Actually, upon further reflection none of this last post really matters ultimately (even if it is still interesting to discuss IMO), since it hinges on notions of preventive war, and that’s blinkered. Benny Franklin had it right, and the notion that there could be a “War to end all wars” is pretty damn disproved by now.
If it leads to war down the line, then you fight the war down the line. If you think the war is very very likely, then you very very prepare for it. But in the meantime, you make the peace. Right ?
Not at all. You are not considering “progress”. There’s a decent chance we can nuke-, chemo-, or bio-war ourselves into oblivion. No more people, no more war. Think positive!
You’re being far too dismissive of the seriousness of this coup attempt, particularly when comparing it to the Matsue incident. Of course they forged orders; they were carrying out a coup. Japan had a long history of Gekokujō which this is far more comparable to than Matsue. The May 15 Incident, February 26 Incident, and the Manchurian Incident. There is a certain degree of morbid comedy in how ineptly it was carried out, but the fact remains that they came close to murdering PM Suzuki, seizing the recording of Hirohito’s speech and taking Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Kito captive.
They *weren’t *promptly stopped or treated like kooks. They spoke to Anami, the Minister of War of their planned coup before carrying it out. Though he chose not to become directly involved in the coup itself, he took no action to stop or try to dissuade them from carrying it out, which was tacit support for it; not promptly stopping it or treating them as kooks. That he committed suicide after the coup failed leaving the cryptic note “I—with my death—humbly apologize to the Emperor for the great crime.” can be seen as further support for the coup had it succeeded, though losing the war may have been the great crime to which he referred.
There’s a great deal of difference between the societies. But I don’t think that WWIII was avoided because of the differences. War had changed. Both the US and USSR became aware of the potential threat of a nuclear war before they ever actually started shooting. Oddly, the peace may have largely been kept by the horror of a weapon for once. Both sides knew that if they got involved in a war directly with each other, the potential destruction of both of them in hours was possible. Even then, they got very close to going to war (insanely enough, over the placement of nukes). Obviously, past performance is no guarantee of future results. I don’t know if nukes would have been used if there hadn’t been Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I think it’s pretty likely that there would be a first use. It was just dumb luck that it ended a war, instead of beginning it.
OK, let’s go over this slowly:
Does any of this have a meaning? You talk earlier of lesser evil still being evil, but what exactly are you talking about? The war itself? Firebombing? Attacking civilians? You say most everyone were frothing at the mouth assholes, so it should be easy to point to specifics, otherwise what is there to debate?
What distinction/dichotomy? That we can’t pass judgment and that we should use modern sensibilities when we do pass judgment? Or is this an argument you are having with yourself, and the rest of us should step back and see who wins?
From what you said before: "At this point, even the more gung-ho of nationalists knew things were beyond hopeless, and further fighting pointless " then changes to “At this point, even the more gung-ho of nationalists knew things were beyond hopeless, and further fighting wouldn’t have reversed the course of the war” Is this correct? I’ll quote myself
And “some” is generally not the word used to describe the a great deal of the ruling oligarchy, including the most powerful member of the government and what appears to be the majority of the IJA leadership. These were the people leading the country and the war. And most of them were committed to fighting to the bitter end in the belief that if “they killed enough, a little more, just a little more and they’ll cave for sure.” This sentiment was so strong that the emperor didn’t even us the word “surrender” in his address.
Give me something to work with, please. In the essay, the author points out the difference in attitudes between those who were on the front lines and those who criticized from the safely on not being in harm’s way. While you claim to not be critical, you’re using terms such as “frothing at the mouth assholes” and while that must be a term of endearment in your neighborhood, it certainly doesn’t convey admiration to your readers.
Is anyone directly calling you completely retarded? It’s not the details which matter, as can be seen with Dissonance’s minor error. Yes, he said “cabinet” when it should have been Supreme Council" but he got the gist completely correct. I’m not seeing that in your arguments.
To be honest, it’s hard to follow exactly what you are arguing.
I have serious doubts about how effective grandmas would be against the Marines, but as your wondering of the morale of the army, what exactly are you wondering? That suddenly the fanatics fighting to the death just months prior, in Okinawa (which wasn’t even Japan proper) that these fanatics would simply roll over when the US Army comes onto their home turf? That the thousands of suicide pilots are suddenly going to get cold feel? And you get defensive when you’re not treated seriously.
