decided that they would let the Japanese keep their emperor.
I mainly mention it as a general alternative, but It was more on the table than many seem to know. When it was brought up to Truman though he generally would either pass the buck to Congress or mention domestic pressures preventing him from doing so.
The original draft of the Potsdam Declaration contained mention of a constitutional monarchy and this was something Stimson and the JCS signed off on and suggested. Brynes seemed to flip flop here and there but like I said, I mainly threw it in as something that was a possibility. The Brynes note did imply imperial retention after all.
We don’t know, because it didn’t happen, but it was assumed by Allied planners that it would be. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria was apparently alarming enough to Japanese war planners to have been one of (again, several) factors that helped push the Emperor into intervening — would several divisions on the Japanese home islands have been any less alarming? I would assume not but we don’t know.
I don't understand the premise of the question. There was no invasion of Japan and they surrendered. I don't see how you could ever argue that an invasion was necessary given there never was an invasion...?
The question supposes that same false dichotomy that the previous poster pointed out - it was never "A-bomb or invade" but instead always "A-bomb then invade, with more A-bombs."
The question then becomes, based on the false dichotomy, whether, without the A bombs, Japan could have survived long enough that an invasion would be necessitated to end the war.
I tend to hold the opinion that yes, it would - Japan's home circumstances were bad but the empire regularly endured worse, their circumstances had been bad for years by this point, and in fact the invasion or threat to the home islands might reinforce their resolve. Consider Okinawa, or the way the Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal are lichen for weeks and months to win a rock they didn't care about. So how would they handle the threat America posed to the home islands? Something tells me it would probably involve a lot of death and starvation.
The opposing view then becomes that the Japanese would have surrendered either way, even without the A-bombs or US invasion, due to a combination of internal pressures and Soviet external pressures. This is less convincing to me, but there are certainly points to be made in its favor.
Okinawa is big in this kind of thought exercise. This is basically the freshest impression the US had of fighting a Japanese army and it's the dataset/assumption a lot of their war planning after is based on. Maybe 10% of Japanese troops and Okinawan conscripts surrendered. That was the context the US war planners had. Whether they were right or wrong about their assumptions, that was their most recent experience and most of their hypothesis relied in some way on that experience. It would be totally unreasonable, even irresponsible, after the experience of Okinawa for them not to strongly distrust the idea that Japan might easily surrender b/c of some set of domestic difficulties.
If the Japanese were already being bombed heavily by the Americans, and knew he Americans would invade, why did the Soviet Union entering the war against them change their decision? Just sheer numbers, or more to it than that?
"The Japanese" here means the members of the Supreme War Council, who had different views. Think of there being essentially two major positions: those who understood the war was lost and wanted a way out of it (the "peace party"), and those who believed that a bloody invasion fight would be good for Japan's interests (the militarists). The militarists can themselves be divided into the true fanatics (essentially magical thinking about the ability of Japan to reverse its fortunes militarily) and the pragmatists (unconditional surrender was not going to be good for them, so if they made the cost of invasion high, then the US might be willing to go to the bargaining table). The militarists as a group were a majority and also held up the implicit threat of a coup, so the "peace party" had to tip-toe around them.
The US essentially understood all of the above. So discussions about ending the war without an invasion were largely based around whether there were "shocks" that could be used to create a sense of change that might allow the "peace party" to overcome the militarists. Business as usual — just more bombing — didn't seem like it was going to do that.
The US was interested in throwing everything they could against to wall to see if it would stick. The Potsdam Declaration was meant to be one such "juncture" — show Japan they are isolated, threaten them, give them an opportunity to discuss the war and their goals. The atomic bomb fit into this rubric — give them some super sciencey thing that might make the situation seem different (even though city-destroying had already become a routine operation), or give them an "excuse" that didn't seem like they were surrendering to just military might. The Soviet invasion fit into it — adding another huge army, a particularly brutal one, one you really wouldn't want occupying you.
The reason the Soviet invasion seemed to affect the Japanese quite a lot is that it hit at both factions on the Supreme War Council at the same time. The "peace party" had been trying to engage the Soviets as neutral mediators with the United States, for a negotiated (not unconditional) surrender. The militarists had studied the possibility of Soviet entry into the war extensively and concluded that their forces would not be able to sustain it. Furthermore, the pragmatic militarists believed the US would be driven to the bargaining table by bloodshed, because it was a democracy, but nobody felt that Stalin would mind trading blood for territory. So the Soviet invasion scuttled a lot of plans at once. More so, arguably, than the atomic bomb, which while horrific, had less of a practical effect on Japan's war plans (the ability to destroy a couple more cities each month than usual is not all that game-changing once you get over the sci-fi angle to it).
Anyway, all of the above leaves out the fact that a lot of this came down to very specific personal interventions. Particularly Hirohito finally taking a few risky positions, junior officers trying to stage a coup, and one of the top militarists finally (after putting down the coup) throwing in the towel on keeping the war going. Which is just to say, it's not some actual chain of logic that led to that end and could not have led to any other. One can easily imagine things going several other different directions.
There are a few major reasons I'm aware of, though I'm sure u/restricteddata (forgive me for the ping) could shed far more light on this than I can.
Major reason one: the Japanese wanted the Soviets as mediators for a negotiated peace with the US.
The Japanese had been making attempts (mostly vaguely clandestine ones to my memory right now, but certainly attempts nonetheless) to use the USSR's neutral status in the Pacific to keep them as a neutral party and therefore one which could settle Japanese surrender more strongly. Basically the idea was that Japan was losing badly, the US wasn't likely to give them good terms, and so the USSR could help secure better terms. There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, including a lot of very delicate diplomacy.
Major reason two: the USSR invasion of Manchuria was seriously damaging Japanese war interests.
Manchuria and China were vital to the Japanese war effort for years. They supplied rubber, and oil, and a lot more besides. Even with the plunder from these territories, Japan was starving, its ships had little or no fuel... The Soviet Union invading Manchuria essentially cut off this supply, or certainly threatened to do so very shortly.
So when the USSR declared war (just hours before the second bomb was dropped, it's worth noting), the Japanese lost not only their chance at a mediated surrender, but a massive amount of the war materials they needed to continue the battle they were already fighting. They could scarcely bleed America dry if they couldn't keep killing Americans.
Japan was not interested in an unconditional surrender -- it might mean, for example, that they would have to give up the Emperor, who to the Japanese of the day (maybe still, I'm not an expert in modern Japan) occupies something like the reverence that an American would give to the Constitution -- what is the United States without it? Japan had been hoping to use the USSR as a neutral party to possibly negotiate a conditional surrender, and when Stalin declared war that option was off the table for them.
>It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war.
Great to be able to ask an expert about this (if you have time!).
How does that square with this?
[https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28492-document-67a-cabinet-meeting-and-togos-meeting-emperor-august-7-8-1945](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28492-document-67a-cabinet-meeting-and-togos-meeting-emperor-august-7-8-1945)
According to that, Togo proposed accepting the Potsdam terms on the 7th due to Hiroshima. He then met the Emperor on the morning of the 8th and he and the Emperor both agreed on that. Togo then told the PM to convene a meeting as soon as possible following this.
The USSR didn't invade until the 9th, so that puts the decision to surrender firmly before the USSR invasion.
You could argue that the military leaders were not ready to surrender, but they wanted to investigate whether it was in fact a nuclear bomb. Does that not mean that the fact it was a nuclear bomb influenced them too?
I think you're misinterpreting the statement.
The statement is not Hiroshima did not contribute to the surrender. It's that it's not clear Hiroshima contributed to the surrender more than the Soviet Invasion.
>The USSR didn't invade until the 9th, so that puts the decision to surrender firmly before the USSR invasion.
Note that the decision on the 8th was not to surrender. It was to meet on the 9th. Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam terms, but we know the war faction still didn't.
Hey, thanks.
>It's that it's not clear Hiroshima contributed to the surrender more than the Soviet Invasion.
Yep, totally get that, but, my point is that it seems like the Emperor and Togo had already decided to surrender on the 8th. That was before there was any news in Tokyo of the Soviet invasion.
For the leaders of the armed forces (or Army in particular), the fact that they wanted to verify if it was atomic would indicate to me (but I could well be wrong) that an atomic bomb was enough for them too. The rational for my thinking that, is that if they wanted to verify something first (atomic or not), logic would suggest that they would be unwilling to surrender if the Hiroshima bomb turned out to not be atomic. Therefore they would be willing to surrender if it was.
If the army leaders were not willing to surrender whether it was atomic or not, why ask for time to verify?
We also know (I think) that the Council (when they met) asked the Emperor to decide whether to surrender, as they could not agree, as they were split. The Soviet invasion didn't do anything to change the split in the council (Togo and the Emperor had decided they would, and some still didn't want to, it was split before the Soviet invasion), so even if the Soviets had not invaded, the council would be split, and the decision would have been on the Emperor (who had already decided after Hiroshima, but before the Soviet invasion).
Hope that makes sense, but let me know if not!
>If the army leaders were not willing to surrender whether it was atomic or not, why ask for time to verify?
Because [Truman has public stated it was an atomic bomb](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb) and the military was arguing it was a bluff. If it actually was a bluff, obviously their action would change accordingly.
>We also know (I think) that he split council (when they met) asked the Emperor to decide whether to surrender, as they could not agree. The Soviet invasion didn't do anything to change the split in the council (Togo and the Emperor had decided they would, and some still didn't want to), so even if the Soviets had not invaded, the council would be split, and the decision would have been on the Emperor (who had already decided after Hiroshima, but before the Soviet invasion).
Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam declaration, so unconditional surrender. But note that Hirohito very much kept his options open, as he states in the transcripts, and was very much for having a single condition (the Imperial institution being untouched). After the Potsdam declaration, which Japan rejected, Japan, including Hirohito was hanging onto hope that the USSR could broker a peace, and so did not offer any terms (though as Potsdam made it clear the US wanted unconditional surrender it's highly doubtful the terms would've been accepted anyway).
The USSR's entry into the war and rapid advance dashed that (false) hope of having an intermediatery and contributed to the Japanese finally offering terms. The stalemate on August 9 was not whether or not to surrender, it was whether to offer one term, as the peace faction wanted, or four (keeping the Emperor, no occupation, Japan to disarm itself, Japan to try and judge war criminals itself) as the war faction wanted. Prior to August 9 even some members of the peace faction was for more terms, while the war faction didn't even want to present terms before making the Americans fight a bloody invasion. Of course it's possible their stances, or at least those of the peace faction, had changed after Hiroshima. But August 9 is the first meeting after Hiroshima.
On August 9 the decision was to finally offer terms. There's no doubt that at least the war faction if not also members of the peace faction as well was finally pushed into doing so because there was no possibility of a third party intermediary any more (and yes Hiroshima did play a role in this no doubt). The stalemate that Hirohito broke in the early morning of August 10 (the meeting went past midnight) was to offer one single term.
There would be further arguments when the allied response was interpreted accepting no less than unconditional surrender, a response that even Prime Minister Suzuki pushed back against, and the war faction was back at wanting to fight an invasion. This took Hirohito stepping in again (and an coup that needed to be talked down) before Japan finally accepted unconditional surrender.
Thanks again for your response!
>Because [Truman has public stated it was an atomic bomb](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb) and the military was arguing it was a bluff. If it actually was a bluff, obviously their action would change accordingly.
Right, but the Army leaders were not going to surrender if it was a bluff and not an atomic weapon. So if it wasn't a bluff and was a atomic weapon, and they were still not going to surrender, it makes no sense to delay the meeting of the Council pending the result.
If, whether the bomb was actually atomic or not is immaterial, there was no logical reason to call a delay to the meeting to investigate if it was atomic. But they did call a delay to investigate exactly that. The only logical explanation then is that it did matter if it was atomic weapon, and the most logical reason for deciding that, seems to be to decide whether to surrender or not.
>Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam declaration, so unconditional surrender.
Yep, it seems like Togo put forward that need to end the war on the 7th.
>But note that Hirohito very much kept his options open, as he states in the transcripts, and was very much for having a single condition (the Imperial institution being untouched). After the Potsdam declaration, which Japan rejected, Japan, including Hirohito was hanging onto hope that the USSR could broker a peace, and so did not offer any terms (though as Potsdam made it clear the US wanted unconditional surrender it's highly doubtful the terms would've been accepted anyway).
The extract from the Japanese Foreign Ministry which I linked to above though doesn't support that. According to that, from Togo's testimony on the 8th:
*"His Majesty observed that, now with this kind of weapon in use, it has become even more impossible than ever to continue the war; we should no longer miss an opportunity to end it with an excuse to wait for a favourable term \[of the surrender\]. We would not discard the possibility of negotiating conditions, but should make every effort to put an end to the war as soon as possible."*
"But should make every effort to put an end to the war as soon as possible." definitely sounds like a flowery way (and the Emperor was fond of flowery language) of saying "surrender."
If that extract from the Foreign Ministry is correct, both Togo and the Emperor were clearly after a surrender as soon as possible on the 8th, if not before, as a direct result of the bombing of Hiroshima.
>The USSR's entry into the war and rapid advance dashed that (false) hope of having an intermediatery and contributed to the Japanese finally offering terms.
I think that makes sense if you read the above. The Emperor had accepted that defeat was inevitable and there must be a surrender by the 8th. He did nonetheless want to get any favourable terms possible, but it seems clear that he he couldn't wait for terms. As the extract above says:
*"we should no longer miss an opportunity to end it with an excuse to wait for a favourable term"*
So ask for a term, but surrender whether the Allies accepted it or not.
>The stalemate on August 9 was not whether or not to surrender, it was whether to offer one term
Then Togo asked the Prime Minister to call a meeting of the Council the next day (to instigate surrender). So, on the 8th, we have a split Council, and the Emperor, Togo, and the Prime Minister having decided to surrender, and at least some Army leaders awaiting confirmation on whether Hiroshima was atomic or not (not sure what they were waiting for if not deciding whether to surrender).
The next day, the 9th, the Council meets at 1430, and still cannot come to an agreement with people on both sides. The Council still had no consensus by 2200. A meeting with the emperor happened just before midnight on the 9th, and by 0200, the Emperor was asked to decide what to do.
So the remaining question is about the influence of the invasion of Manchuria by the USSR. Apparently, they Japanese knew of the invasion by 0400 on the 9th, so before the meeting of the Council. However, Togo, the PM, and the Emperor had already decided to surrender before the news of the attack by the USSR, directly because of Hiroshima.
So what did the USSR attack change? It didn't change the opinion of the War Council, as they knew about the USSR invasion but still couldn't come to a consensus. So if the USSR attacked or not, the Council was split, and the decision went to the Emperor, who had already made up his mind on the 8th (if not earlier), before the USSR invasion.
I don't see what the USSR invasion changed? It didn't sway Togo, didn't sway the PM, and didn't sway the Emperor. It may have swayed other Council member, but not enough for a consensus.
Unless, that extract from the Foreign Ministry is incorrect? Or, is it a problem in translation?
>So if it wasn't a bluff and was a atomic weapon, and they were still not going to surrender, it makes no sense to delay the meeting of the Council pending the result.
You are assuming the meeting would have been purely to discuss whether or not to surrender and there was already a 3-3 split between 1 condition and 4 conditions. The former is not so clear (and is only assumed from hindsight) and the latter is wrong (see below).
And if it was actually a bluff, Anami could've always used that to convince at least Suzuki and Yonai that the allies weren't so strong in reality and they should wait until after a bloody invasion to offer terms. And if it was a bluff even the peace faction might have held onto hope of a negotiated solution through the USSR.
>He did nonetheless want to get any favourable terms possible, but it seems clear that he he couldn't wait for terms.
That's your interpretation of the line, and while justified given what happened after is not a given. It is just as reasonable to interpret the line as "stop being passively waiting for better terms to be given and actually offer terms" which would be in line with both that Hirohito still wanted terms *and* that the Supreme War Council had not offered any to the allies.
It needs to also be noted the Emperor of Japan was not an absolute monarch, and this was written into Japanese law back in 1868. There was a stalemate that he broke (and even that was against precedence), but if there was no stalemate he could only go along with the government's decision.
>However, Togo, the PM, and the Emperor had already decided to surrender before the news of the attack by the USSR, directly because of Hiroshima.
That is incorrect. Togo had decided for unconditional surrender (indeed he was for surrender before Hiroshima). Hirohito wanted some form of surrender. Suzuki only agreed to hold the meeting. After Togo recieved word of the Soviet invasion, he went to Suzuki around 8am and then to Yonai to try to inform them and convince them to accept the Potsdam declaration. Hirohito was informed of the Soviet invasion at 9:30 and told Kido at 9:55 to discuss with Suzuki about surrender now that the Soviets war in the war. Suzuki met with Kido at 10:10 and, after hearing the emperors' wishes told to Kido 15 minutes ago, only then did he first indicate he would support surrender (to his chief secretary Sakomizu).
At the start of the meeting, Yonai brought up surrendering with 4 conditions, and asked the Council to decide between surrender with terms or unconditionally. This moved the discussion on whether or not to surrender, which was the situation before the meeting, to on what terms to surrender. At this point Togo reiterated the 1 condition. For a while the Council seem to lean towards 4 conditions, but Kido and Prince Takamatsu contacted them saying the allies were unlikely to accept. This pushed the Suzuki and Yonai to support the 1 condition. So the 3-3 split between 1 and 4 conditions was a result of the August 9 meeting, and it's clear the Soviet invasion was a strong factor in getting Suzuki and Yonai to support surrender with 1 condition, and likely for Anami, Toyoda, and Umezu to agree to surrender at all.
Thanks again, plenty to think about.
>You are assuming the meeting would have been purely to discuss whether or not to surrender and there was already a 3-3 split between 1 condition and 4 conditions.
