# Why did the Japanese surrender to the US in WWII? The A-bomb or the Russians?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-japanese-surrender-to-the-us-in-wwii-the-a-bomb-or-the-russians/252437>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 27, 2004, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-japanese-surrender-to-the-us-in-wwii-the-a-bomb-or-the-russians/252437 "2004-06-27T20:09:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2004, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-japanese-surrender-to-the-us-in-wwii-the-a-bomb-or-the-russians/252437/21 "2004-06-29T17:22:25Z")

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Well, think about it from the other point of view. What if the May offer had been legitimate and accepted? How many more Americans died in between May and September? It sure as heck wasn’t zero. That’s why the debate still matters.

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**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-japanese-surrender-to-the-us-in-wwii-the-a-bomb-or-the-russians/252437/22 "2004-06-29T17:33:19Z")

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> [@paperbackwriter](#):
>
> And lastly, the contention by returning veterans that there were thousands of suicide boats and kamikaze planes is indeed correct. What is commonly forgotten is that they had almost no fuel for them, rendering them superfluous.

Surely many of these wooden boats were _sailboats_\*. Unless you think that the wind was going to stop somehow, they would still have 'fuel".

War diaries from american submarine captains, for example, are full of reports of seeing japenese wooden sailing vessels around the islands. Mostly fishing vessels, though some were fitted with radios and were obviously watching for submarines. They also saw these wooden boats being used for shipping, because so many other japanese boats had been sunk. This was sometimes a problem for them, because these boats were too small to waste a torpedo on, and wooden boats were hard to sink with the undersized guns on a submarine.

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**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2004, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-japanese-surrender-to-the-us-in-wwii-the-a-bomb-or-the-russians/252437/23 "2004-06-29T17:49:38Z")

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I don’t think you have been reading the same records I was. This was a few years ago, but I remember going through Admiral Lockwood’s (COMSUBPAC) records at the National Archives. Towards the end of the war, there were frequent reports along the lines of “Sighted sampan, surfaced, sunk same with deck gun.” The _Gato_ class had a 3" deck gun, plenty big enough for these vessels.

And what sail-powerd suicide boats are you talking about? This is the first I’ve heard of that idea. The suicide boats were supposed to attack _en masse_ at high speed and crash into their targets, i.e., they were [power boats](http://www.ww2pacific.com/suicide.html):

> [@](#):
>
> Shinyo – Motorboat with explosives in the bow. Great numbers (6,200 Navy, 3,000 Army) were built and stored in caves for the invasion. 400 were at Okinawa and Formosa; thousands waited in the coves of Japan proper. The speedboat had one man and, typically, two depth charges as explosives.

If you have some source for the idea, please let me know. Otherwise, it sounds like late-war or post-war propaganda.

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