Now we come back to “modern man” and what exactly would we do if faced with an enemy who was fighting a total war against us? Is it that we are really better or that we just don’t have enemies as powerful? More below in response to another comment.
Help me out here. Is there anyway to distinguish this comment from Monday morning quarterbacking when we base our answers on the known outcome of things? This reminds me of how Mr. Future Man in SNL made his money, from tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. A more satisfying answer would be why they shouldn’t have worried, given the long history of Japanese ultranationalists assassinating prominent leaders and threatening others, including naval admirals. The coup leaders were looking for Kido in the imperial palace and would have assassinated him had they only found his hiding place. oh god. This is another rabbit hole.
Again, nonsense. There is strong evidence that atomic bombs set things in motion for the surrender of Japan.
:dubious: So you are going to allow them to keep Korea and Taiwan?
You are also suggesting leaving in place a group of leaders who were committed to dominating Asia, allow them to reset the clock, regain their strength so they can go after China again? You allowed above that you may be possibly naive. We can safely eliminate that qualifier.
What is this “modern people” and what exactly are our modern morals? Avoiding civilian deaths? That is a luxury which we have now because of our overwhelming military superiority as well as modern guidance systems on our weapons. The decision by the US to firebomb Japanese cities was based on the situation present in the midst of a total war, given no other alternatives.
Define “modern people” as to what exactly how we are different than in the 1940s if we were faced with total war in which killing civilians was a requirement in order to win.
Sort of like they left Korea, Taiwan, China, the French Indochina, the Philippines, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and the US alone. OK.
Grrr. Didn’t finish this.
Give me something to work with, please. In the essay, the author points out the difference in attitudes between those who were on the front lines and those who criticized from the safely of not being in harm’s way. How different are your arguments that we have “modern” morality, when the primary difference is circumstance? If you are claiming a better morality for “modern” people, what is that morality and how do we know its existence with any degree of certainty without a true test?
It’s damn easy to laugh at total war when one isn’t facing a vicious enemy who can only be stopped at great cost, isn’t it? To talk of a higher morality when there is no need to burn babies to ashes and starve grandparents. What wonderful people we must be now.
Or am I’m missing something?
I’m officially tired of this. I’m fine with spirited disagreement, but when you don’t pay attention to a word I write, what’s the fucking point.
Not directly, no.
Well, naturally. When I write “restitution of all land”, that’s implicit, as is ceding California and Australia.
Yes, disarmament generally means patiently, and in a spirit of sporting fairness, letting an arms race resume and the country remain on war footing.
Hardliners in Japan considered Korea and Taiwan to be part of Japan. Both of these were territories of Japan in the time you specified.
It’s pretty much a given that any agreement which the ultra nationalists would have agreed to would not have allowed a total disarmament forever. And, let’s compare this to what you wrote before:
in which you don’t seem to be denying the possibility.
I’m like Tokyobayer. I don’t get your point(s). Seems to me the gist of it boils down to “if things were different, we coulda/woulda/shoulda behaved differently”.
Thats not exactly a massive revelation. And more importantly, it doesnt address the actual topic at hand.
Maybe you’ve got an interesting point in your mind, but I can’t figure out quite what it is from what you are posting.
Put me down in the same category. You seem to be a large part of second-guessing and a part: “if everyone was nice to each other we wouldn’t have wars”.
Your handwaving dismissal of things like the coup attempt shows a real lack of understanding of Japan at that time.
I was “officially” tired of the “let’s blame the U.S. for ending the war quickly by using an atomic bomb” tirades decades ago. Doesn’t stop me from occasionally participating in them though. 
(FYI - The “act” of participating in a conversation or debate concerning history doesn’t mean you’ve actually won it. It’s either a discussion of history or of trying to convince others that you’re more right than they are.)
Your biggest obstacle seems to be that people “have” paid attention to the words you’ve written, including me, and find your train of thought or intention difficult to follow. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
They could have considered them to be the Emperor’s favourite tea set for all I care. Dealing with ogres is one thing, but feeding them ?
Yes. But it would have conceivably brought the boys back home earlier, ended the fighting in China earlier, given the US&Russia a tremendous head start on nuclear deterrence and so on.