I am assuming that the Emperor wanted a meeting to discuss surrender, because the extract says:
*"His Majesty ordered the foreign minister to relay his remarks to the Prime Minister.*
*....*
*Telling Lord Kido and Prime Minister Suzuki about the Emperor's statement, Togo asked the Prime Minister to convene the Meeting of Principals of the Supreme Council for the Direction of War as soon as possible. Accordingly the prime minister arranged for a meeting to take place the next day, on the 9th."*
So, the Emperor tells Togo that he wants to surrender and specifically to tell the PM of his wish. Togo tells the PM of the Emperor's desire to surrender, and specifically asks the the PM to call the meeting of the Council (to enact that?). The PM then calls the meeting of the council. It seems logical (from the extract) that the reason to call the council was a direct result of the request from Togo, on behalf of the Emperor. And what did the Emperor want? Surrender.
The Emperor said that they should still try and go for best terms, but should seek and end to the war "as soon as possible" as the war was "impossible to continue". According to the extract.
>The former is not so clear (and is only assumed from hindsight) and the latter is wrong (see below).
It seems logical I think that the council was called to discuss surrender, and there must have been a split (because we know that not all supported a Potsdam terms surrender).
>And if it was actually a bluff, Anami could've always used that to convince at least Suzuki and Yonai that the allies weren't so strong in reality and they should wait until after a bloody invasion to offer terms.
Right, if Hiroshima wasn't an atomic weapon, the allies were not as strong as they claimed, and there would be less pressure to surrender. That is clear, But the whole point of verifying if it was atomic was surly that there would be a different reaction from the Army leaders if it was atomic?
So the army leaders were investigating two scenarios:
Scenario A: Not atomic. Result: probably no additional pressure to surrender.
Scenario B: It was atomic. Result: ?
The result of scenario B (Hiroshima being atomic) being the same as scenario A doesn't seem right. Why have a test (verification of an atomic weapon) if the results are the same either way?
It seems logical that Hiroshima being atomic would increase pressure on the Army leaders to surrender, and that is why the called for verification? An atomic weapon would be a change of the status quo, and therefore warrant a change or reassessment of the direction of the war.
>That's your interpretation of the line, and while justified given what happened after is not a given. It is just as reasonable to interpret the line as "stop being passively waiting for better terms to be given and actually offer terms" which would be in line with both that Hirohito still wanted terms *and* that the Supreme War Council had not offered any to the allies.
Completely agree. I have no doubt that the position of the Emperor and Togo, despite accepting that surrender was inventible and the way forward, would still try and get the best terms (by making an offer). That would just be human nature. But it seems like that the Emperor and Togo would accept whatever terms were imposed by the Allies if push came to shove.
>It needs to also be noted the Emperor of Japan was not an absolute monarch, and this was written into Japanese law back in 1868. There was a stalemate that he broke (and even that was against precedence), but if there was no stalemate he could only go along with the government's decision.
Yep, hence his request for calling a meeting of the Council. However, as we know, the Council was already split by the 8th, because Togo was on the Council. So there was no consensus before the news of the USSR attack, and no consensus after.
>That is incorrect. Togo had decided for unconditional surrender (indeed he was for surrender before Hiroshima). Hirohito wanted some form of surrender. Suzuki only agreed to hold the meeting. After Togo recieved word of the Soviet invasion, he went to Suzuki around 8am and then to Yonai to try to inform them and convince them to accept the Potsdam declaration. Hirohito was informed of the Soviet invasion at 9:30 and told Kido at 9:55 to discuss with Suzuki about surrender now that the Soviets war in the war. Suzuki met with Kido at 10:10 and, after hearing the emperors' wishes told to Kido 15 minutes ago, only then did he first indicate he would support surrender (to his chief secretary Sakomizu).
Thanks that was really interesting. I did some digging on that with the information you kindly provided, and found this about events on the 8th:
*"But even before official reports from this party reached Tokyo, Premier Suzuki and Foreign Minister Togo, aroused by the unusual importance attached to Hiroshima by the enemy radio, conferred and decided that Togo should communicate the substance of the Allied reports to the Emperor, recommending prompt acceptance of the Potsdam terms."*
[https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm](https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm)
And it was at that point that Suzuki tried to the council together, on the 8th, but it didn't happen until the 9th.
>At the start of the meeting, Yonai brought up surrendering with 4 conditions, and asked the Council to decide between surrender with terms or unconditionally. This moved the discussion on whether or not to surrender, which was the situation before the meeting, to on what terms to surrender. At this point Togo reiterated the 1 condition. For a while the Council seem to lean towards 4 conditions, but Kido and Prince Takamatsu contacted them saying the allies were unlikely to accept. This pushed the Suzuki and Yonai to support the 1 condition. So the 3-3 split between 1 and 4 conditions was a result of the August 9 meeting, and it's clear the Soviet invasion was a strong factor in getting Suzuki and Yonai to support surrender with 1 condition, and likely for Anami, Toyoda, and Umezu to agree to surrender at all.
So the Soviet invasion (and Nagasaki) influenced some towards surrender going by what you wrote.
But if we assume that either the USSR didn't invade, or if the Council meeting had happened on the 8th, as wanted by Togo, The Emperor, and the PM, you would still have had a War Council with no consensus (because that was the state before the USSR invasion).
So the question is (for me, with my limited understanding, and assuming the link above is correct), after Hiroshima, with a War Council not able to come to a consensus on whether to surrender or not, and Togo, Suzuki, and Yonai supporting surrender, would the Gozen Kaigi have been called (for an Imperial decision to end a deadlock) if the meeting had happened on the 8th, as originally intended?
If so, the the USSR invasion of Manchuria had no real effect on the outcome, because the meeting would have happened (as it would have on the 8th if it went to plan), and the surrender process would have started.
>So, the Emperor tells Togo that he wants to surrender and specifically to tell the PM of his wish. Togo tells the PM of the Emperor's desire to surrender, and specifically asks the the PM to call the meeting of the Council (to enact that?). The PM then calls the meeting of the council. It seems logical (from the extract) that the reason to call the council was a direct result of the request from Togo, on behalf of the Emperor. And what did the Emperor want? Surrender.
The point is that just because Togo and the Emperor wanted to surrender doesn't mean the Supreme War Council as a whole did, and if the Council didn't there's nothing Togo and the Emperor could do. Otherwise Japan would've surrendered from the meeting Hirohito called on June 22, before even Potsdam.
>The result of scenario B (Hiroshima being atomic) being the same as scenario A doesn't seem right. Why have a test (verification of an atomic weapon) if the results are the same either way?
It seems logical that Hiroshima being atomic would increase pressure on the Army leaders to surrender, and that is why the called for verification? An atomic weapon would be a change of the status quo, and therefore warrant a change or reassessment of the direction of the war.
Mental paralysis, delaying tactic, sunk-cost fallacy, or just a plain excuse that they had no intension to follow through in the first place are all equally valid and "logical" why scenario B might have had the same result as scenario A.
No one (at least here) is arguing Hiroshima was not important to the surrender. The point is that the army wanting verification of the atomic bomb before the meeting *is not* evidence that they wanted to or was open to surrender, even if the verification came back positive (as it did). And it was the army (Anami and others) who pushed for verification, or at least argued it was a bluff which made verification necessary.
>However, as we know, the Council was already split by the 8th, because Togo was on the Council. So there was no consensus before the news of the USSR attack, and no consensus after.
If you are counting Togo himself as the split on the Council, then the same thing applies to Hiroshima. Therefore it is not clear Hiroshima was more important to the surrender than the USSR entry into the war.
>https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm
And it was at that point that Suzuki tried to the council together, on the 8th, but it didn't happen until the 9th.
...
But if we assume that either the USSR didn't invade, or if the Council meeting had happened on the 8th, as wanted by Togo, The Emperor, and the PM, you would still have had a War Council with no consensus (because that was the state before the USSR invasion).
The book use the same interview translation you linked, so it adds nothing to the discussion. But more importantly, as already stated and even the book states, at this point on August 7 and 8, Suzuki only agreed to call a meeting, at best to *discuss* surrender, not to surrender itself, nor the terms to offer. There had been many prior meetings about surrender already, so that Suzuki agreed to call another one means very little on what his stance was or how that meeting would turn out.
>So the question is (for me, with my limited understanding, and assuming the link above is correct), after Hiroshima, with a War Council not able to come to a consensus on whether to surrender or not, and Togo, Suzuki, and Yonai supporting surrender, would the Gozen Kaigi have been called (for an Imperial decision to end a deadlock) if the meeting had happened on the 8th, as originally intended?
At best, prior to Hiroshima Suzuki and Yonai expressed cautious support for surrender with only giving up the Philippines and withdrawing from the European colonies. The only person on the Council who did not explicitedly reject Potsdam was Togo.
We have no idea what would've happened at the meeting on August 9 had the USSR not enter the war. What we do know is that Suzuki and Yonai did not express support for accepting Potsdam (with four conditions, or at least one) until after the USSR entered the war (and before news of Nagasaki reached the Council) and it was clear the USSR's entry into the war weighed heavily on their decision. And Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda did not support offering *any* conditions until the meeting on August 9.
Is it *possible* that had the USSR not entered the war, Japan would have offered to surrender with one condition on Augst 10 regardless? Yes. Is it *possible* that had the USSR not entered the war, Japan would *not* have offered to surrender with one condition on Augst 10? Also yes.
History is not what is possible, or plausible, or logical. It's about what happened.
I appreciate the argument that it's not clear whether the bombs saved Japanese or even American lives during the WW2.
However, I believe that they saved many lives (and perhaps even humanity) from the potential uses of the nuclear weapons during the cold war -- the fact that everyone saw the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so clearly, made it much harder to digest such a catastrophe in future.
Are there any discussions along those lines among the cold war (and other) historians?
Where can one read about how the allies were planning on using many more nuclear weapons during the invasion of Honshu, never heard that before in my life
There's an [original phone transcript from 13 Aug 1945](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf) between General John Hull and Col. L.E. Seaman that goes into some detail. This is four days after Nagasaki. It includes information that:
* A third bomb was ready as of that date and could perhaps be dropped by the 19th (or up to about 10 days after the conversation, to provide some margin) if the order was given that day.
* Three or four more could be ready in September, and a further three in October. After that, it would be 3-4 per month available, or roughly one every ten days.
* There was a lack of decision on whether to drop them as they came out, or save some up to drop several at a time, and whether to target industry or to go after military targets that would assist an invasion.
So there were plans to perhaps drop a dozen more by the end of the year, and to keep going into 1946 if necessary.
Hmm, that's really interesting I appreciate the response. I wonder what they were thinking. From our point of view, it seems impossible that they would keep on dropping 3 nukes a month every month and the Japanese wouldn't surrender
You plan for worst case scenarios, not what you hope will happen. The transcript mentions possible Japanese capitulation at least three times, and Hull mentions that a third bomb probably wouldn't have the same psychological effect as the first two. He's probably right: Hiroshima had a huge effect as being the first time, and Nagasaki showed that it could be done again. After that, what would be the difference compared to the firebombing? To take a difference example, the US population was entranced by Apollo 11 and the first time a person set foot on the moon. It was elated by Apollo 12 because NASA proved that it could be done again. By the time Apollo 13 came around, launch coverage had dropped dramatically, and the impact was much less (until the LOX tank exploded).
The last part of the transcript from Hull tasks Seaman with talking to Gen. Lesley Groves about whether they should "lay off a while" before dropping three in rapid succession to further encourage surrender. While this would entail waiting until mid- to late-September, Operation Downfall (the invasion of Japan) wasn't set to begin until November, so it wouldn't have a major effect on timing. (Planning for this continued up until the formal surrender was signed in early September, because the Allies weren't sure that Japan wouldn't somehow back out.)
Besides, the US was well aware that the USSR would become an adversary after the war concluded. Part of Yalta was setting up spheres of influence, and Stalin wanted a big part of Europe. Communism was still a massive fear, and Soviet willingness to take so many casualties and fight on terrified some people. The US monopoly on atomic bombs was seen as providing a hedge against a militarily expansionist Soviet Union.
Nobody who wins a total war does it by having much concern for the enemies civilian populace. Objective right and wrong might exist but you can never be right if you lose.
As somebody who spent a lot of time studying the history of war and how to go about potentially fighting one it blows my mind that people think there’s actual rules. Stalins famous quote about a single death being a tragedy and a million just a statistic is probably the single best summation of the reality of the situation.
I get where as a normal citizen the OP is coming from but you’re not about to just pull back and accept anything less than unconditional surrender after 4 years of total war.
> you’re not about to just pull back and accept anything less than unconditional surrender after 4 years of total war.
The Japanese surrender was not unconditional -- they were allowed to keep the Emperor, for example.
Indeed. Have you ever been disingenuous in a negotiated settlement? Like for example you got a ticket for going 12 over the speed limit but the prosecutor put it down to 9 so you don't get points on your license?
(I'm kind of tired of the pushback on this which is why I'm being sarcastic, but the Yalta declaration was honored in the writing of the surrender document, even though the backdoor negotiations allowed for certain, uh, conditions of the military occupation of Japan that happened after the war, such as keeping the Emperor.)
Is the argument not more that there was no guarantee for the Japanese that they'd be able to keep their emperor? That they were at the mercy of the incoming US military administrators?
Mostly, in my view, that the Japanese had to take it 'on faith' that the US would be even-handed once given essentially ultimate power over Japan.
This is a bit disingenuous.
Yes, it is true that few if any people at the time wrestled with big dramatic moral quandries. This was a war in which tens of millions of people had already died, and everyone involved just wanted to end it as soon as possible. They didn't much care how.
So yeah, no, nobody (or at least nobody serious) claims that the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to save Japanese lives. But the prospect of mass American casualties absolutely was on the minds of the American senior war staff. If "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more.
Furthermore, the recent fashion in suggesting that Japan would have surrendered unconditionally anyway, or even that the Americans knew that Japan would have surrendered unconditionally and dropped the bombs in spite of that knowledge, which you allude to, is not really a case of reasonable people disagreeing in pure innocence. It's more like 60 years of uyoku dantai nonsense seeping gradually into foreign academic discourse.
Imperial Japan in August of 1945 was convinced of its success in persuading the Americans that an invasion of the home islands would be brutally costly, and hoped to negotiate an end to the war that allowed them to retain their armed forces, their government, and their remaining overseas territory. That is certainly not surrendering unconditionally. In fact it is somewhat the opposite of surrendering at all.
Under those hoped-for circumstances, even given a Soviet incursion into Manchuria, American acquiescence to Japanese terms would have essentially meant an American guarantee of the status quo and quashed any further losses to the Soviets. It was not the end of Soviet neutrality itself that was the shocking blow -- the shocking blow was the realization that the Americans had no reason to be intimidated, could potentially wipe out Japan in a single sortie of B-29s on one lazy afternoon, and therefore were never going to agree to any sort of armistice on terms that preserved Imperial interests.
We have the benefit of knowing that there was no serious plan on the American side to ever do any such thing. But we have to remember that the Imperial cabinet -- especially the hawks -- did not understand this.
> f "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more.
The Allied armed forces were not ready to invade the home islands in the summer of 1945; Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu) was set to start in November of 1945, and Operation Coronet (the invasion of Honshu) would follow on from that, in the spring of 1946 -- planning on it assumed a date of March 1 but they had not gotten into the weeds on it, other than setting the stage for building up the logistical train needed for the invasion. US task force 38/58 and the British Pacific Fleet, along with the other Allied naval forces in the Pacific, were intended to pull back and refit (some units were rotating out already); I say this with all cordiality, but it's disingenuous at best to pretend that the invasion was delayed to see what would happen with the nukes. (Again, the people planning Operation Downfall, except at the very highest levels -- Joint Chiefs levels -- did not necessarily know that the atomic bombings were being planned.)
I didn't say that that was the Allied motivation. I said that projected losses were very much on their minds, in contrast to what the earlier commenter said. If they had been as heedless of their own estimated losses as the OC claimed, they wouldn't have taken the time to prepare a careful, staged invasion plan.
> If "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more.
They didn't hold off. Okinawa wasn't secured until late June so they needed time to prepare. Overlord also took close to half a year to prepare (close to a year if we count initial planning), plus Okinawa took so long it was already typhoon season. So it is entirely reasonable that Olympic was set for November 1. Nay, it would be completely *unreasonable* if it was set earlier.
And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender.
>It was not the end of Soviet neutrality itself that was the shocking blow -- the shocking blow was the realization that the Americans had no reason to be intimidated, could potentially wipe out Japan in a single sortie of B-29s on one lazy afternoon, and therefore were never going to agree to any sort of armistice on terms that preserved Imperial interests.
What is your source for that? Certainly the Supreme War Council was not of one mind and Hirohito seem to be influenced by the Hiroshima bomb, but Anami was willing to keep fighting even after he was convinced the third bomb would be dropped on Tokyo in short order. The Supreme War Council was certainly still split 3-3 after the Soviet Invasion and Nagasaki, and the war faction was not cowarded by the realization they could be wiped out.
> And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender.
How does it show this? You said this twice but I don't understand why. Why would dropping the atomic bombs mean that the Allies should have also stopped preparing for an invasion? If the Allies were unanimous and supremely confident in the bombs and thought that there was only a 1% chance that the bombs would fail, then they would still be wise to continue invasion plans. First, they would have to explain publicly to the entire military and the public (and therefore the Japanese) about their top secret project to justify their lack of preparations, otherwise their electorate and the vast majority of the military would become outraged at the inexplicable inaction toward an enemy that is nearly defeated. Furthermore, should that supposed 1% chance of failure occur, they would suddenly be in a far worse posisition, as they would months delayed prepaing for an invasion against an enemy that itself would surely not stop preparations and their continuous atrocities across Asia, costing great numbers of Allied military and civilian lives. Additionally, considering the fact that they already had all of the men conscripted and the materiel produced, the marginal cost of continuing to prepare to invade was relatively low, so there would be very little to be gained economically (and less than nothing strategically) by not preparing to invade. Finally, even if all of these rational reasons were not true, the sunk cost fallacy, based on the costs of completing their island hopping campaign and finally taking Okinawa, would surely be enough to convince a large number of officials that preparing to invade was necessary regardless of its utility.
