Russia keeps land that they occupy . All those eastern block countries and a big chunk of Germany. All occupied for almost 45 years.
Japan could have lost territory to Russia.
What territory and how? how would the Soviets have invaded Japan? What risk did the Soviets pose, more than the US and the bombs?
The Allies had already said unconditional surrender, and loss of all conquered territories. What risk did the Soviets pose that made Japan surrender?
Here’s a pretty good discussion about the effect of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the Bombs combined on the Japanese decision to surrender.
The author takes the position that it was more the Soviet invasion than the Bombs that led to the decision to surrender at that particular moment.
But even more to the point, the Soviets had represented the last hope for a diplomatic solution, from Japan’s point of view.
Thank you! that looks very interesting.
I’m about two-thirds of the way through Gar Alperovitz’s book *The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, *a substantial 1996 expansion of his 1965 work, taking advantage of the tremendous documentary evidence that has been declassified in the decades since public opinion in the US was deliberately fed the “military necessity” justification, shaped by deliberate omission and Cold War–era misdirection and shadings.
I began it confident of my opinions on the subject, having read many biographies of (and memoirs by) Truman and his Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes. But those were mostly written during the Cold War and before much of the documentary evidence was declassified. Alperovitz is methodical and painstaking in examining the chronology of statements, comparing one official’s recollection against another, examining phone logs, and noting unusual gaps in our knowledge of how the decision was reached. It becomes pretty clear that “military necessity” isn’t the central tenet most Americans think it was: no American military leader (except possibly Gen. Marshall) believed use of the bomb was necessary, and some took extraordinary steps to let Truman know that. It was well-accepted in Washington that some combination of modifying “unconditional surrender” with a provision for the Emperor, and/or the threat of Russian entry into the war would prompt Japanese surrender before autumn. What worried Byrnes and Truman was how the Soviets were behaving in Eastern Europe, a situation that was getting worse during the spring and summer of 1945.
It wasn’t so much that the Russians would take parts of Hokkaido or Honshu, but they would tie up a huge part of the Japanese army in Manchuria, preventing them from being used for defense of the home islands. By June 1945, the US Navy could also prevent them from coming home, and the necessity of Russian entry into the war faded rapidly.
The Japanese predicated their attack on the rest of Asia as being a defensive measure against the spread of Communism.
The Communist party started in Japan in 1922 and three years later the Japanese established the Peace Preservation Law, which made it illegal to advocate any position which encouraged abandoning the concept of private ownership.
In China, Mao was tearing the country apart and killing the elite. Lenin had already taken over Russia and had the Czars murdered. I doubt that the Japanese leadership, nor the Emperor, were too thrilled with the prospect of a Communist revolution.
I remember reading a quote from a Japanese author who was favorable to the war, and he said something to the effect of, “If you live in a house and your neighbor is a danger to the other people in the neighborhood. He might light his own house on fire and burn down your house as well, for example. Then you are justified to go over to your neighbor’s house and to beat him, and control his actions, for the defense of your own home.”
Now, in reality, I think that the main goal of attacking China was simply to grab land, while things were destabilized by Mao and the Communists. But there was a genuine fear of Communism and I think that the leadership of Japan were reasonably fearful of what a Communist Japan would be like, even beyond their own deaths at the hands of the Russians.
In a sense, that’s rather self-serving, since it’s not like the Japanese were anything less than horrific to the people they conquered. I’m not sure that the Communists were really much, if any, worse than the Japanese were. But, then again, it’s not like the Chinese got any better from Mao, and surrendering to the US did save the Japanese from Communism.
I feel like it’s worth noting, though, that there may be a third reason the Japanese surrendered. By the time the war ended, the 60% of Japan’s military dead were due to starvation. Some of their soldiers even began to cannibalize PoWs or anyone they could find. In the mainland, the average person was eating at 78% of the minimum caloric intake to continue living, and it’s likely that most of the population wouldn’t have survived through the winter, since there were no food stores left.
It really was a good time to quit.
From most of the reading I do in this area, it appears to me that many Japanese historians would like to make a case that the dropping of the atomic bombs was unnecessary. That would be one good reason to choose the Russians.
Could be. It also later occurred to me that the Japanese are, still, wary of the Russians today. I believe I have been told that the second most common second language in the Self Defense Force is Russian, rather than English, as that’s who they always expected to be fighting off. So, maintaining a general preference for them as the enemy, through history, might make sense.
Except for the dropping of the bombs to have been unnecessary , the US would have had to known that the Soviet declaration of war was likely to be enough to persuade the Japanese to surrender. Was there anything in the record, known to US intelligence, that would have supported that conclusion?
The Hiroshima bombing was a few days before the Soviet declaration of war, and the Hiroshima bombing was a few days after it. Was there anything known to the US before or after the Soviet action that suggested a war with the Soviets would be enough for Japan to cave?
I concur with your thinking Northern Piper. I was responding to Sage Rat’s post on why Japanese historians may want to argue that the atomic bombs weren’t necessary. I believe they were.
I sometimes wonder if Japan explicitly or implicitly requested the bombings in order to give the win to the allies and also have that face-saving excuse of “Look, we’ll get flamed by this ungodly new weapon if we don’t.” Or if it was recognized by Truman or someone else in the cabinet that the emperor wanted to end the war, surrender even, but needed a face-saving motivation like getting nuked.
Why is this in GQ, and especially, why is this in GQ if you have factually incorrect statements?
“More modern research” does not, in fact suggest such a thing. It’s very well documented that they weren’t and to assert such a thing is absurd
So, cite?
The GQ answer is that no, there is no evidence which definitively suggests that. Squinting at tea leaves may provide a different answer. Certainly there were discussions of how the Soviets may react but the primary purpose was simply to end the war. Had there been no question of the Soviets, Truman would have made the exact same decision at the exact same time.
To suggest otherwise is silly.
No, this is all utter trash and not
worth rebutting.
We didn’t have enough material to do all of that.
My bolding.
As the author which kunilou links to points out (I didn’t click on this particular article, but I’ve read a lot from him) it was not that the Japanese feared a Soviet invasion (which they would not have, since the Soviets lacked the ability to invade), but that the Soviet entry into the war eliminated the one excuse which the three hardliners in the Supreme War Counsel were using to dodge the question of negotiating an end.
The hardliners never would have given up, had the Emperor not intervened (an act which was contrary to the Meiji Constitution) they would have prevailed.
We’re so far out of GQ territory here, but IMHO, Japan was headed for martial law and then it may not have ever surrendered.
The problem with this discussion, as with anything else this complicated, is that it really can’t be discussed in sound bites.
For the discussion of the surrender of Japan, one simply cannot talk about “Japan” as a monolith. We talk about seven people. There were two rival groups of three each (the Big Six) in the Supreme War Council: the “peace faction” and the die hards who intended to do just that. The later never were going to give in.
The Foreign Minister, and the only civilian, had seen the writing on the wall. He wanted to quit before everyone was killed. The not that strong Prime Minister and the Navy Minister were also on this camp.
General Anami, the War (Army) Minister, and the most member of the government (outside of the Emperor, who had more theoretical power, but was usually unable to act on it) led the hawks.
In addition there was the Emperor and then the people who he looked to for advice.
The Big Six had been split before the bombing and neither the Soviet entry into the war nor the atomic bombs changed that. What did change was the Emperor’s decision to intervene. There are no GQ answers to that.
Then after the intervention, Gen. Anami decided not the lead a coup for reasons again, which are not GQ.