You, and the essay you link, insist on ending the war ASAP being one of if not the most important consideration in warfare. I tend to agree. Preventing a distant future war would then be strictly secondary to that, yes ? Even more so that they foresaw such a war was already in the cards (on two parallel fronts even - vs. Russia, and the decolonization front). I mean, that essentially goes back to what I was saying about re:the conflicting, mutually exclusive natures of the two goals - bringing the boys back home, or justice. Switch justice with “prevent a future war” or “set up advantageous conditions for the next war”, you still have two conflicting goals, right ?
So it’s intriguing to me why the Allies didn’t even *attempt *brokering a punitive armistice w/ Japan, if only to open up their options and gauging where they were at.
Yes, “not a repeat of Versailles”, that’s obvious. Humongous crimes that hid even bigger ones, OK (but then again, they had *already *made a deal with another humongous devil. In what seems to be the WW2 leitmotiv, “what’s one more ? what’s one worse ?”). Another factor I can guess at from here is the notion not to give Japan’s leadership any reasons to hang onto their delusions.
But surely they must have considered that terms and conditions even harsher than those of Versailles could extremely likely give rise to the exact same sort of deranged revanchism as soon as their respective occupation(s) were over, free elections and “remolding the country” or not ? And that, had the Wunderwaffe not done the trick, then even with the Russians dealing with the mainland, they were up a serious creek by to their own estimates ?
None of this has bearing on the droppage of the A-bomb but… still, the notion of resolutely setting yourself up to losing millions of yours, of gearing up to depopulate the entire country to the last, all for the sake of *potentially *avoiding a *possible *future war ? And this when, as has been pointed out earlier, in the imminent power struggle between the two new superbig dogs, even an unevolving Emperor of Japan would have somewhat predictably fallen in with the capitalists (albeit with great awkwardness, one expects :)) ?
Tell me again how that’s not some kind of crazy ? M.A.D. makes more sense to me than this notion, and that’s… yeah.
And then I wrote:
Do you strongly disagree with this, and if so why ? Be it in the strict context of Japan, or war in general.
That’s because, poring through the thread again, I realize now that I completely lost track of it myself halfway through.
My original intention was to examine the motivations and rationales of people who had very set (and documented, and more knowledgeable than me) opinions on the matter (particularly those who do play the “what would I have done” game) to try and understand them better - and asking questions was to be a way to let them develop their points, prod at the apparent contradictions or the stuff that didn’t make sense to me.
Along the way I got waylaid by my less-than-humble self into something not entirely unlike ignorantly JAQing off and trying to *give *the learned folk answers instead. Which is pretty darn dumb and arrogant. Sorry about that.
In my defence, that’s not exactly a low bar. WW2’s been done and then some, hasn’t it ? 
Nope. But do you feel like the OP’s question hasn’t been addressed ?
You do get that was sarcasm though, right ?
And I’ll say it again, for what seems like the millionth time: I. Don’t. Blame. The US. For dropping. An atomic bomb.
Is this a joke? Feed them? They took what they wanted, killed anyone who got in their way, and left the locals to fend for themselves or starve to death.
Then what exactly are you saying? Are you saying the war could have been ended sooner had the Allies been better at diplomacy? If not, what is your point?
Any deal that would have left Korea in Japanese hands would have been feeding them, is what I meant.
The deal that I’ve been outlying so far is not one that I assert the Allies should have made, but the terms of an armistice I think I could conceivably have lived with if they had made it. Is that clearer ?
No point. Genuine question, one that has nothing to do with diplomacy. It’s about the decision-making process, and the fact that there was no plan B.
If Potsdam hadn’t been enough threat, they were ready to drop the atom bomb. If that hadn’t been enough, they were ready to launch the invasion. The invasion would have continued until the last Japanese was dead, or they surrendered totally, however many bodies that would have taken on either side. No deal, of any kind, ever, because at that point there was no real possibility of the Allies losing and it was just a matter of time and pressure. All those people, reliant on the odds of a game of chicken being played with people who had a death wish.
How is that kind of determination, that readiness to match anyone madness for madness not also insane ? How do you square that with the desire to just end it and bring the boys home, even if it is at the cost of a the first compromise you can bring yourself to accept ?