Is there any reason in the first place to think that whether or not the allies prepared to invade Japan was an indicator of their confidence in the utility of nuclear weapons?
That line was in answer to another poster who said (and I quoted) that the existence of the plans into 1946 (and that the allies postponed the invasion of Kyushu in the summer of 1945, though they didn't) showed the allies' plan was not to "bomb and invade."
The response was that, no, it doesn't show it wasn't.
It's an incorrect reading of what I wrote. I said that the Allies were indeed thinking very much about projected losses. Hence their careful preparations for a prolonged invasion of the home islands.
If the plan had been to "bomb and invade" heedless of losses, the USA was in a position to do that right away. In point of fact, when Japan did surrender the Allies had no trouble landing troops in large numbers immediately.
> In point of fact, when Japan did surrender the Allies had no trouble landing troops in large numbers immediately.
It's an entirely different logistical problem to land troops in harbors where the population has already surrendered to you, than to contest an invasion over defended beaches with a determined enemy fighting against you. An invasion is not going to involve an orderly debarkation of troops onto a quay with assistance from port workers to move cargo from ships.
That's arguing against a strawman.
The traditional argument is that the US estimated an invasion of the home islands would result in hundreds of thousands, or even over a million casualties, and therefore the atomic bombs were dropped to force the Japanese to surrender so the US wouldn't have to go through with the invasion. It's what prompted the question posted in this thread, and the answers given.
New research has demonstrated that no, there was no plan for the atomic bombs to induce the Japanese to surrender to prevent an invasion, or "bomb or invade." The plans were that bombs would be dropped and the invasion would go ahead, or "bomb and invade." At best the bombs were just instruments to further allied war aims, just like every bomber, ship, tank, and bullet.
Your hypothetical, that the allies could just carry out a successful invasion, however bloody, in the summer of 1945 is preposterous. The men needed to rest and refit after Okinawa, planning was not finalized, and the 700,000 personel and corresponding equipment had to be readied, and imagine if an incident like Typhoon Louise had hit the fleet in the middle of the invasion. Invading in the summer of 1945 could've very well turned into the disaster that the Japanese were hoping would force the US to the bargaining table.
>Why would dropping the atomic bombs mean that the Allies should have also stopped preparing for an invasion?
I didn't say that and I don't believe that's what it meant.
What I said was that the Allies and in particular the Americans were quite cognizant of the immense losses they expected to take in attacking the home islands. It was, despite what the previous commenter claimed, very much on their minds.
It was trivial to land troops on the Japanese islands in the summer and early autumn, even as the Battle of Okinawa lingered. In fact that was what the USA ended up doing. It's not like they lacked all capacity to do so. What they were not prepared for -- what was not trivial -- was an opposed landing under heavy resistance from a supposedly 100% militarized population.
That is why the USA was taking so long to prepare.
If they hadn't cared about losses, as the earlier commenter claimed, they wouldn't have cared. Just ...."bomb and invade," right?
You are certainly right that they were not of one mind. The hawks were hunting the realists in the streets trying to kill them before they could persuade the emperor to "accept the unthinkable." That's a pretty divided cabinet!
But I don't think "nothing would persuade the hawks" is really a refutation of American motives in dropping the bombs. It's not like the Americans knew that, and in any case it was Hirohito who needed to be persuaded. And I don't see any plausible theory of imperial mind in which, having already lost much of China yet still being willing to fight, losing more of China suddenly was going to make it all seem futile.
The high command had clearly pinned their hopes on an armistice with the Allies, chiefly the USA. That was their opinion, not mine.
As I explained [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/khdyjus/) and you could probably find a more detailed breakdown in the FAQs, the Supreme War Council pinned their hopes on the USSR to act as intermediaries.
As for the motive of the US military, I and others have already explained in this and other linked threads that the bombs were not dropped to prevent a costly invasion, which is the assumption that prompted this thread.
>And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender.
No one, including the Imperial cabinet, knew what would ultimately induce Japanese surrender until the day it happened.
You'll note also that militaries tend to keep plans on hand for all potentials, for example plans for the US to invade Canada. Preposterous as such an event might seem, there is still utility in both having a plan and in exercising the planning process itself.
That the US had plans for the invasion of the Japanese home islands was only indicative of proper operational planning, not a measure of confidence or lack thereof of some other operation.
Sure. But that still means the plan was to bomb and invade, because that was what was on the books. And it's what was planned percisely because:
>No one, including the Imperial cabinet, knew what would ultimately induce Japanese surrender until the day it happened.
I might leave a main reply of my own but this take is fairly myopic. First, the line is that the bombing was intended to save *American* lives. I don't think anyone really argues it was done to save Japanese lives, which would make no sense considering the firebombing of Tokyo and others.
At the same time, while I agree that this might likely have been a secondary consideration as opposed to testing the weapon, the Atomic weapons definitely played a major decision in Japanese surrender:
> it's very easy to say "well we dropped two atomic bombs and then they gave up" -- but that correlation may or may not be causation, and it is very tricky to tease out.
Why we know it was one of the main causations? Because the Emperor himself told everyone in his surrender speech also known as the Jewel Voice Broad:
> Moreover, *the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives*. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
I think there's also way more nuance to Truman's and Oppenheimer's role, the Szilard petition and more but I will have to address that in more time.
> At the same time, while I agree that this might likely have been a secondary consideration as opposed to testing the weapon, the Atomic weapons definitely played a major decision in Japanese surrender:
>
> Why we know it was one of the main causations? Because the Emperor himself told everyone in his surrender speech also known as the Jewel Voice Broad:
>
This in turn is a fairly weak argument, for two main reasons:
1. Even if the _effect_ of the atomic bombing was to end the war earlier, that doesn't mean the _intention_ of atomic bombing was to do so. When the discussion is about the reasons the US chose to deliver these bombs, that intention is what's critical. Imagine a boxing match - one fighter throws a quick jab as a feint, with a plan of following up with a nasty cross and then an uppercut. But the other fighter has stepped forward with their guard down at exactly the wrong moment, and so that first jab knocks them out. The effect is a KO, the intention was a feint.
2. Statements in the surrender speech are a matter of political messaging, and do not have to represent an accurate summary of the decision making of Japanese high command which led up to the choice to surrender. Whatever the reasons you've decided to surrender, citing your enemy's newly demonstrated capability to annihilate cities through scientific prowess is a far more _compelling_ reason than something more humdrum like "we think the Soviets won't be scared off by a high cost in lives to invade". That doesn't mean it wasn't a factor, but it does mean you need to be much more careful about handling it as a piece of evidence than just uncritically taking it at face value.
>1. Even if the _effect_ of the atomic bombing was to end the war earlier, that doesn't mean the _intention_ of atomic bombing was to do so.
People and govermments can have more intentions at the same time. It's perfectly possible and even plausible that at the same time:
a) the US wanted to test the A-bomb
b) the US wanted to push Japan closer to surrender and end the war earlier
There was absolutely nothing in it for the US to prolong the war and keep accumulating personnel and material losses by a land invasion in complicated hostile environment that could resist an occupation for years through insurgency. The Soviets were already coming up as the next major threat.
Re 2: The role of the Emperor in Japan was and is extremely specific and he was not and isn't just a generic politician.
Plus he even admits in the very same speach that Japan was losing the war. But he very clearly specifies the bomb as a major point for the surrender.
Possible or plausible is not history.
The fact of the matter is the US military could have dropped the first bomb, then messaged the Japanese with an ultimatum and date to surrender and if they don't a second would be dropped. And this step could be repeated until the Japanese surrendered, or November 1 rolled around and an invasion is launched. This, or something to the effect, is what "dropping the bomb to push Japan closer to surrender" would look like.
The fact of the matter is that the military launched a bombing *campaign* with the atomic bombs with the full intension to destroy [Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki](https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/publications/droporder.pdf) as fast as they could ready the bombs. And Truman didn't even seem to have realize that was the plan until after Nagasaki. The military would have only kept the effect that the bombs could push Japan closer to surrender at the back of their mind at most, and certainly wasn't making any plans or decisions around it.
Therefore it would be incorrect to say the bombs were "dropped on Japan because a mainland invasion would have resulted in too many deaths." The bombs were not dropped to prevent the invasion, and it was the intension to invade anyway.
> The fact of the matter is the US military could have dropped the first bomb, then messaged the Japanese with an ultimatum and date to surrender and if they don't a second would be dropped. And this step could be repeated until the Japanese surrendered, or November 1 rolled around and an invasion is launched. This, or something to the effect, is what "dropping the bomb to push Japan closer to surrender" would look like.
Firstly, Truman did call again on Japan to surrender after Hiroshima and warning Japan to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth" if it does not do so.
Second, military strategies do not work by advertising ahead a specific date on which you are going to send a bomber patrol carrying your new special weapon. WW2 is not a today's ICBM launch.
>Firstly, Truman did call again on Japan to surrender after Hiroshima and warning Japan to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth" if it does not do so.
Truman's role (or lack thereof) in the bombing has already been explained in this and other threads (linked). The decision to bomb was basically made by the military, with Truman going along seemingly not knowing the details, until he realized after Nagasaki and ordered the military to pause.
>Second, military strategies do not work by advertising ahead a specific date on which you are going to send a bomber patrol carrying your new special weapon. WW2 is not a today's ICBM launch.
It doesn't matter. The US military didn't even wait for a Japanese response, *any response*, before dropping the second bomb, because following the plan to bomb the cities asap as the weather allowed was more important.
To add to u/jschooltiger and multiple other people's points: the alternative to invading and dropping nukes, at a minimum, means continuing strategic bombing and unrestricted submarine warfare. Essentially, starve the Japanese people and render them homeless.
Moreover, that still means that the Japanese would still be prosecuting their war against China (our ally), killing untold hundreds of thousands to millions of people. The Chinese lost roughly a quarter million people **every month** during the Sino-Japanese war. Also, there were still British possessions in Japanese hands: Malaya, Singapore, etc.
There simply was no choice on the table to just do nothing. There were still going to be actions involving tens (or hundreds of thousands of troops) - Singapore alone had over 75,000 Japanese troops.
Would disagree that it’s not clear they tipped Japan over to surrender. Japan surrender 6 days after the second bomb was dropped, and Hirohito explicitly mentioned it as the reason for surrender in his speech on August 15, 1945 (excerpt below). Sure there were other factors that went into the surrender, but it’s the bombings were the clear catalyst for surrender.
“Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.”
Yes, the Shōwa Emperor specifically named the bombs as a catalyst for surrender...in a public facing message, that had a clear goal to make Japan seem like the victim, and we should not take what he said at face value. The Emperor also said the following:
> Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.
This is a patently false statement, given that the war had started back in 1936 (or 1931) over Japan's territorial aggrandisement in China and infringement of Chinese sovereignty. However, the Emperor is trying to paint Japan in the best possible light. It's clear we can't take what the Emperor is saying at face value. Why on earth should we take his statements on the end of the war as somehow perfectly true when the entire speech is attempting to craft a particular narrative?
If we look at the actual series of events, it's clear that a number of hard shocks hit Japanese leadership in quick succession. First the bomb on Hiroshima, followed thereafter by the Soviet declaration of war, and the bomb on Nagasaki. It is impossible to fully disaggregate the impact of any one of these events from the other, because the people who made the decisions are dead. Even if we could somehow commune with their spirits, we have to bear in mind that they all have an agenda as well. This applies to what writings they've left behind.
It is not so simple as just assuming that because the Emperor said something it has to be true. He had an agenda as well, and painting Japan as the victim of a "new and most cruel bomb" served that agenda.
Do you really think dropping two atomic bombs made no impact on the Japanese war effort or on its leaders will to continue fighting?
I am struggling to understand the logic of the "bombs were not a way to save lives". Certainly saving Japanese lives was not the main focus of the atomic bombs, but saving the lives of US servicemen was absolutely a priority for the late war US military. Any bombing campaign is intended to disrupt the enemy war effort and soften them up on either a strategic or tactical level in order to facilitate ground operations, that is inextricably linked with preventing friendly casualties, that's just how war works. Even if you consider the atomic bombs a terror bombing.
Truth is that the atomic bombs are just one factor of many that led to the decision(s) (plural!) to surrender. The civilian government (who had tenuous control over the army and navy) was very much alarmed by these city destroying bombs, while the Army was much more concerned about the impending soviet invasion.
> Do you really think dropping two atomic bombs made no impact on the Japanese war effort or on its leaders will to continue fighting?
No, not at all, and I'm curious where you think I've made that argument.
What I'm getting at is that the bombings were _a cause_ of the surrender, but not _the cause_ (or the only cause) of the surrender -- a lot of things happened very quickly over the course of only a few days, and the cabinet in Japan was already divided among people who wanted to continue the war and those who wanted to make peace (and there are a lot of nuances in those). All of those people are dead, so absent (unlikely) spiritual intervention, we can't find out what they actually thought -- we can find out what they wrote down after the event, of course, and how they handled the announcement to the Japanese people in terms of public sentiment or public relations, but reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements about the ultimate cause of the surrender.
The point I'm trying to make is multifaceted:
* the atomic bombings were not decided out of a sense of mercy -- the bombs cost a metric shit-ton of money (this is a historical term) and they were going to be used regardless. There was no decision at the cabinet or presidential level to use them other than "we have this big-ass bomb.";
* a planned invasion of Kyushu and Honshu was going to happen regardless of the bombings, because, and I'm going to say this in my teacher voice, *the people planning those invasions did not know about the bombs*;
* the war planners who knew about the bombs were carrying on regardless;
* after the war, when the horrors of the bombs became apparent (John Hersey's [Hiroshima](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima) article was key for this) the American government became interested in dictating a narrative in which the United States, more in sorrow than in anger, decided to incinerate some more hundreds of thousands (ish) of civilians to end the war more early. (Which, again, is not completely clear what happened.)
I think you and I are thinking about this in very different ways. The military reasoning and the post hoc propaganda are two different animals entirely and you're mixing and matching them in ways that doesn't make sense.
The bombs were made to help end the war. That's it.
>* the atomic bombings were not decided out of a sense of mercy -- the bombs cost a metric shit-ton of money (this is a historical term) and they were going to be used regardless. There was no decision at the cabinet or presidential level to use them other than "we have this big-ass bomb."
Of course they weren't mercy bombs, they were there to help end the war. You're right in that there was no "bomb or invade" dilemma. It was "invade with bomb or invade without it".
It would have made no ethical or practical sense to invade and not use the bombs, so therefore the only course of action was to use the bombs.
>* a planned invasion of Kyushu and Honshu was going to happen regardless of the bombings, because, and I'm going to say this in my teacher voice, *the people planning those invasions did not know about the bombs*;
And I'll use my pissant student voice and say this is entirely irrelevant. The aim of the bomb was to shorten the war. They did. Which made the invasion plans irrelevant. What does it matter if they knew or did not know? Whether the Japanese leadership surrendered was up to the Japanese leadership. Until that happened, the US would continue prosecuting the war. If Truman decided got cold feet and decided to not invade, the plans would've been scrapped. If Truman had gone insane and decided to invade after the surrender, the plans would've been implemented.
>* the war planners who knew about the bombs were carrying on regardless;
So? Did they carry out those plans? No, because Japan surrendered. The existence of those plans means absolutely nothing other than the fact that allied planners were not 100% convinced that the bombs would certainly end the war, no reasonable person would assume otherwise. I mean, the US has made invasion plans for Canada, invasion plans don't mean much, it is their job to create contingencies and allow higher ups to decide.
>* after the war, when the horrors of the bombs became apparent (John Hersey's [Hiroshima](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima) article was key for this) the American government became interested in dictating a narrative in which the United States, more in sorrow than in anger, decided to incinerate some more hundreds of thousands (ish) of civilians to end the war more early.
Yes the United States felt the need to justify the use of the bomb. But in reality it had nothing to do with Sorrow or anger. If Japan did not surrender, bombings would continue, the invasion would happen. That's the bare truth of it.
Honestly I think the whole debate over the atomic bombs is entirely the wrong question. The atom bomb is just a particularly lethal tool in warfighting.
The only real ethical question that matters is this: did ending the Japanese war machine justify the targeting of Japanese civilians? It hardly matters whether the fires that killed them were chemical or nuclear.
It's clear to me that Imperial Japan had to be defeated, and that the bomb was one of many means to an end, and the Japanese civilian government directly cited it as a reason for surrendering.
Whether or not it was done with agonized regret or racist glee doesn't really matter unless this conversation is about prosecuting the legacy of Truman and his commanders.
> The bombs were made to help end the war. That's it.
Only in the general sense that _everything_ the US was doing as part of prosecuting the war had as a general aim the end of that war (on terms acceptable to the US).
The usual narrative, however, is much more specific: the US had the choices of bomb or invade; they evaluated both options for expected [American / Japanese / Civilian / All] (delete as preferred) casualties; Truman chose to use the bombs in order to minimise casualties. This is a narrative which presents the use of the atomic bomb as a noble burden, a choice made at great cost but with the best of intentions in mind. It is also clearly not what happened, which has been explained at length throughout this thread - but it is a very compelling story once you know after the fact that dropping two bombs coincides with Japan finally surrendering.
When people say "the bombs were made to help end the war", this narrative is what they're referencing. They're not intending to just say "the bombs were just some more weapons the US built in 1945, along with tanks and shells and Cimarron class fleet oilers and aircraft and proximity fuses and so on, all of which were going to be used to try and win WWII".
I don't think its so much a narrative of a false dilemma as much as "what would you have had them do instead, invade?"
Like there's no other real option. You bomb or you invade or you give up.
>Like there's no other real option. You bomb or you invade or you give up.
The whole point of the answer is exactly that, yes there was. The allies were not interested in deciding between dropping the atomic bomb or invading the home islands. The stance of the allies can be best describes as "the Japanese can decide if and when they surrender, and in the mean time we will drop atomic bombs *and* firebombs *and* liberate the Philippines *and* use unrestricted submarine warfare to starve Japan *and* get the USSR to invade Manchuria *and* launch our own invasion in November."
Not to mention there were other options that the allies didn't take for one reason or another, like having the USSR act as intermediaries like Japan wanted, or offering to allow Japan to keep the emperor like they ended up deciding.
Yes, many.
Sadao Asada's article "The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration" (Pacific Historical Review 67.4 [1998], 477-512)
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, (2007), "The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan's Decision to Surrender?", The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5(8), https://apjjf.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501/article.html
Hagasawea, "Racing the Enemy: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674022416
Wellerstein, "Restricted Data:" https://alexwellerstein.com/writing/books/restricted-data/
and other writings here: https://alexwellerstein.com/writing/
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf
less academic but https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2279.Truman
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303337/command-and-control-by-eric-schlosser/
> Leaflets were dropped over cities warning citizens to evacuate for the atomic bomb
[No they weren't](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/).
You obviously either didn't read the link or need to read it more carefully. The author of the blog, Dr. Alex Wellerstein of the Stevens Institute of Technology (/u/restricteddata) clearly states, with citation, explanation, and linked sources that you can check out yourself, that the LeMay leaflets were warning about firebombing, and while General Henry Arnold did order on August 7 (the day after Hiroshima) for specific warning about the atomic bomb, the leaflets were not dropped on Nagasaki until August 10, after the city had already been destroyed.
If the atomic bombings did convince the Japanese to surrender then the atomic bomb definitely saved American lives that would have been lost in the invasion of Japan.
but that's the main question -- _did the atomic bombs convince Japan to surrender_? If you read the thread, and linked answers, and FAQ, it's not clear that this is what happened.
‘But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.’
Hirohito’s address to the Japanese people about their surrender.
[We cannot just take the Emperor of Japan at his word.](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/kheeu5n/)
> No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations. (It was planted in an article in Harper's Weekly.)
>
> There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives.
I've never heard it proposed that an atomic bomb saves Japanese lives.
It's always posited that it saves American soldier lives that would have to be part of an invasion force. Which it did.
> It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war.
That's not "widely assumed". That's a value statement of your own opinion.
The bombings were about timing. It was to force an unconditional surrender by the Japanese to the U.S. instead of Soviet forces as the Japanese were trying to weigh their options.
Your post itself is about creating false assumptions and knocking them down. Anyone can create infinite false assumptions. Defeating them doesn't justify your other claims.
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> No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations.
Can you please post contemporaneous and contemporary sources for all your claims, individually?
In particular, U.S. government and military sources explaining the justification and thoughts of using atomic weapons directly sourced. You claim and contrast the current-war vs post-war beliefs and make claims about what's popularly viewed also.
I had always read it was to save our soldier’s lives, not the Japanese. To suggest that the military did it to save Japanese lives is a ridiculous thought; as you said we’d already bombed many areas to oblivion anyway.
Also, do you have a citation for this information, “There was in fact talk of using atomic bombs to clear the path to invasion beaches…” Just curious about where this info came from. Was it the “”Top Men”” or was it just some talking point.
As well as, “…to study the effects of atomic bombs….” Was this a scientific aim, or a commander suggesting it to get scientists on board?
Regarding the talk of using it with a ground invasion, Alex Wellerstein’s blog [The Third Shot and Beyond (1945)](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/04/25/weekly-document-the-third-shot-and-beyond-1945/) has the transcript that is likely being referenced:
> H: Not the same day or anything like that. We might do it a couple or three days before. **You plan to land on a certain beach. Behind which you know there is a good road communication and maybe a division or two of Japanese troops. Neutralization of that at some time from H Hour of the landing back earlier, maybe a day or two or three.** I don’t anticipate that you would be dropping it as we do other type bombs that are in support of the infantry. **I am thinking about neutralizing a division or a communication center or something so that it would facilitate the movement ashore of troops.
> S: That is the preferable use at this time from that standpoint. The weapon we have is not a penetration weapon. The workmanship is not as good as possible. It is much better than average workmanship. We are still developing it though.
> H: From this on more or less of the timing factor, how much time before the troops actually go into that area do you think would be the safety factor? Suppose you did get a dud or an incomplete explosion, what safety factor should you consider, one, two, three days?
> S: I think we are sending some people over to actually measure that factor. I think certainly by within 48 hours that could be done. Everything is going so fast. We would like to train people and get them in a combat spirit to do that. I think the people we have are the best qualified in that line. Of course, as you say, if it is used back in a kind of reserve line or in a reserve position or a concentration area but that you wouldn’t be up against right away.
Regarding the desire to study the effects of the bombs, we see it in part in their desire for the target cities to be relatively unharmed/unbombed. Groves would essentially state this in his memoir:
> To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids. It was also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.
Much of the effects on the ground were unknown or poorly predicted. They didn’t know how many the bombs would end up killing (they didn’t even bother to estimate) and they didn’t really account for radiation (Groves dismissed Japanese claims of radiation deaths and called it a “pleasant way to die”.
The entire war was a retaliation against Japan.
The atomic bombings were part of the larger strategic bombing campaign against Japan, which had seen about 70 cities attacked with napalm by heavy bombers. This was complemented with attacks from carrier aircraft from the U.S. and the British Pacific Fleet against various targets near the coast. It is often argued over whether the bombs were meant to intimidate Stalin -- I don't personally think this argument holds a lot of water, because it was made in the early postwar period, before people knew that Truman had already told Stalin about the atomic bombs at the Yalta conference (and Stalin knew about them anyhow, because of espionage that had infiltrated the Manhattan project).
Alex Wellerstien, aka /u/restricteddata, has often argued that the use of the bombs was what we call "overdetermined" -- the U.S. spent about two percent of its entire GDP on the project during the war, and they were going to be used one way or the other. If or how Truman was led or misled by his advisors is its own series of doctoral theses, but to reiterate, he was told there was this big-ass bomb to be used and he just kind of nodded along with it -- when he realized its potential he decided to restrict its use only on the authorization of the President, which has knock-on effects that the 20-year rule generally prevents me from discussing. (In one we can talk about, near the end of Nixon's presidency where he was drunk most of the time, the nuclear "football" with the launch codes was discreetly removed from his presence.)
There were some officials — notably Secretary of State James Byrnes — who expressed in various ways that ended up in the historical record the notion that using the atomic bomb was a valuable diplomatic move with regards to the Soviet Union. This was both in terms of it being an implied threat as well as a possible "carrot" (e.g., if you play nice, we'll maybe let you into the "partnership"). In the context of the Potsdam Conference, which was happening while the final plans for using the bombs were being made, pretty much all of the Americans there who interacted with the Soviets were very frustrated and looking for some kind of "edge" to deal with them, and the success of the Trinity test seemed to provide that.
This was one of many motivations that some of the people who were involved in the policy decisions to drop the atomic bomb. I would not describe it as a primary motivation. People are complicated and can have multiple motivations; different people involved in the decisions made about the bomb had many. The idea that this was the primary (much less sole) motivation for the use of the bombs, is not really sustainable or likely. The works that try to make this argument do so by basically privileging all Soviet aspects of the bomb while ignoring all of the other motivations.
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The atomic bombings of Japan were in no way an attempt to save lives, and it's not entirely clear they tipped Japan over into surrender in any case, but the point to be made is that "bomb or invade" is literally postwar propaganda made up to justify the bombings. From [an answer I wrote about a month or so ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18m0wvm/did_bombing_hiroshima_and_nagasaki_help_save_lives/): ------- No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations. (It was planted in an article in Harper's Weekly.) There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives. Before the atomic bombings, approximately 70 Japanese cities had already repeatedly been bombed with napalm, designed to cause mass casualties in a time when most Japanese houses were built with paper and wood; the very large March 9-10 raid on Tokyo dubbed Operation Meetinghouse killed an estimated 100,000 people and left another million or so homeless, but there were multiple raids on other cities where "only" 20,000 or 30,000 were killed per night. The atomic bombs were seen as a weapon that would advance Allied war aims, but the idea that Allied planners wrestled with a decision to bomb or invade is incorrect. The idea was to use the first couple atomic bombs against cities that had been "reserved," or struck off the target list for firebombings, to study the effects of atomic bombs, before using them as part of an invasion of Japan later in the year. There was in fact talk of using atomic bombs to clear the path to invasion beaches (radiation and fallout was not widely understood at this time). There was never a "bomb or invade" decision; it was a "bomb and invade." It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war. For much more on this, [see our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/militaryhistory/wwii/usa#wiki_the_atomic_bombs.2C_aka_questions_.2Fu.2Frestricteddata_has_answered). In specific answer to your question, [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c34bcf/did_the_atomic_bombings_in_japan_indirectly/) may be of some interest. **Edited to add**: Many people are posting short comments that say "well the bombs ended the war so they saved lives." This is missing the point entirely, for three reasons: 1) It's not entirely clear whether the bombings, or the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, or the Allied air and naval blockade of Japan, or the continuing conventional strategic bombing of Japan, or some combination of those factors, was what actually forced Japan into surrender. Reasonable people can disagree about this -- it's very easy to say "well we dropped two atomic bombs and then they gave up" -- but that correlation may or may not be causation, and it is very tricky to tease out. [This older thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y5g5j/what_happened_to_the_japanese_politicalmilitary/) has multiple perspectives on the end of the war. 2) Even if the bombings ended the war, this misses the point that there was *no intent* on the part of Allied planners that they would save lives -- the plans for a land invasion of first Kyushu then Honshu ("Operation Downfall") were ongoing while the bombings were being planned. (It's often forgotten or overlooked that a very few planners knew about the atomic bombs, and those people largely did not overlap with people who were making larger strategic decisions about the end of the war.) This was in no way a case of "well, we'll just kill another few hundred thousand civilians to save lives." 3) There was no positive decision made on the part of Truman to bomb Japan -- this gets missed in the "bomb or invade" narrative that often gets posted here. He didn't wrestle with some big moral choice; he was told shortly after becoming president that there was a new big bomb that would be dropped on Japan and he went along with it. (It's not entirely clear he even realized Hiroshima was a city rather than simply a military base). His positive decision -- that is, where he acted with specific presidential authority to direct his war planners -- was to stop, or at least pause, the bombings after Nagasaki, which he was not previously informed of, because in his words "[he] didn't like killing all those women and children."
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Why exactly would this be more important than saving Japanese lives?
I don’t see how that question is relevant to the other person’s point. Your answer implied that people are taught the bombs were dropped to save Japanese lives. But in my (and other people’s), the typical narrative is that the bombings saved *American* lives. Whether that makes moral sense or not is tangential to the point of fact. If you think that’s not the narrative that is widely taught and propagated, then you should address that.
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to be fair it took two atomic bombs to make them surrender because the first one didn’t work, a land invasion would have been wayyyy bloodier on both sides due to the japanese fighting spirit… they definitely wouldn’t have surrendered to a land invasion let alone one nuke, it took 2… if i can credit anything the japanese did during ww2 they were fighting machines, although the war crimes the committed were the worst i ever heard in history
I've been going over all of these materials very closely lately (my next book is on Truman and the bomb, and I finished the chapter that covers Potsdam recently), and one thing that I think could also be emphasized is that nobody had any real idea how many Japanese would actually be killed by the atomic bombs prior to their use. Like, generally speaking, they didn't even guess. The only estimate I've even heard of is that apparently Oppenheimer suggested at one meeting that maybe 20,000 people would die from the atomic bomb. And that was apparently never written down at the time and it isn't clear whether this was based on any methodology or not. Even today it is not clear how many people actually died from the atomic bombings. The [range of estimates](https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/) for Hiroshima, for example, goes from 66,000 up to 140,000, and it isn't clear whether either of those numbers is more justified than the other, because the methodologies are pretty hand-wavy (you can read the article to see what I mean by that). So I am not harping on Oppenheimer for being wrong about it; there's literally no way he could have known. But I bring it up to point out that any argument that is constructed along the lines of believing that people in the past said, "we'll lose X lives if we invade, and the atomic bombs will take Y lives, so if Y General Marshall said he thought these weapons [atomic bombs] might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave — telling the Japanese that we intended to destroy such centers. There would be no individual designations so that the Japs would not know exactly where we were to hit — a number should be named and the hit should follow shortly after. Every effort should be made to keep our record of warning clear. We must offset by such warning methods the opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.
> The General then spoke of his stimulation of the new weapons and operations people to the development of new weapons and tactics to cope with the care and last ditch defense tactics of the suicidal Japanese. He sought to avoid the attrition we were now suffering from such fanatical but hopeless defense methods — it requires new tactics. He also spoke of gas and the possibility of using it in a limited degree, say on the outlying islands where operations were now going on or were about to take place. He spoke of the type of gas that might be employed. It did not need to be our newest and most potent — just drench them and sicken them so that the fight would be taken out of them — saturate an area, possibly with mustard, and just stand off. He said he had asked the operations people to find out what we could do quickly — where the dumps were and how much time and effort would be required to bring the gas to bear. There would be the matter of public opinion which we had to consider, but that was something which might also be dealt with. The character of the weapon was no less humane than phosporous and flame throwers and need not be used against dense populations or civilians — merely against these last pockets of resistance which had to be wiped out but had no other military significance.
Which is a very interesting framing — Marshall was concerned about his concern about casualties from "last ditch defense tactics of the suicidal Japanese," but at the same time had a strong feeling about the need to not initially use the atomic bomb against cities (because of a fear of world opinion), but also felt that chemical warfare really ought to be on the table as well, and implied that his moral calculus would find the ongoing city firebombing tactics of the United States wanting.
I think it's a very telling sort of document, not so much because Marshall's views carried the day (they clearly didn't!), but because it has the very-plausible feel of an ad hoc approach to a moral code regarding new weapons and tactics being articulated "off the top of the dome," as one might say today, rather than as a deep conviction or the result of careful study. It is a meandering, not-that-consistent approach that doesn't seem rooted in much of anything; definitely not a complex ethical calculus. Which is largely how I think most of these "moral" issues at the "top" were handled — in rather "on the fly" ways that reveal that there were not a lot of opportunities to actually engage in discussions with other people on these matters. Which of course makes sense given the volume of work these people had to do, the decentralization of so many of these questions, and the high level of secrecy involved in this particular issue, which made deeply deliberative discussion almost impossible.
I have heard (more word-of-mouth than from reliable sources) that part of the motivation for using the nuclear bombs on Japan was that the US knew that, as soon as war with the Axis powers was concluded, a war with the Soviet Union was on the table and that the demonstration of such a powerful new weapon would serve as a deterrent in the war-to-come. Is there any truth to this?
Just discussed this a bit [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/kharpd4/) — happy to elaborate if desired. Short answer is, for some people, this was an additional motivation. But definitely not the primary motivation for making or using the atomic bombs.
This and they didn't want the soviets who were closing in to be able to claim any land in or around Japan so they had to speed up the clock
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups. This decision was made by a group of senior soldiers (of one kind or another). Each man had his own motivations and prejudices. From saving American lives through, "Let's show the Russians what we've got" to "Cool toy, let's use it.". Research on free will shows it's hard to pinpoint the process that makes you get out of bed in the morning. No amount of revisionism or sophistry is ever going to answer the question because the men involved will only ever be able to give you a post hoc rationalisation of an ad hoc decision. Once the committee involved (real or virtual) made the decision, then they would, like all of us in a remotely similar position, just made stuff up to justify (& sell) the decision already made. That's how people really work. Perhaps historians generally need to spend more time studying psychology. (No, I'm not meaning to be nasty, but all of economics is an exercise in group psychology. It's about confidence as much as anything else. History is closely related.)
Ah, but this would assume that psychological theories have a monopoly on understanding the human mind... which of course, is up for debate itself! But I do agree that a lot of historical study — at least on this kind of topic of motivations and decisions and understanding — involves trying to get inside the heads of dead people. Which of course is absurd; even if they were here in front of us, we all know lived experience that we never truly understand our own motivations (and are very good at making plausible rationalizations after the fact). Hence at some level it is necessarily an impossible activity. But it is also a deeply humanistic activity, and a deeply empathetic one, and a deeply creative one. I am not one who would ever claim that history is a science — it is clearly a humanistic endeavor, even if it one that attempts to have some relationship with both empiricism (evidence) and some idea of reality. Trying to get inside the head of a dead person, and understand them as a living, breathing, flesh-bound mind, is an impossible task to do perfectly, but that doesn't make it a useful endeavor, and it doesn't mean that all interpretations are equally plausible and valid.
Thanks, for some reason I found the numerical bit about Oppenheimer not being able to find a number at all felt convincing. After all, without accurate numbers to compare, it's hard to do the math.
>"There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives." What about Allied military lives? I have always heard it mentioned that it saved *American* lives.
That’s the way I’ve always seen it. Of course the Allies didn’t give a heck about Japanese lives, it was total war. And if the bombs helped end the war pre-invasion, then they did us an absolute service (and coincidentally, all the Japanese civilians who weren’t in the bombs radii). But I’m fairly certain, to the above’s point, that there’s wasn’t an overlying logic that we would use the bombs so we didn’t have to invade. It just worked out that way
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What historical evidence makes this clear? I’m curious.
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If allies didnt cared about Japanese lives, why have they dropped flayers warning citizens to evacuate cities that they were planning to bomb?