I dunno. It applies just as readily to all wars, I suppose. I’d just never thought about it that way.
Might be more straightforward to just run through the logical path I’m taking step by step than asking why they did not follow it.
- The primary concern is to end the war. Secondary is to get what you want.
- The fastest way to end the war is to reach a compromise with the enemy that both can live with
- The only way to get them to back off from what they want, and agree to some of what you want is to keep fighting, and assessing if their demands have lowered, or their agreements increased, at turning points in the war
- The war should therefore end as soon as the fluctuating status of the compromise being floated pegs on the combination of the highest you’re prepared to give up, and they give the lowest you’re prepared to accept, or better if the situation/enemy allows it.
However
5) The Potsdam declaration demands everything and gives nothing. It is no compromise at all.
6) This is not something Japan, or any country, could ever agree to without fighting to the very last of their ability, which Japan was a lot more eager to than is reasonable
7) This involves a lot more fighting
8) In the event that the “twin shocks” are not enough, this will involve a bloody invasion which, apart from taking a staggering toll in lives, pushes the end of the war way further back
9) This is in contradiction with point 1)
10) There’s no walking back from Potsdam
So what gives ? Doesn’t the combination of 6) and 8) make it a pretty sizeable gamble ? Why not drop, 3), drop again if not 4), 3), invasion if STILL not 4) ?
Because their leaders were so very evil and so very untrustworthy, there was no desire to compromise.
You seem to be working on the idea that dropping the bomb was somehow wrong, that is was something to be avoided at all cost, even if that means compromising with evil.
In 1945 the bomb was just another weapon and the Japanese were the enemy, and enemy that would have happily destroyed our way of live, enslaved and tortured our men, raped our woman and performed atrocities on the children.
Yes, in the 1950’s after the USSR and the USA both assembled a nuclear arsenal capable of ending civilization- then we decided- wisely- that “the bomb” was a force for evil and something to be avoided at all costs. This was not true in 1945.
It was a tool that ended the war with surgical precision, compared to any other means.
It was the very best choice. Diplomacy would have just left a great evil in power.
I think that 1 is obviously wrong. Ending the war is not the primary concern. If it was, they could’ve simply allowed Japan to keep her conquests, said “okay, no more”, assumed a strong defensive posture, and quite likely seen an end to the war in the East. You make “get what you want” sound like the axis and allies were negotiating a sale, with each side’s ends equal in moral value.
The primary goal was to achieve a just and lasting peace. “Just” means that Japan’s expansionist aims are frustrated and rolled back; “lasting” means Japan is disarmed and the people who started the war are, at the very least, out of power. This is why a negotiated end to hostilities in 1944 isn’t in the cards: it’s nowhere near to meeting that primary goal.
“End the war” comes up in terms of the question “now that we’re in a position to end the war while achieving our primary goal, how do we do it with least cost to ourselves?” Dropping atomic bombs has the lowest projected cost in lives, both allied and Japanese, compared to invasion or blockade. It’s not more complicated than that.
And I understand, Kobal, that we’re not talking about the actual participants, but some sort of hypothetical, current day participants holding substantially similar views to us who are sort of dropped into the situation. I would put “achieve a just and lasting peace” as primary goal against your “end the war” goal any day, even as a contemporary goal. Failure to end the war creates a moral hazard for expansionist tyrants, which guarantees war down the road. And a peace that doesn’t last simply defers the corpses, and likely increases their number because time passes, armaments are restocked, and new battlefields found. It’s immoral to simply end the war. This doesn’t justify preventative war, but it does justify finishing it correctly.
This. actually everything in both posts, especially the rejection of Assumption 1.
Excellent posts. I came here to say something like you, but undoubtedly not as succinct or coherent.
I will add that one does not negotiate with toddlers or tyrants without anticipating that any sign of budging is opening a door for hours of screaming as they believe they now have a chance to gain more. You may have only one piece of candy and no more is the message they need to hear. Not, how much candy will it take to quiet you?
For Kobal2, I still do not understand what you mean by “modern people.” As many of us have stated, the decisions were made because of the circumstances, not because these were people living 70 years ago. Please define “frothing at the mouth assholes” along as well so that we can get an idea of what you are trying to argue.
If that is not your argument anymore, then also let us know.