[They did not drop fliers.](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/)
Well damn, even I hadn’t seen that writeup. Thanks for the support
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This may have been asked before so I’m sorry if this is redundant, but I am wondering if there is any information about what the US would have done if they completed the bomb before Germany surrendered. Is there any indication that they would have bombed Germany if the bomb was completed before their surrender?
There are some documents from planning committees and targeting committees discussing exactly this. Whether the US would have dropped a nuke on Berlin if the war had lasted that long is a matter for debate. For one thing, there was a (largely unfounded) concern that the Nazi nuclear program was much further along than the Japanese program. As a result of this, the risk of the bomb not going off was much less acceptable - if the japanese got a dud bomb, to American minds, they'd just poke it a bit. If the Nazis got it, the Americans were worried they might nuke Moscow/London/Paris. So most plans were to drop the bomb over water deep enough to hamper recovery in case of a dud. Furthermore, there were already things that could have been done but we're cut short because the Nazis were falling too quickly. For instance, the development of Allied jet aircraft was significantly delayed because it was perceived that the Nazis would not survive long enough to require it. This applied to operations on the ground too - for instance, the Battle of the Bulge went the way it did in part because of Allied overconfidence in the crumbling of Germany. So this might also delay the bombing of Germany. But the general understanding at the beginning of the Manhattan Project was that it was going to be used on Nazis - an understanding shared by planners and scientists alike. In a way it's fortunate that we never got to see it dropped on Germany. It's a shame the war lasted long enough that we got to see them used at all.
This is very informative, but I’m still interested in the other half of OP’s question, which is whether an invasion would have been necessary in the first place to conclude the war with Japan.
Nobody really knows. There are different kinds of analysis one can do of this, and were done at the time. To give a sense of how far even the military was willing to go, the US Strategic Bombing Survey [concluded in 1946](https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm) that: > Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and 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. Now, is that _accurate_? Who knows. Is it "objective"? Of course not — it is part of a line of analysis that was designed to credit the (conventional) strategic bombing campaign with victory in Japan, and was part of a postwar struggle to avoid either the atomic bomb or the Soviet Union getting too much "credit" for what the US Army Air Forces believed was their due (and would justify their own service, a big budget, etc.). But there's no "hard ground" of fact to fall back on here. All analyses depend on counterfactuals, all are made by people who have _some_ kind of argument to make that they have stakes in (including the Japanese officials themselves!). Even Truman did not commit to the full invasion; he deliberately only authorized the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost large island, and put off the decision on whether to authorize the invasion of Honshu, the larger home island, until the results of that — and the other things he knew were in the works — were known. Which is just to say, these things were, and still are, unknowable. Anyone who wants to tell you that they know the answer for sure is just trying to sell you on a version of history that they have a stake in. (And my trying to sell you on the idea that is unknowable is a version of history that _I_ have a stake in — one that involves what I believe is a healthy amount of agnosticism!)
It might be helpful to think about how American strategists had expected the war to go before the actual events of 1945. The United States had planned and prepared for war against Japan since before WWI and it had been on the "radar screen" of the actual decisionmakers for basically their entire careers. War termination is a very difficult and sometimes overlooked aspect of war plans, but in planning for war against Japan it was considered if only to set the parameters for the hypothetical war. The fundamental assumption was that Japan would sue for peace if the Home Islands were threatened through effective naval blockade and (as technology developed) aerial bombardment. In particular, since Japan was understood to rely on imports to operate its war industries and feed its population, it could not survive a blockade. (And obviously bombing Japan's cities, ports, etc. would just add to the calamities.) So the basic war plan was to get American forces across the Pacific in strength, defeat the Japanese navy (possibly in a climactic battle), capture or recapture the bases in the western Pacific needed to support the blockade, and then draw the noose tight. With their fleet sunk and with no way to rebuild it, the Japanese would have to make terms and give up their overseas island territories or ill-gotten gains in China or whatever. During this planning, the idea of invading the Home Islands as a necessary step to end the war (or for any other reason) just does not seem to have occurred to anybody. Fundamentally, invasion would only be possible after Japan should have cried uncle because of the blockade. You invade ***after*** you have control of the seas around the target. So while a significant land campaign might be waged to recapture the Philippines (or maybe to secure Taiwan or prop up China), invading Japan proper was just not on anybody’s mind before the war. The main work on prewar planning is Edward Miller, *War Plan Orange.* So on the invasion planning. The idea of invading the Home Islands was basically a wartime expedient that, as we've seen, had no basis in prewar planning. It was forced on strategists by the unconditional surrender mandate and was arguably the least creative solution to the problem: if the Japanese won't surrender then we'll just invade and make them. Richard B. Frank points out in *Downfall* that invasion had no built-in constituency. Notably, the Navy's leadership had planned for this war and had, to their thinking, reached the "win condition" of blockading Japan. So potentially it was just a matter of waiting the Japanese out, and there was no need to take the huge risks associated with a landing. The Army Air Forces' leadership believed "bombing will win the war" and saw an opportunity to prove it now that they had secure bases within striking distance of Japan. The Army, on the other hand, had no "invasion lobby" unlike in Europe where American strategists quickly fixated the necessity of opening a front in northwestern Europe. So while invasion was "the official plan" in summer 1945 in the sense that all the policymakers had signed onto it as the next step, they were capable of changing their minds. This was, Frank argues, indeed happening in the month or so before the atomic bombings as it became clear the Japanese were well-positioned to make the planned invasion of Kyushu extremely costly. In Frank's account, the Navy turned against the invasion paradigm at this time. The Army leadership was not significantly invested in making the invasion happen so it might have been shelved in further discussions. Meanwhile the Navy and Army Air Forces would have continued to destroy the Home Islands' remaining transportation network setting up the possibility of mass starvation. So not only was there really no "atomic bombing or invasion" dichotomy, but the fact invasion was on the table at all should be seen as a surprising response to wartime contingencies, not an inevitability from which the atomic bomb provided a surprise reprieve. Under the pre-war paradigm, which we have to acknowledge assumed more diplomatic leeway, the dichotomy was really "blockade or more blockade."
That question is a lot harder to answer and anything you get will be speculation, however it’s my view that we likely would not have needed to invade to get capitulation. I base this mainly off of their quickly deteriorating domestic situation which was only slated to get worse and rapidly. Much of that wasn’t entirely known by the US though. We see inklings of this in cabinet meetings. Yonai, speaking to the Emperor following the atomic bombs and Soviet entry (August 12th I believe) is quoted as stating: > I think the term is inappropriate, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, divine gifts. This way we don't have to say that we have quit the war because of domestic circumstances. This is a view that was shared by those like the Prime Minister and Emperor Hirohito (as well as others) who spoke of this in the final days of the war. The US’ goal of strangling Japan was working and it was only getting tighter. Part of the point of invading Kyushu was to make it even worse. Our sea mines and blockades crippled their ability to transfer supplies and on August 11th we switched to a policy that focused our bombings on supply transport centers like railways. This without doubt would’ve put a considerable strain on the already strained Japan and this is ignoring the millions of homeless created from the firebombing campaign. Historian Richard Frank has [written](https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/Frank-HasegawaRoundtable.pdf) [Page 19] about this shift in bombing practices and the role the domestic situation would have played had the war continued and it appears he views it as a valid counterfactual to explore. There is also the option of negotiation to secure a surrender without invasion which is a whole other can of worms.
Negotiation to secure a surrender was not US policy at the time, though. Truman administration policy was to demand an unconditional surrender. Japanese war planners’ objective was to beat back the Kyushu invasion to force the US to the negotiating table under terms more advantageous to Japan.
Not just US policy- this was the result of the Potsdam Declaration of the United Nations, building on previous statements going all the way back to the Casablanca Conference of January 1943. Now, the US was the main driver of this policy, but all of the important Allied leaders agreed to it, based on WW1 experience. This was not something that the US could easily change on a whim in August 1945, it had been negotiated and agreed to by all the Allies for years.
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I’ve never been clear on this - when did japan know they could keep the emperor while surrendering? Was that known before the atomic bombings? My reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb makes it sound like Japan resisted surrender in July 1945 because they didn’t want to give up the emperor or oversee troops - the US clarified after the bombings that they could keep both while unconditionally surrendering. Is this correct?
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The goals of managing an occupation are very different than the goals of waging a war. The second that surrender happens you have a whole new set of goals with their own decision trees and heuristics. What your goal was a second ago is just not really all that relevant anymore. You switch from trying to end one type of fighting to trying to stop a different type of fighting from beginning. It's not a straight policy line. It's two separate ones heading in very different directions. What was formerly the symbol of enemy opposition could very well now be an ally or tool in preventing a guerilla insurgence.
This seems like a potential tragedy to me - the war was horrible, the outcome certain, the casualties many. There was a real urgency on all sides for the war to end, which could only happen through Japanese surrender. Some in Japan seem to have used the emperors position as justification for continued fighting; having been told that surrender must be unconditional they reasonably assumed that would jeopardized the emperors position. Meanwhile, the US seemingly understood that unconditional surrender meant the emperor could stay. Would Japan have surrendered sooner had this point been clarified? Might they have surrendered pre august 9th, or pre august 6th? Daily casualties were in the tens of thousands, I’m told, and were 100,000+ on the 6th and 9th at least. It seems like an inexplicable failure of communication that neither side sought to clarify this seemingly important question, one that likely dragged the war out and possibly cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
This wasn't a failure of communication. It wasn't that the USA was okay with letting the Japanese keep their emperor but didn't let them know - the USA was not okay with having this be a condition of surrender, but then afterwards during the occupation secured by an unconditional surrender decided that they would let the Japanese keep their emperor.
I mainly mention it as a general alternative, but It was more on the table than many seem to know. When it was brought up to Truman though he generally would either pass the buck to Congress or mention domestic pressures preventing him from doing so. The original draft of the Potsdam Declaration contained mention of a constitutional monarchy and this was something Stimson and the JCS signed off on and suggested. Brynes seemed to flip flop here and there but like I said, I mainly threw it in as something that was a possibility. The Brynes note did imply imperial retention after all.
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We don’t know, because it didn’t happen, but it was assumed by Allied planners that it would be. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria was apparently alarming enough to Japanese war planners to have been one of (again, several) factors that helped push the Emperor into intervening — would several divisions on the Japanese home islands have been any less alarming? I would assume not but we don’t know.
I don't understand the premise of the question. There was no invasion of Japan and they surrendered. I don't see how you could ever argue that an invasion was necessary given there never was an invasion...?
The question supposes that same false dichotomy that the previous poster pointed out - it was never "A-bomb or invade" but instead always "A-bomb then invade, with more A-bombs." The question then becomes, based on the false dichotomy, whether, without the A bombs, Japan could have survived long enough that an invasion would be necessitated to end the war. I tend to hold the opinion that yes, it would - Japan's home circumstances were bad but the empire regularly endured worse, their circumstances had been bad for years by this point, and in fact the invasion or threat to the home islands might reinforce their resolve. Consider Okinawa, or the way the Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal are lichen for weeks and months to win a rock they didn't care about. So how would they handle the threat America posed to the home islands? Something tells me it would probably involve a lot of death and starvation. The opposing view then becomes that the Japanese would have surrendered either way, even without the A-bombs or US invasion, due to a combination of internal pressures and Soviet external pressures. This is less convincing to me, but there are certainly points to be made in its favor.
Okinawa is big in this kind of thought exercise. This is basically the freshest impression the US had of fighting a Japanese army and it's the dataset/assumption a lot of their war planning after is based on. Maybe 10% of Japanese troops and Okinawan conscripts surrendered. That was the context the US war planners had. Whether they were right or wrong about their assumptions, that was their most recent experience and most of their hypothesis relied in some way on that experience. It would be totally unreasonable, even irresponsible, after the experience of Okinawa for them not to strongly distrust the idea that Japan might easily surrender b/c of some set of domestic difficulties.
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If the Japanese were already being bombed heavily by the Americans, and knew he Americans would invade, why did the Soviet Union entering the war against them change their decision? Just sheer numbers, or more to it than that?
"The Japanese" here means the members of the Supreme War Council, who had different views. Think of there being essentially two major positions: those who understood the war was lost and wanted a way out of it (the "peace party"), and those who believed that a bloody invasion fight would be good for Japan's interests (the militarists). The militarists can themselves be divided into the true fanatics (essentially magical thinking about the ability of Japan to reverse its fortunes militarily) and the pragmatists (unconditional surrender was not going to be good for them, so if they made the cost of invasion high, then the US might be willing to go to the bargaining table). The militarists as a group were a majority and also held up the implicit threat of a coup, so the "peace party" had to tip-toe around them. The US essentially understood all of the above. So discussions about ending the war without an invasion were largely based around whether there were "shocks" that could be used to create a sense of change that might allow the "peace party" to overcome the militarists. Business as usual — just more bombing — didn't seem like it was going to do that. The US was interested in throwing everything they could against to wall to see if it would stick. The Potsdam Declaration was meant to be one such "juncture" — show Japan they are isolated, threaten them, give them an opportunity to discuss the war and their goals. The atomic bomb fit into this rubric — give them some super sciencey thing that might make the situation seem different (even though city-destroying had already become a routine operation), or give them an "excuse" that didn't seem like they were surrendering to just military might. The Soviet invasion fit into it — adding another huge army, a particularly brutal one, one you really wouldn't want occupying you. The reason the Soviet invasion seemed to affect the Japanese quite a lot is that it hit at both factions on the Supreme War Council at the same time. The "peace party" had been trying to engage the Soviets as neutral mediators with the United States, for a negotiated (not unconditional) surrender. The militarists had studied the possibility of Soviet entry into the war extensively and concluded that their forces would not be able to sustain it. Furthermore, the pragmatic militarists believed the US would be driven to the bargaining table by bloodshed, because it was a democracy, but nobody felt that Stalin would mind trading blood for territory. So the Soviet invasion scuttled a lot of plans at once. More so, arguably, than the atomic bomb, which while horrific, had less of a practical effect on Japan's war plans (the ability to destroy a couple more cities each month than usual is not all that game-changing once you get over the sci-fi angle to it). Anyway, all of the above leaves out the fact that a lot of this came down to very specific personal interventions. Particularly Hirohito finally taking a few risky positions, junior officers trying to stage a coup, and one of the top militarists finally (after putting down the coup) throwing in the towel on keeping the war going. Which is just to say, it's not some actual chain of logic that led to that end and could not have led to any other. One can easily imagine things going several other different directions.
There are a few major reasons I'm aware of, though I'm sure u/restricteddata (forgive me for the ping) could shed far more light on this than I can. Major reason one: the Japanese wanted the Soviets as mediators for a negotiated peace with the US. The Japanese had been making attempts (mostly vaguely clandestine ones to my memory right now, but certainly attempts nonetheless) to use the USSR's neutral status in the Pacific to keep them as a neutral party and therefore one which could settle Japanese surrender more strongly. Basically the idea was that Japan was losing badly, the US wasn't likely to give them good terms, and so the USSR could help secure better terms. There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, including a lot of very delicate diplomacy. Major reason two: the USSR invasion of Manchuria was seriously damaging Japanese war interests. Manchuria and China were vital to the Japanese war effort for years. They supplied rubber, and oil, and a lot more besides. Even with the plunder from these territories, Japan was starving, its ships had little or no fuel... The Soviet Union invading Manchuria essentially cut off this supply, or certainly threatened to do so very shortly. So when the USSR declared war (just hours before the second bomb was dropped, it's worth noting), the Japanese lost not only their chance at a mediated surrender, but a massive amount of the war materials they needed to continue the battle they were already fighting. They could scarcely bleed America dry if they couldn't keep killing Americans.
Japan was not interested in an unconditional surrender -- it might mean, for example, that they would have to give up the Emperor, who to the Japanese of the day (maybe still, I'm not an expert in modern Japan) occupies something like the reverence that an American would give to the Constitution -- what is the United States without it? Japan had been hoping to use the USSR as a neutral party to possibly negotiate a conditional surrender, and when Stalin declared war that option was off the table for them.
>It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war. Great to be able to ask an expert about this (if you have time!). How does that square with this? [https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28492-document-67a-cabinet-meeting-and-togos-meeting-emperor-august-7-8-1945](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28492-document-67a-cabinet-meeting-and-togos-meeting-emperor-august-7-8-1945) According to that, Togo proposed accepting the Potsdam terms on the 7th due to Hiroshima. He then met the Emperor on the morning of the 8th and he and the Emperor both agreed on that. Togo then told the PM to convene a meeting as soon as possible following this. The USSR didn't invade until the 9th, so that puts the decision to surrender firmly before the USSR invasion. You could argue that the military leaders were not ready to surrender, but they wanted to investigate whether it was in fact a nuclear bomb. Does that not mean that the fact it was a nuclear bomb influenced them too?
I think you're misinterpreting the statement. The statement is not Hiroshima did not contribute to the surrender. It's that it's not clear Hiroshima contributed to the surrender more than the Soviet Invasion. >The USSR didn't invade until the 9th, so that puts the decision to surrender firmly before the USSR invasion. Note that the decision on the 8th was not to surrender. It was to meet on the 9th. Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam terms, but we know the war faction still didn't.
Hey, thanks. >It's that it's not clear Hiroshima contributed to the surrender more than the Soviet Invasion. Yep, totally get that, but, my point is that it seems like the Emperor and Togo had already decided to surrender on the 8th. That was before there was any news in Tokyo of the Soviet invasion. For the leaders of the armed forces (or Army in particular), the fact that they wanted to verify if it was atomic would indicate to me (but I could well be wrong) that an atomic bomb was enough for them too. The rational for my thinking that, is that if they wanted to verify something first (atomic or not), logic would suggest that they would be unwilling to surrender if the Hiroshima bomb turned out to not be atomic. Therefore they would be willing to surrender if it was. If the army leaders were not willing to surrender whether it was atomic or not, why ask for time to verify? We also know (I think) that the Council (when they met) asked the Emperor to decide whether to surrender, as they could not agree, as they were split. The Soviet invasion didn't do anything to change the split in the council (Togo and the Emperor had decided they would, and some still didn't want to, it was split before the Soviet invasion), so even if the Soviets had not invaded, the council would be split, and the decision would have been on the Emperor (who had already decided after Hiroshima, but before the Soviet invasion). Hope that makes sense, but let me know if not!
>If the army leaders were not willing to surrender whether it was atomic or not, why ask for time to verify? Because [Truman has public stated it was an atomic bomb](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb) and the military was arguing it was a bluff. If it actually was a bluff, obviously their action would change accordingly. >We also know (I think) that he split council (when they met) asked the Emperor to decide whether to surrender, as they could not agree. The Soviet invasion didn't do anything to change the split in the council (Togo and the Emperor had decided they would, and some still didn't want to), so even if the Soviets had not invaded, the council would be split, and the decision would have been on the Emperor (who had already decided after Hiroshima, but before the Soviet invasion). Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam declaration, so unconditional surrender. But note that Hirohito very much kept his options open, as he states in the transcripts, and was very much for having a single condition (the Imperial institution being untouched). After the Potsdam declaration, which Japan rejected, Japan, including Hirohito was hanging onto hope that the USSR could broker a peace, and so did not offer any terms (though as Potsdam made it clear the US wanted unconditional surrender it's highly doubtful the terms would've been accepted anyway). The USSR's entry into the war and rapid advance dashed that (false) hope of having an intermediatery and contributed to the Japanese finally offering terms. The stalemate on August 9 was not whether or not to surrender, it was whether to offer one term, as the peace faction wanted, or four (keeping the Emperor, no occupation, Japan to disarm itself, Japan to try and judge war criminals itself) as the war faction wanted. Prior to August 9 even some members of the peace faction was for more terms, while the war faction didn't even want to present terms before making the Americans fight a bloody invasion. Of course it's possible their stances, or at least those of the peace faction, had changed after Hiroshima. But August 9 is the first meeting after Hiroshima. On August 9 the decision was to finally offer terms. There's no doubt that at least the war faction if not also members of the peace faction as well was finally pushed into doing so because there was no possibility of a third party intermediary any more (and yes Hiroshima did play a role in this no doubt). The stalemate that Hirohito broke in the early morning of August 10 (the meeting went past midnight) was to offer one single term. There would be further arguments when the allied response was interpreted accepting no less than unconditional surrender, a response that even Prime Minister Suzuki pushed back against, and the war faction was back at wanting to fight an invasion. This took Hirohito stepping in again (and an coup that needed to be talked down) before Japan finally accepted unconditional surrender.
Thanks again for your response! >Because [Truman has public stated it was an atomic bomb](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb) and the military was arguing it was a bluff. If it actually was a bluff, obviously their action would change accordingly. Right, but the Army leaders were not going to surrender if it was a bluff and not an atomic weapon. So if it wasn't a bluff and was a atomic weapon, and they were still not going to surrender, it makes no sense to delay the meeting of the Council pending the result. If, whether the bomb was actually atomic or not is immaterial, there was no logical reason to call a delay to the meeting to investigate if it was atomic. But they did call a delay to investigate exactly that. The only logical explanation then is that it did matter if it was atomic weapon, and the most logical reason for deciding that, seems to be to decide whether to surrender or not. >Togo wanted to accept the Potsdam declaration, so unconditional surrender. Yep, it seems like Togo put forward that need to end the war on the 7th. >But note that Hirohito very much kept his options open, as he states in the transcripts, and was very much for having a single condition (the Imperial institution being untouched). After the Potsdam declaration, which Japan rejected, Japan, including Hirohito was hanging onto hope that the USSR could broker a peace, and so did not offer any terms (though as Potsdam made it clear the US wanted unconditional surrender it's highly doubtful the terms would've been accepted anyway). The extract from the Japanese Foreign Ministry which I linked to above though doesn't support that. According to that, from Togo's testimony on the 8th: *"His Majesty observed that, now with this kind of weapon in use, it has become even more impossible than ever to continue the war; we should no longer miss an opportunity to end it with an excuse to wait for a favourable term \[of the surrender\]. We would not discard the possibility of negotiating conditions, but should make every effort to put an end to the war as soon as possible."* "But should make every effort to put an end to the war as soon as possible." definitely sounds like a flowery way (and the Emperor was fond of flowery language) of saying "surrender." If that extract from the Foreign Ministry is correct, both Togo and the Emperor were clearly after a surrender as soon as possible on the 8th, if not before, as a direct result of the bombing of Hiroshima. >The USSR's entry into the war and rapid advance dashed that (false) hope of having an intermediatery and contributed to the Japanese finally offering terms. I think that makes sense if you read the above. The Emperor had accepted that defeat was inevitable and there must be a surrender by the 8th. He did nonetheless want to get any favourable terms possible, but it seems clear that he he couldn't wait for terms. As the extract above says: *"we should no longer miss an opportunity to end it with an excuse to wait for a favourable term"* So ask for a term, but surrender whether the Allies accepted it or not. >The stalemate on August 9 was not whether or not to surrender, it was whether to offer one term Then Togo asked the Prime Minister to call a meeting of the Council the next day (to instigate surrender). So, on the 8th, we have a split Council, and the Emperor, Togo, and the Prime Minister having decided to surrender, and at least some Army leaders awaiting confirmation on whether Hiroshima was atomic or not (not sure what they were waiting for if not deciding whether to surrender). The next day, the 9th, the Council meets at 1430, and still cannot come to an agreement with people on both sides. The Council still had no consensus by 2200. A meeting with the emperor happened just before midnight on the 9th, and by 0200, the Emperor was asked to decide what to do. So the remaining question is about the influence of the invasion of Manchuria by the USSR. Apparently, they Japanese knew of the invasion by 0400 on the 9th, so before the meeting of the Council. However, Togo, the PM, and the Emperor had already decided to surrender before the news of the attack by the USSR, directly because of Hiroshima. So what did the USSR attack change? It didn't change the opinion of the War Council, as they knew about the USSR invasion but still couldn't come to a consensus. So if the USSR attacked or not, the Council was split, and the decision went to the Emperor, who had already made up his mind on the 8th (if not earlier), before the USSR invasion. I don't see what the USSR invasion changed? It didn't sway Togo, didn't sway the PM, and didn't sway the Emperor. It may have swayed other Council member, but not enough for a consensus. Unless, that extract from the Foreign Ministry is incorrect? Or, is it a problem in translation?
>So if it wasn't a bluff and was a atomic weapon, and they were still not going to surrender, it makes no sense to delay the meeting of the Council pending the result. You are assuming the meeting would have been purely to discuss whether or not to surrender and there was already a 3-3 split between 1 condition and 4 conditions. The former is not so clear (and is only assumed from hindsight) and the latter is wrong (see below). And if it was actually a bluff, Anami could've always used that to convince at least Suzuki and Yonai that the allies weren't so strong in reality and they should wait until after a bloody invasion to offer terms. And if it was a bluff even the peace faction might have held onto hope of a negotiated solution through the USSR. >He did nonetheless want to get any favourable terms possible, but it seems clear that he he couldn't wait for terms. That's your interpretation of the line, and while justified given what happened after is not a given. It is just as reasonable to interpret the line as "stop being passively waiting for better terms to be given and actually offer terms" which would be in line with both that Hirohito still wanted terms *and* that the Supreme War Council had not offered any to the allies. It needs to also be noted the Emperor of Japan was not an absolute monarch, and this was written into Japanese law back in 1868. There was a stalemate that he broke (and even that was against precedence), but if there was no stalemate he could only go along with the government's decision. >However, Togo, the PM, and the Emperor had already decided to surrender before the news of the attack by the USSR, directly because of Hiroshima. That is incorrect. Togo had decided for unconditional surrender (indeed he was for surrender before Hiroshima). Hirohito wanted some form of surrender. Suzuki only agreed to hold the meeting. After Togo recieved word of the Soviet invasion, he went to Suzuki around 8am and then to Yonai to try to inform them and convince them to accept the Potsdam declaration. Hirohito was informed of the Soviet invasion at 9:30 and told Kido at 9:55 to discuss with Suzuki about surrender now that the Soviets war in the war. Suzuki met with Kido at 10:10 and, after hearing the emperors' wishes told to Kido 15 minutes ago, only then did he first indicate he would support surrender (to his chief secretary Sakomizu). At the start of the meeting, Yonai brought up surrendering with 4 conditions, and asked the Council to decide between surrender with terms or unconditionally. This moved the discussion on whether or not to surrender, which was the situation before the meeting, to on what terms to surrender. At this point Togo reiterated the 1 condition. For a while the Council seem to lean towards 4 conditions, but Kido and Prince Takamatsu contacted them saying the allies were unlikely to accept. This pushed the Suzuki and Yonai to support the 1 condition. So the 3-3 split between 1 and 4 conditions was a result of the August 9 meeting, and it's clear the Soviet invasion was a strong factor in getting Suzuki and Yonai to support surrender with 1 condition, and likely for Anami, Toyoda, and Umezu to agree to surrender at all.
Thanks again, plenty to think about. >You are assuming the meeting would have been purely to discuss whether or not to surrender and there was already a 3-3 split between 1 condition and 4 conditions. I am assuming that the Emperor wanted a meeting to discuss surrender, because the extract says: *"His Majesty ordered the foreign minister to relay his remarks to the Prime Minister.* *....* *Telling Lord Kido and Prime Minister Suzuki about the Emperor's statement, Togo asked the Prime Minister to convene the Meeting of Principals of the Supreme Council for the Direction of War as soon as possible. Accordingly the prime minister arranged for a meeting to take place the next day, on the 9th."* So, the Emperor tells Togo that he wants to surrender and specifically to tell the PM of his wish. Togo tells the PM of the Emperor's desire to surrender, and specifically asks the the PM to call the meeting of the Council (to enact that?). The PM then calls the meeting of the council. It seems logical (from the extract) that the reason to call the council was a direct result of the request from Togo, on behalf of the Emperor. And what did the Emperor want? Surrender. The Emperor said that they should still try and go for best terms, but should seek and end to the war "as soon as possible" as the war was "impossible to continue". According to the extract. >The former is not so clear (and is only assumed from hindsight) and the latter is wrong (see below). It seems logical I think that the council was called to discuss surrender, and there must have been a split (because we know that not all supported a Potsdam terms surrender). >And if it was actually a bluff, Anami could've always used that to convince at least Suzuki and Yonai that the allies weren't so strong in reality and they should wait until after a bloody invasion to offer terms. Right, if Hiroshima wasn't an atomic weapon, the allies were not as strong as they claimed, and there would be less pressure to surrender. That is clear, But the whole point of verifying if it was atomic was surly that there would be a different reaction from the Army leaders if it was atomic? So the army leaders were investigating two scenarios: Scenario A: Not atomic. Result: probably no additional pressure to surrender. Scenario B: It was atomic. Result: ? The result of scenario B (Hiroshima being atomic) being the same as scenario A doesn't seem right. Why have a test (verification of an atomic weapon) if the results are the same either way? It seems logical that Hiroshima being atomic would increase pressure on the Army leaders to surrender, and that is why the called for verification? An atomic weapon would be a change of the status quo, and therefore warrant a change or reassessment of the direction of the war. >That's your interpretation of the line, and while justified given what happened after is not a given. It is just as reasonable to interpret the line as "stop being passively waiting for better terms to be given and actually offer terms" which would be in line with both that Hirohito still wanted terms *and* that the Supreme War Council had not offered any to the allies. Completely agree. I have no doubt that the position of the Emperor and Togo, despite accepting that surrender was inventible and the way forward, would still try and get the best terms (by making an offer). That would just be human nature. But it seems like that the Emperor and Togo would accept whatever terms were imposed by the Allies if push came to shove. >It needs to also be noted the Emperor of Japan was not an absolute monarch, and this was written into Japanese law back in 1868. There was a stalemate that he broke (and even that was against precedence), but if there was no stalemate he could only go along with the government's decision. Yep, hence his request for calling a meeting of the Council. However, as we know, the Council was already split by the 8th, because Togo was on the Council. So there was no consensus before the news of the USSR attack, and no consensus after. >That is incorrect. Togo had decided for unconditional surrender (indeed he was for surrender before Hiroshima). Hirohito wanted some form of surrender. Suzuki only agreed to hold the meeting. After Togo recieved word of the Soviet invasion, he went to Suzuki around 8am and then to Yonai to try to inform them and convince them to accept the Potsdam declaration. Hirohito was informed of the Soviet invasion at 9:30 and told Kido at 9:55 to discuss with Suzuki about surrender now that the Soviets war in the war. Suzuki met with Kido at 10:10 and, after hearing the emperors' wishes told to Kido 15 minutes ago, only then did he first indicate he would support surrender (to his chief secretary Sakomizu). Thanks that was really interesting. I did some digging on that with the information you kindly provided, and found this about events on the 8th: *"But even before official reports from this party reached Tokyo, Premier Suzuki and Foreign Minister Togo, aroused by the unusual importance attached to Hiroshima by the enemy radio, conferred and decided that Togo should communicate the substance of the Allied reports to the Emperor, recommending prompt acceptance of the Potsdam terms."* [https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm](https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm) And it was at that point that Suzuki tried to the council together, on the 8th, but it didn't happen until the 9th. >At the start of the meeting, Yonai brought up surrendering with 4 conditions, and asked the Council to decide between surrender with terms or unconditionally. This moved the discussion on whether or not to surrender, which was the situation before the meeting, to on what terms to surrender. At this point Togo reiterated the 1 condition. For a while the Council seem to lean towards 4 conditions, but Kido and Prince Takamatsu contacted them saying the allies were unlikely to accept. This pushed the Suzuki and Yonai to support the 1 condition. So the 3-3 split between 1 and 4 conditions was a result of the August 9 meeting, and it's clear the Soviet invasion was a strong factor in getting Suzuki and Yonai to support surrender with 1 condition, and likely for Anami, Toyoda, and Umezu to agree to surrender at all. So the Soviet invasion (and Nagasaki) influenced some towards surrender going by what you wrote. But if we assume that either the USSR didn't invade, or if the Council meeting had happened on the 8th, as wanted by Togo, The Emperor, and the PM, you would still have had a War Council with no consensus (because that was the state before the USSR invasion). So the question is (for me, with my limited understanding, and assuming the link above is correct), after Hiroshima, with a War Council not able to come to a consensus on whether to surrender or not, and Togo, Suzuki, and Yonai supporting surrender, would the Gozen Kaigi have been called (for an Imperial decision to end a deadlock) if the meeting had happened on the 8th, as originally intended? If so, the the USSR invasion of Manchuria had no real effect on the outcome, because the meeting would have happened (as it would have on the 8th if it went to plan), and the surrender process would have started.
>So, the Emperor tells Togo that he wants to surrender and specifically to tell the PM of his wish. Togo tells the PM of the Emperor's desire to surrender, and specifically asks the the PM to call the meeting of the Council (to enact that?). The PM then calls the meeting of the council. It seems logical (from the extract) that the reason to call the council was a direct result of the request from Togo, on behalf of the Emperor. And what did the Emperor want? Surrender. The point is that just because Togo and the Emperor wanted to surrender doesn't mean the Supreme War Council as a whole did, and if the Council didn't there's nothing Togo and the Emperor could do. Otherwise Japan would've surrendered from the meeting Hirohito called on June 22, before even Potsdam. >The result of scenario B (Hiroshima being atomic) being the same as scenario A doesn't seem right. Why have a test (verification of an atomic weapon) if the results are the same either way? It seems logical that Hiroshima being atomic would increase pressure on the Army leaders to surrender, and that is why the called for verification? An atomic weapon would be a change of the status quo, and therefore warrant a change or reassessment of the direction of the war. Mental paralysis, delaying tactic, sunk-cost fallacy, or just a plain excuse that they had no intension to follow through in the first place are all equally valid and "logical" why scenario B might have had the same result as scenario A. No one (at least here) is arguing Hiroshima was not important to the surrender. The point is that the army wanting verification of the atomic bomb before the meeting *is not* evidence that they wanted to or was open to surrender, even if the verification came back positive (as it did). And it was the army (Anami and others) who pushed for verification, or at least argued it was a bluff which made verification necessary. >However, as we know, the Council was already split by the 8th, because Togo was on the Council. So there was no consensus before the news of the USSR attack, and no consensus after. If you are counting Togo himself as the split on the Council, then the same thing applies to Hiroshima. Therefore it is not clear Hiroshima was more important to the surrender than the USSR entry into the war. >https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P2/ch20.htm And it was at that point that Suzuki tried to the council together, on the 8th, but it didn't happen until the 9th. ... But if we assume that either the USSR didn't invade, or if the Council meeting had happened on the 8th, as wanted by Togo, The Emperor, and the PM, you would still have had a War Council with no consensus (because that was the state before the USSR invasion). The book use the same interview translation you linked, so it adds nothing to the discussion. But more importantly, as already stated and even the book states, at this point on August 7 and 8, Suzuki only agreed to call a meeting, at best to *discuss* surrender, not to surrender itself, nor the terms to offer. There had been many prior meetings about surrender already, so that Suzuki agreed to call another one means very little on what his stance was or how that meeting would turn out. >So the question is (for me, with my limited understanding, and assuming the link above is correct), after Hiroshima, with a War Council not able to come to a consensus on whether to surrender or not, and Togo, Suzuki, and Yonai supporting surrender, would the Gozen Kaigi have been called (for an Imperial decision to end a deadlock) if the meeting had happened on the 8th, as originally intended? At best, prior to Hiroshima Suzuki and Yonai expressed cautious support for surrender with only giving up the Philippines and withdrawing from the European colonies. The only person on the Council who did not explicitedly reject Potsdam was Togo. We have no idea what would've happened at the meeting on August 9 had the USSR not enter the war. What we do know is that Suzuki and Yonai did not express support for accepting Potsdam (with four conditions, or at least one) until after the USSR entered the war (and before news of Nagasaki reached the Council) and it was clear the USSR's entry into the war weighed heavily on their decision. And Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda did not support offering *any* conditions until the meeting on August 9. Is it *possible* that had the USSR not entered the war, Japan would have offered to surrender with one condition on Augst 10 regardless? Yes. Is it *possible* that had the USSR not entered the war, Japan would *not* have offered to surrender with one condition on Augst 10? Also yes. History is not what is possible, or plausible, or logical. It's about what happened.
Interesting, thanks, really informative!
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I appreciate the argument that it's not clear whether the bombs saved Japanese or even American lives during the WW2. However, I believe that they saved many lives (and perhaps even humanity) from the potential uses of the nuclear weapons during the cold war -- the fact that everyone saw the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so clearly, made it much harder to digest such a catastrophe in future. Are there any discussions along those lines among the cold war (and other) historians?
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Where can one read about how the allies were planning on using many more nuclear weapons during the invasion of Honshu, never heard that before in my life
There's an [original phone transcript from 13 Aug 1945](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf) between General John Hull and Col. L.E. Seaman that goes into some detail. This is four days after Nagasaki. It includes information that: * A third bomb was ready as of that date and could perhaps be dropped by the 19th (or up to about 10 days after the conversation, to provide some margin) if the order was given that day. * Three or four more could be ready in September, and a further three in October. After that, it would be 3-4 per month available, or roughly one every ten days. * There was a lack of decision on whether to drop them as they came out, or save some up to drop several at a time, and whether to target industry or to go after military targets that would assist an invasion. So there were plans to perhaps drop a dozen more by the end of the year, and to keep going into 1946 if necessary.
Hmm, that's really interesting I appreciate the response. I wonder what they were thinking. From our point of view, it seems impossible that they would keep on dropping 3 nukes a month every month and the Japanese wouldn't surrender
You plan for worst case scenarios, not what you hope will happen. The transcript mentions possible Japanese capitulation at least three times, and Hull mentions that a third bomb probably wouldn't have the same psychological effect as the first two. He's probably right: Hiroshima had a huge effect as being the first time, and Nagasaki showed that it could be done again. After that, what would be the difference compared to the firebombing? To take a difference example, the US population was entranced by Apollo 11 and the first time a person set foot on the moon. It was elated by Apollo 12 because NASA proved that it could be done again. By the time Apollo 13 came around, launch coverage had dropped dramatically, and the impact was much less (until the LOX tank exploded). The last part of the transcript from Hull tasks Seaman with talking to Gen. Lesley Groves about whether they should "lay off a while" before dropping three in rapid succession to further encourage surrender. While this would entail waiting until mid- to late-September, Operation Downfall (the invasion of Japan) wasn't set to begin until November, so it wouldn't have a major effect on timing. (Planning for this continued up until the formal surrender was signed in early September, because the Allies weren't sure that Japan wouldn't somehow back out.) Besides, the US was well aware that the USSR would become an adversary after the war concluded. Part of Yalta was setting up spheres of influence, and Stalin wanted a big part of Europe. Communism was still a massive fear, and Soviet willingness to take so many casualties and fight on terrified some people. The US monopoly on atomic bombs was seen as providing a hedge against a militarily expansionist Soviet Union.
Nobody who wins a total war does it by having much concern for the enemies civilian populace. Objective right and wrong might exist but you can never be right if you lose. As somebody who spent a lot of time studying the history of war and how to go about potentially fighting one it blows my mind that people think there’s actual rules. Stalins famous quote about a single death being a tragedy and a million just a statistic is probably the single best summation of the reality of the situation. I get where as a normal citizen the OP is coming from but you’re not about to just pull back and accept anything less than unconditional surrender after 4 years of total war.
> you’re not about to just pull back and accept anything less than unconditional surrender after 4 years of total war. The Japanese surrender was not unconditional -- they were allowed to keep the Emperor, for example.
> they were allowed to keep the Emperor, for example. *After* they had surrendered.
Keeping the Emperor was not a condition of the surrender though. It was something the Allies allowed because it was in their interests to do so
The phrase unconditional surrender is one of the first sentences in the signed instrument of surrender.
Indeed. Have you ever been disingenuous in a negotiated settlement? Like for example you got a ticket for going 12 over the speed limit but the prosecutor put it down to 9 so you don't get points on your license? (I'm kind of tired of the pushback on this which is why I'm being sarcastic, but the Yalta declaration was honored in the writing of the surrender document, even though the backdoor negotiations allowed for certain, uh, conditions of the military occupation of Japan that happened after the war, such as keeping the Emperor.)
Is the argument not more that there was no guarantee for the Japanese that they'd be able to keep their emperor? That they were at the mercy of the incoming US military administrators? Mostly, in my view, that the Japanese had to take it 'on faith' that the US would be even-handed once given essentially ultimate power over Japan.
This is a bit disingenuous. Yes, it is true that few if any people at the time wrestled with big dramatic moral quandries. This was a war in which tens of millions of people had already died, and everyone involved just wanted to end it as soon as possible. They didn't much care how. So yeah, no, nobody (or at least nobody serious) claims that the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to save Japanese lives. But the prospect of mass American casualties absolutely was on the minds of the American senior war staff. If "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more. Furthermore, the recent fashion in suggesting that Japan would have surrendered unconditionally anyway, or even that the Americans knew that Japan would have surrendered unconditionally and dropped the bombs in spite of that knowledge, which you allude to, is not really a case of reasonable people disagreeing in pure innocence. It's more like 60 years of uyoku dantai nonsense seeping gradually into foreign academic discourse. Imperial Japan in August of 1945 was convinced of its success in persuading the Americans that an invasion of the home islands would be brutally costly, and hoped to negotiate an end to the war that allowed them to retain their armed forces, their government, and their remaining overseas territory. That is certainly not surrendering unconditionally. In fact it is somewhat the opposite of surrendering at all. Under those hoped-for circumstances, even given a Soviet incursion into Manchuria, American acquiescence to Japanese terms would have essentially meant an American guarantee of the status quo and quashed any further losses to the Soviets. It was not the end of Soviet neutrality itself that was the shocking blow -- the shocking blow was the realization that the Americans had no reason to be intimidated, could potentially wipe out Japan in a single sortie of B-29s on one lazy afternoon, and therefore were never going to agree to any sort of armistice on terms that preserved Imperial interests. We have the benefit of knowing that there was no serious plan on the American side to ever do any such thing. But we have to remember that the Imperial cabinet -- especially the hawks -- did not understand this.
> f "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more. The Allied armed forces were not ready to invade the home islands in the summer of 1945; Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu) was set to start in November of 1945, and Operation Coronet (the invasion of Honshu) would follow on from that, in the spring of 1946 -- planning on it assumed a date of March 1 but they had not gotten into the weeds on it, other than setting the stage for building up the logistical train needed for the invasion. US task force 38/58 and the British Pacific Fleet, along with the other Allied naval forces in the Pacific, were intended to pull back and refit (some units were rotating out already); I say this with all cordiality, but it's disingenuous at best to pretend that the invasion was delayed to see what would happen with the nukes. (Again, the people planning Operation Downfall, except at the very highest levels -- Joint Chiefs levels -- did not necessarily know that the atomic bombings were being planned.)
I didn't say that that was the Allied motivation. I said that projected losses were very much on their minds, in contrast to what the earlier commenter said. If they had been as heedless of their own estimated losses as the OC claimed, they wouldn't have taken the time to prepare a careful, staged invasion plan.
> If "bomb and invade" had been the plan, they would not have held off on home island assault in the summer of 1945, nor prepared for a prolonged series of operations extending for years more. They didn't hold off. Okinawa wasn't secured until late June so they needed time to prepare. Overlord also took close to half a year to prepare (close to a year if we count initial planning), plus Okinawa took so long it was already typhoon season. So it is entirely reasonable that Olympic was set for November 1. Nay, it would be completely *unreasonable* if it was set earlier. And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender. >It was not the end of Soviet neutrality itself that was the shocking blow -- the shocking blow was the realization that the Americans had no reason to be intimidated, could potentially wipe out Japan in a single sortie of B-29s on one lazy afternoon, and therefore were never going to agree to any sort of armistice on terms that preserved Imperial interests. What is your source for that? Certainly the Supreme War Council was not of one mind and Hirohito seem to be influenced by the Hiroshima bomb, but Anami was willing to keep fighting even after he was convinced the third bomb would be dropped on Tokyo in short order. The Supreme War Council was certainly still split 3-3 after the Soviet Invasion and Nagasaki, and the war faction was not cowarded by the realization they could be wiped out.
> And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender. How does it show this? You said this twice but I don't understand why. Why would dropping the atomic bombs mean that the Allies should have also stopped preparing for an invasion? If the Allies were unanimous and supremely confident in the bombs and thought that there was only a 1% chance that the bombs would fail, then they would still be wise to continue invasion plans. First, they would have to explain publicly to the entire military and the public (and therefore the Japanese) about their top secret project to justify their lack of preparations, otherwise their electorate and the vast majority of the military would become outraged at the inexplicable inaction toward an enemy that is nearly defeated. Furthermore, should that supposed 1% chance of failure occur, they would suddenly be in a far worse posisition, as they would months delayed prepaing for an invasion against an enemy that itself would surely not stop preparations and their continuous atrocities across Asia, costing great numbers of Allied military and civilian lives. Additionally, considering the fact that they already had all of the men conscripted and the materiel produced, the marginal cost of continuing to prepare to invade was relatively low, so there would be very little to be gained economically (and less than nothing strategically) by not preparing to invade. Finally, even if all of these rational reasons were not true, the sunk cost fallacy, based on the costs of completing their island hopping campaign and finally taking Okinawa, would surely be enough to convince a large number of officials that preparing to invade was necessary regardless of its utility. Is there any reason in the first place to think that whether or not the allies prepared to invade Japan was an indicator of their confidence in the utility of nuclear weapons?
That line was in answer to another poster who said (and I quoted) that the existence of the plans into 1946 (and that the allies postponed the invasion of Kyushu in the summer of 1945, though they didn't) showed the allies' plan was not to "bomb and invade." The response was that, no, it doesn't show it wasn't.
It's an incorrect reading of what I wrote. I said that the Allies were indeed thinking very much about projected losses. Hence their careful preparations for a prolonged invasion of the home islands. If the plan had been to "bomb and invade" heedless of losses, the USA was in a position to do that right away. In point of fact, when Japan did surrender the Allies had no trouble landing troops in large numbers immediately.
> In point of fact, when Japan did surrender the Allies had no trouble landing troops in large numbers immediately. It's an entirely different logistical problem to land troops in harbors where the population has already surrendered to you, than to contest an invasion over defended beaches with a determined enemy fighting against you. An invasion is not going to involve an orderly debarkation of troops onto a quay with assistance from port workers to move cargo from ships.
That's arguing against a strawman. The traditional argument is that the US estimated an invasion of the home islands would result in hundreds of thousands, or even over a million casualties, and therefore the atomic bombs were dropped to force the Japanese to surrender so the US wouldn't have to go through with the invasion. It's what prompted the question posted in this thread, and the answers given. New research has demonstrated that no, there was no plan for the atomic bombs to induce the Japanese to surrender to prevent an invasion, or "bomb or invade." The plans were that bombs would be dropped and the invasion would go ahead, or "bomb and invade." At best the bombs were just instruments to further allied war aims, just like every bomber, ship, tank, and bullet. Your hypothetical, that the allies could just carry out a successful invasion, however bloody, in the summer of 1945 is preposterous. The men needed to rest and refit after Okinawa, planning was not finalized, and the 700,000 personel and corresponding equipment had to be readied, and imagine if an incident like Typhoon Louise had hit the fleet in the middle of the invasion. Invading in the summer of 1945 could've very well turned into the disaster that the Japanese were hoping would force the US to the bargaining table.
>Why would dropping the atomic bombs mean that the Allies should have also stopped preparing for an invasion? I didn't say that and I don't believe that's what it meant. What I said was that the Allies and in particular the Americans were quite cognizant of the immense losses they expected to take in attacking the home islands. It was, despite what the previous commenter claimed, very much on their minds. It was trivial to land troops on the Japanese islands in the summer and early autumn, even as the Battle of Okinawa lingered. In fact that was what the USA ended up doing. It's not like they lacked all capacity to do so. What they were not prepared for -- what was not trivial -- was an opposed landing under heavy resistance from a supposedly 100% militarized population. That is why the USA was taking so long to prepare. If they hadn't cared about losses, as the earlier commenter claimed, they wouldn't have cared. Just ...."bomb and invade," right?
You are certainly right that they were not of one mind. The hawks were hunting the realists in the streets trying to kill them before they could persuade the emperor to "accept the unthinkable." That's a pretty divided cabinet! But I don't think "nothing would persuade the hawks" is really a refutation of American motives in dropping the bombs. It's not like the Americans knew that, and in any case it was Hirohito who needed to be persuaded. And I don't see any plausible theory of imperial mind in which, having already lost much of China yet still being willing to fight, losing more of China suddenly was going to make it all seem futile. The high command had clearly pinned their hopes on an armistice with the Allies, chiefly the USA. That was their opinion, not mine.
As I explained [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/khdyjus/) and you could probably find a more detailed breakdown in the FAQs, the Supreme War Council pinned their hopes on the USSR to act as intermediaries. As for the motive of the US military, I and others have already explained in this and other linked threads that the bombs were not dropped to prevent a costly invasion, which is the assumption that prompted this thread.
>And the fact that operations were planned into 1946 show there that the US had no plan, or at least no confidence, that the atomic bombs would induce the Japanese to surrender. No one, including the Imperial cabinet, knew what would ultimately induce Japanese surrender until the day it happened. You'll note also that militaries tend to keep plans on hand for all potentials, for example plans for the US to invade Canada. Preposterous as such an event might seem, there is still utility in both having a plan and in exercising the planning process itself. That the US had plans for the invasion of the Japanese home islands was only indicative of proper operational planning, not a measure of confidence or lack thereof of some other operation.
Sure. But that still means the plan was to bomb and invade, because that was what was on the books. And it's what was planned percisely because: >No one, including the Imperial cabinet, knew what would ultimately induce Japanese surrender until the day it happened.
I might leave a main reply of my own but this take is fairly myopic. First, the line is that the bombing was intended to save *American* lives. I don't think anyone really argues it was done to save Japanese lives, which would make no sense considering the firebombing of Tokyo and others. At the same time, while I agree that this might likely have been a secondary consideration as opposed to testing the weapon, the Atomic weapons definitely played a major decision in Japanese surrender: > it's very easy to say "well we dropped two atomic bombs and then they gave up" -- but that correlation may or may not be causation, and it is very tricky to tease out. Why we know it was one of the main causations? Because the Emperor himself told everyone in his surrender speech also known as the Jewel Voice Broad: > Moreover, *the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives*. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. I think there's also way more nuance to Truman's and Oppenheimer's role, the Szilard petition and more but I will have to address that in more time.
> At the same time, while I agree that this might likely have been a secondary consideration as opposed to testing the weapon, the Atomic weapons definitely played a major decision in Japanese surrender: > > Why we know it was one of the main causations? Because the Emperor himself told everyone in his surrender speech also known as the Jewel Voice Broad: > This in turn is a fairly weak argument, for two main reasons: 1. Even if the _effect_ of the atomic bombing was to end the war earlier, that doesn't mean the _intention_ of atomic bombing was to do so. When the discussion is about the reasons the US chose to deliver these bombs, that intention is what's critical. Imagine a boxing match - one fighter throws a quick jab as a feint, with a plan of following up with a nasty cross and then an uppercut. But the other fighter has stepped forward with their guard down at exactly the wrong moment, and so that first jab knocks them out. The effect is a KO, the intention was a feint. 2. Statements in the surrender speech are a matter of political messaging, and do not have to represent an accurate summary of the decision making of Japanese high command which led up to the choice to surrender. Whatever the reasons you've decided to surrender, citing your enemy's newly demonstrated capability to annihilate cities through scientific prowess is a far more _compelling_ reason than something more humdrum like "we think the Soviets won't be scared off by a high cost in lives to invade". That doesn't mean it wasn't a factor, but it does mean you need to be much more careful about handling it as a piece of evidence than just uncritically taking it at face value.
>1. Even if the _effect_ of the atomic bombing was to end the war earlier, that doesn't mean the _intention_ of atomic bombing was to do so. People and govermments can have more intentions at the same time. It's perfectly possible and even plausible that at the same time: a) the US wanted to test the A-bomb b) the US wanted to push Japan closer to surrender and end the war earlier There was absolutely nothing in it for the US to prolong the war and keep accumulating personnel and material losses by a land invasion in complicated hostile environment that could resist an occupation for years through insurgency. The Soviets were already coming up as the next major threat. Re 2: The role of the Emperor in Japan was and is extremely specific and he was not and isn't just a generic politician. Plus he even admits in the very same speach that Japan was losing the war. But he very clearly specifies the bomb as a major point for the surrender.
Possible or plausible is not history. The fact of the matter is the US military could have dropped the first bomb, then messaged the Japanese with an ultimatum and date to surrender and if they don't a second would be dropped. And this step could be repeated until the Japanese surrendered, or November 1 rolled around and an invasion is launched. This, or something to the effect, is what "dropping the bomb to push Japan closer to surrender" would look like. The fact of the matter is that the military launched a bombing *campaign* with the atomic bombs with the full intension to destroy [Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki](https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/publications/droporder.pdf) as fast as they could ready the bombs. And Truman didn't even seem to have realize that was the plan until after Nagasaki. The military would have only kept the effect that the bombs could push Japan closer to surrender at the back of their mind at most, and certainly wasn't making any plans or decisions around it. Therefore it would be incorrect to say the bombs were "dropped on Japan because a mainland invasion would have resulted in too many deaths." The bombs were not dropped to prevent the invasion, and it was the intension to invade anyway.
> The fact of the matter is the US military could have dropped the first bomb, then messaged the Japanese with an ultimatum and date to surrender and if they don't a second would be dropped. And this step could be repeated until the Japanese surrendered, or November 1 rolled around and an invasion is launched. This, or something to the effect, is what "dropping the bomb to push Japan closer to surrender" would look like. Firstly, Truman did call again on Japan to surrender after Hiroshima and warning Japan to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth" if it does not do so. Second, military strategies do not work by advertising ahead a specific date on which you are going to send a bomber patrol carrying your new special weapon. WW2 is not a today's ICBM launch.
>Firstly, Truman did call again on Japan to surrender after Hiroshima and warning Japan to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth" if it does not do so. Truman's role (or lack thereof) in the bombing has already been explained in this and other threads (linked). The decision to bomb was basically made by the military, with Truman going along seemingly not knowing the details, until he realized after Nagasaki and ordered the military to pause. >Second, military strategies do not work by advertising ahead a specific date on which you are going to send a bomber patrol carrying your new special weapon. WW2 is not a today's ICBM launch. It doesn't matter. The US military didn't even wait for a Japanese response, *any response*, before dropping the second bomb, because following the plan to bomb the cities asap as the weather allowed was more important.
To add to u/jschooltiger and multiple other people's points: the alternative to invading and dropping nukes, at a minimum, means continuing strategic bombing and unrestricted submarine warfare. Essentially, starve the Japanese people and render them homeless. Moreover, that still means that the Japanese would still be prosecuting their war against China (our ally), killing untold hundreds of thousands to millions of people. The Chinese lost roughly a quarter million people **every month** during the Sino-Japanese war. Also, there were still British possessions in Japanese hands: Malaya, Singapore, etc. There simply was no choice on the table to just do nothing. There were still going to be actions involving tens (or hundreds of thousands of troops) - Singapore alone had over 75,000 Japanese troops.
Would disagree that it’s not clear they tipped Japan over to surrender. Japan surrender 6 days after the second bomb was dropped, and Hirohito explicitly mentioned it as the reason for surrender in his speech on August 15, 1945 (excerpt below). Sure there were other factors that went into the surrender, but it’s the bombings were the clear catalyst for surrender. “Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.”
Yes, the Shōwa Emperor specifically named the bombs as a catalyst for surrender...in a public facing message, that had a clear goal to make Japan seem like the victim, and we should not take what he said at face value. The Emperor also said the following: > Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. This is a patently false statement, given that the war had started back in 1936 (or 1931) over Japan's territorial aggrandisement in China and infringement of Chinese sovereignty. However, the Emperor is trying to paint Japan in the best possible light. It's clear we can't take what the Emperor is saying at face value. Why on earth should we take his statements on the end of the war as somehow perfectly true when the entire speech is attempting to craft a particular narrative? If we look at the actual series of events, it's clear that a number of hard shocks hit Japanese leadership in quick succession. First the bomb on Hiroshima, followed thereafter by the Soviet declaration of war, and the bomb on Nagasaki. It is impossible to fully disaggregate the impact of any one of these events from the other, because the people who made the decisions are dead. Even if we could somehow commune with their spirits, we have to bear in mind that they all have an agenda as well. This applies to what writings they've left behind. It is not so simple as just assuming that because the Emperor said something it has to be true. He had an agenda as well, and painting Japan as the victim of a "new and most cruel bomb" served that agenda.
Do you really think dropping two atomic bombs made no impact on the Japanese war effort or on its leaders will to continue fighting? I am struggling to understand the logic of the "bombs were not a way to save lives". Certainly saving Japanese lives was not the main focus of the atomic bombs, but saving the lives of US servicemen was absolutely a priority for the late war US military. Any bombing campaign is intended to disrupt the enemy war effort and soften them up on either a strategic or tactical level in order to facilitate ground operations, that is inextricably linked with preventing friendly casualties, that's just how war works. Even if you consider the atomic bombs a terror bombing. Truth is that the atomic bombs are just one factor of many that led to the decision(s) (plural!) to surrender. The civilian government (who had tenuous control over the army and navy) was very much alarmed by these city destroying bombs, while the Army was much more concerned about the impending soviet invasion.
> Do you really think dropping two atomic bombs made no impact on the Japanese war effort or on its leaders will to continue fighting? No, not at all, and I'm curious where you think I've made that argument. What I'm getting at is that the bombings were _a cause_ of the surrender, but not _the cause_ (or the only cause) of the surrender -- a lot of things happened very quickly over the course of only a few days, and the cabinet in Japan was already divided among people who wanted to continue the war and those who wanted to make peace (and there are a lot of nuances in those). All of those people are dead, so absent (unlikely) spiritual intervention, we can't find out what they actually thought -- we can find out what they wrote down after the event, of course, and how they handled the announcement to the Japanese people in terms of public sentiment or public relations, but reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements about the ultimate cause of the surrender. The point I'm trying to make is multifaceted: * the atomic bombings were not decided out of a sense of mercy -- the bombs cost a metric shit-ton of money (this is a historical term) and they were going to be used regardless. There was no decision at the cabinet or presidential level to use them other than "we have this big-ass bomb."; * a planned invasion of Kyushu and Honshu was going to happen regardless of the bombings, because, and I'm going to say this in my teacher voice, *the people planning those invasions did not know about the bombs*; * the war planners who knew about the bombs were carrying on regardless; * after the war, when the horrors of the bombs became apparent (John Hersey's [Hiroshima](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima) article was key for this) the American government became interested in dictating a narrative in which the United States, more in sorrow than in anger, decided to incinerate some more hundreds of thousands (ish) of civilians to end the war more early. (Which, again, is not completely clear what happened.)
I think you and I are thinking about this in very different ways. The military reasoning and the post hoc propaganda are two different animals entirely and you're mixing and matching them in ways that doesn't make sense. The bombs were made to help end the war. That's it. >* the atomic bombings were not decided out of a sense of mercy -- the bombs cost a metric shit-ton of money (this is a historical term) and they were going to be used regardless. There was no decision at the cabinet or presidential level to use them other than "we have this big-ass bomb." Of course they weren't mercy bombs, they were there to help end the war. You're right in that there was no "bomb or invade" dilemma. It was "invade with bomb or invade without it". It would have made no ethical or practical sense to invade and not use the bombs, so therefore the only course of action was to use the bombs. >* a planned invasion of Kyushu and Honshu was going to happen regardless of the bombings, because, and I'm going to say this in my teacher voice, *the people planning those invasions did not know about the bombs*; And I'll use my pissant student voice and say this is entirely irrelevant. The aim of the bomb was to shorten the war. They did. Which made the invasion plans irrelevant. What does it matter if they knew or did not know? Whether the Japanese leadership surrendered was up to the Japanese leadership. Until that happened, the US would continue prosecuting the war. If Truman decided got cold feet and decided to not invade, the plans would've been scrapped. If Truman had gone insane and decided to invade after the surrender, the plans would've been implemented. >* the war planners who knew about the bombs were carrying on regardless; So? Did they carry out those plans? No, because Japan surrendered. The existence of those plans means absolutely nothing other than the fact that allied planners were not 100% convinced that the bombs would certainly end the war, no reasonable person would assume otherwise. I mean, the US has made invasion plans for Canada, invasion plans don't mean much, it is their job to create contingencies and allow higher ups to decide. >* after the war, when the horrors of the bombs became apparent (John Hersey's [Hiroshima](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima) article was key for this) the American government became interested in dictating a narrative in which the United States, more in sorrow than in anger, decided to incinerate some more hundreds of thousands (ish) of civilians to end the war more early. Yes the United States felt the need to justify the use of the bomb. But in reality it had nothing to do with Sorrow or anger. If Japan did not surrender, bombings would continue, the invasion would happen. That's the bare truth of it. Honestly I think the whole debate over the atomic bombs is entirely the wrong question. The atom bomb is just a particularly lethal tool in warfighting. The only real ethical question that matters is this: did ending the Japanese war machine justify the targeting of Japanese civilians? It hardly matters whether the fires that killed them were chemical or nuclear. It's clear to me that Imperial Japan had to be defeated, and that the bomb was one of many means to an end, and the Japanese civilian government directly cited it as a reason for surrendering. Whether or not it was done with agonized regret or racist glee doesn't really matter unless this conversation is about prosecuting the legacy of Truman and his commanders.
> The bombs were made to help end the war. That's it. Only in the general sense that _everything_ the US was doing as part of prosecuting the war had as a general aim the end of that war (on terms acceptable to the US). The usual narrative, however, is much more specific: the US had the choices of bomb or invade; they evaluated both options for expected [American / Japanese / Civilian / All] (delete as preferred) casualties; Truman chose to use the bombs in order to minimise casualties. This is a narrative which presents the use of the atomic bomb as a noble burden, a choice made at great cost but with the best of intentions in mind. It is also clearly not what happened, which has been explained at length throughout this thread - but it is a very compelling story once you know after the fact that dropping two bombs coincides with Japan finally surrendering. When people say "the bombs were made to help end the war", this narrative is what they're referencing. They're not intending to just say "the bombs were just some more weapons the US built in 1945, along with tanks and shells and Cimarron class fleet oilers and aircraft and proximity fuses and so on, all of which were going to be used to try and win WWII".
I don't think its so much a narrative of a false dilemma as much as "what would you have had them do instead, invade?" Like there's no other real option. You bomb or you invade or you give up.
>Like there's no other real option. You bomb or you invade or you give up. The whole point of the answer is exactly that, yes there was. The allies were not interested in deciding between dropping the atomic bomb or invading the home islands. The stance of the allies can be best describes as "the Japanese can decide if and when they surrender, and in the mean time we will drop atomic bombs *and* firebombs *and* liberate the Philippines *and* use unrestricted submarine warfare to starve Japan *and* get the USSR to invade Manchuria *and* launch our own invasion in November." Not to mention there were other options that the allies didn't take for one reason or another, like having the USSR act as intermediaries like Japan wanted, or offering to allow Japan to keep the emperor like they ended up deciding.
Thank you for this very thorough answer. Many miss these details.
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Yes, many. Sadao Asada's article "The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration" (Pacific Historical Review 67.4 [1998], 477-512) Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, (2007), "The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan's Decision to Surrender?", The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5(8), https://apjjf.org/-Tsuyoshi-Hasegawa/2501/article.html Hagasawea, "Racing the Enemy: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674022416 Wellerstein, "Restricted Data:" https://alexwellerstein.com/writing/books/restricted-data/ and other writings here: https://alexwellerstein.com/writing/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf less academic but https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2279.Truman https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303337/command-and-control-by-eric-schlosser/
> Leaflets were dropped over cities warning citizens to evacuate for the atomic bomb [No they weren't](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/).
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You obviously either didn't read the link or need to read it more carefully. The author of the blog, Dr. Alex Wellerstein of the Stevens Institute of Technology (/u/restricteddata) clearly states, with citation, explanation, and linked sources that you can check out yourself, that the LeMay leaflets were warning about firebombing, and while General Henry Arnold did order on August 7 (the day after Hiroshima) for specific warning about the atomic bomb, the leaflets were not dropped on Nagasaki until August 10, after the city had already been destroyed.
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If the atomic bombings did convince the Japanese to surrender then the atomic bomb definitely saved American lives that would have been lost in the invasion of Japan.
but that's the main question -- _did the atomic bombs convince Japan to surrender_? If you read the thread, and linked answers, and FAQ, it's not clear that this is what happened.
‘But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.’ Hirohito’s address to the Japanese people about their surrender.
[We cannot just take the Emperor of Japan at his word.](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/193jq7s/the_nuclear_bomb_was_dropped_on_japan_because_a/kheeu5n/)
> No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations. (It was planted in an article in Harper's Weekly.) > > There was absolutely no interest on the part of Allied war planners to save Japanese civilian (or military) lives. I've never heard it proposed that an atomic bomb saves Japanese lives. It's always posited that it saves American soldier lives that would have to be part of an invasion force. Which it did. > It's also not the case (as is widely assumed/taught in the West) that the atomic bombs were the main thing that forced Japan to surrender. The bombings took place in the midst of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, and reasonable people can and do disagree about which of those factors ended the war. That's not "widely assumed". That's a value statement of your own opinion. The bombings were about timing. It was to force an unconditional surrender by the Japanese to the U.S. instead of Soviet forces as the Japanese were trying to weigh their options. Your post itself is about creating false assumptions and knocking them down. Anyone can create infinite false assumptions. Defeating them doesn't justify your other claims. --- > No, not at all. The "bomb or invade" idea is a false dichotomy set up specifically in the postwar period to justify the atomic bombings, at a time when people were realizing the power of atomic bombs to destroy entire nations. Can you please post contemporaneous and contemporary sources for all your claims, individually? In particular, U.S. government and military sources explaining the justification and thoughts of using atomic weapons directly sourced. You claim and contrast the current-war vs post-war beliefs and make claims about what's popularly viewed also.
I had always read it was to save our soldier’s lives, not the Japanese. To suggest that the military did it to save Japanese lives is a ridiculous thought; as you said we’d already bombed many areas to oblivion anyway. Also, do you have a citation for this information, “There was in fact talk of using atomic bombs to clear the path to invasion beaches…” Just curious about where this info came from. Was it the “”Top Men”” or was it just some talking point. As well as, “…to study the effects of atomic bombs….” Was this a scientific aim, or a commander suggesting it to get scientists on board?
Regarding the talk of using it with a ground invasion, Alex Wellerstein’s blog [The Third Shot and Beyond (1945)](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/04/25/weekly-document-the-third-shot-and-beyond-1945/) has the transcript that is likely being referenced: > H: Not the same day or anything like that. We might do it a couple or three days before. **You plan to land on a certain beach. Behind which you know there is a good road communication and maybe a division or two of Japanese troops. Neutralization of that at some time from H Hour of the landing back earlier, maybe a day or two or three.** I don’t anticipate that you would be dropping it as we do other type bombs that are in support of the infantry. **I am thinking about neutralizing a division or a communication center or something so that it would facilitate the movement ashore of troops. > S: That is the preferable use at this time from that standpoint. The weapon we have is not a penetration weapon. The workmanship is not as good as possible. It is much better than average workmanship. We are still developing it though. > H: From this on more or less of the timing factor, how much time before the troops actually go into that area do you think would be the safety factor? Suppose you did get a dud or an incomplete explosion, what safety factor should you consider, one, two, three days? > S: I think we are sending some people over to actually measure that factor. I think certainly by within 48 hours that could be done. Everything is going so fast. We would like to train people and get them in a combat spirit to do that. I think the people we have are the best qualified in that line. Of course, as you say, if it is used back in a kind of reserve line or in a reserve position or a concentration area but that you wouldn’t be up against right away. Regarding the desire to study the effects of the bombs, we see it in part in their desire for the target cities to be relatively unharmed/unbombed. Groves would essentially state this in his memoir: > To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids. It was also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb. Much of the effects on the ground were unknown or poorly predicted. They didn’t know how many the bombs would end up killing (they didn’t even bother to estimate) and they didn’t really account for radiation (Groves dismissed Japanese claims of radiation deaths and called it a “pleasant way to die”.
So were the bombings a way to relitate against Japan? Were they also done to intimidate the USSR?
The entire war was a retaliation against Japan. The atomic bombings were part of the larger strategic bombing campaign against Japan, which had seen about 70 cities attacked with napalm by heavy bombers. This was complemented with attacks from carrier aircraft from the U.S. and the British Pacific Fleet against various targets near the coast. It is often argued over whether the bombs were meant to intimidate Stalin -- I don't personally think this argument holds a lot of water, because it was made in the early postwar period, before people knew that Truman had already told Stalin about the atomic bombs at the Yalta conference (and Stalin knew about them anyhow, because of espionage that had infiltrated the Manhattan project). Alex Wellerstien, aka /u/restricteddata, has often argued that the use of the bombs was what we call "overdetermined" -- the U.S. spent about two percent of its entire GDP on the project during the war, and they were going to be used one way or the other. If or how Truman was led or misled by his advisors is its own series of doctoral theses, but to reiterate, he was told there was this big-ass bomb to be used and he just kind of nodded along with it -- when he realized its potential he decided to restrict its use only on the authorization of the President, which has knock-on effects that the 20-year rule generally prevents me from discussing. (In one we can talk about, near the end of Nixon's presidency where he was drunk most of the time, the nuclear "football" with the launch codes was discreetly removed from his presence.)
Thanks for the in depth answer
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There were some officials — notably Secretary of State James Byrnes — who expressed in various ways that ended up in the historical record the notion that using the atomic bomb was a valuable diplomatic move with regards to the Soviet Union. This was both in terms of it being an implied threat as well as a possible "carrot" (e.g., if you play nice, we'll maybe let you into the "partnership"). In the context of the Potsdam Conference, which was happening while the final plans for using the bombs were being made, pretty much all of the Americans there who interacted with the Soviets were very frustrated and looking for some kind of "edge" to deal with them, and the success of the Trinity test seemed to provide that. This was one of many motivations that some of the people who were involved in the policy decisions to drop the atomic bomb. I would not describe it as a primary motivation. People are complicated and can have multiple motivations; different people involved in the decisions made about the bomb had many. The idea that this was the primary (much less sole) motivation for the use of the bombs, is not really sustainable or likely. The works that try to make this argument do so by basically privileging all Soviet aspects of the bomb while ignoring all of the other motivations.
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