I have heard conflicting things about Japan’s offers of surrender in the closing days of WWII. The standard story that gets around seems to be that Japan was unwilling to surrender before the dropping of the atom bombs. The response that I have heard to this is that the Japanese did, in fact, offer a surrender before the dropping of the bombs that was basically the same as what the US eventually got out of them (namely, unconditional surrender, but keeping the emperor). In response to that, though, I have heard it said that the surrender that was offered before the dropping of the atom bombs was not a legitimate one, in that it was offered by government figures that did not have the authority to actually get it done. Hmm, not the most elegant phrasing of the situation, but hopefully I got my point across.
So, obviously my understanding of the particulars of this point in history are pretty sketchy, and so I would greatly appreciate it if someone could set me straight. Basically, my question is when did Japan offer surrender, who in particular offered surrender, and could that offer have been considered legitimate? I realize that this could morph into a debate topic, but for now I would appreciate it it we could stay in the realm of the factual.
Also, apologies if this has been asked before. Accursed disabled search function…
Also, as with Germany, the condition had to be unconditional and even the parties wanting to surrender had numerous conditions. (Ultimately the U.S. did allow Hirohito to stay in power [he was largely a figurehead anyway], but otherwise surrender was unconditional.)
Though I think the Japanese textbook version is that in August 1945 the Japanese felt we had learned our lesson for starting the war and let us surrender and go home.
The Japanese offers were very conditional. In fact they arguably were more of an armistice than a surrender. They wanted Japan to continue as an independant sovereign nation; no occupation of Japanese territory; no surrender of any Japanese military or government officials for war trials; and no outside restrictions of Japanese military power. Basically what they were offering was to go back to their pre-war borders and pretend the whole war had never happened.
I looked over the Wikipedia article, but it still leaves me with questions. It speaks of a 40 page dossier of surrender proposals which Roosevelt dismissed out of hand. Were these proposals basically unconditional, except for the emperor clause, or were there other conditions? They were put forth by “Japanese officials close to the Emperor,” but were they actually persons with enough clout to really make it happen? Was this the only real surrender proposal before August 6th?
Basically, I’m trying to get the necessary facts to examine the claim that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary on the grounds that the Japanese had already offered a surrender that was the same as what the US would eventually adopt. I’m pretty familiar with the chain of events after the bombings, but I’m still hazy on the notions of pre-bomb surrender.
On a somewhat related note, I just read an interesting article on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. This author argues that the main effect of the atomic bombs were that they shattered the Japanese illusion of exceptionalism. He argued that the Japanese (like many other people, including Americans) believed they were a historically “exceptional” people - that the normal rules of history did not apply to them. Japan had never been conquered by any foreign power and on some occasions, such as the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, had apparently been saved by divine intervention. This mindset led many Japanese to believe that they were protected by fate - that as long as they did not surrender, some miracle would save them in the final moments. The sudden and complete destruction of two cities by such unforeseen means broke this illusion and convinced the Japanese that they had no special protection and needed to acknowledge the reality that they had lost the war.
While information on the pre-surrender overture is scanty on either of these websites, and I don’t remember anything in particular about it from earlier reading, since it weighed in at 40 pages it undoubtedly had multiple conditions attached. The Allies were only considering unconditional surrender, so why would a document so obviously unacceptable even deserve consideration? Only a couple of the points outlined were mentioned, and the main one — the retention of the Emperor — was one of the very few concessions the Allies later made. There was obviously a lot more demanded by the Japanese in that early missive.
Months later, they were still talking to the Russians about back-channel support, and treating Allied overtures with contempt. It’s fairly clear that even after the atomic bombings, securing a surrender was not easy. According to this source and the Wikipedia article, there was an stalemate between the “Big Six” that the Emperor himself had to break. Even nuking them TWICE almost didn’t do the trick. A delay of three days between the first bombing and the second was ridiculously long under the circumstances. There’s not really any support for the idea that everybody could have gone home and played nice before someone got a sharp stick in the eye.
It is hard to believe just how detached from reality, the Japanese leadership was in 1945. By the time of the Atomic bombings, the japanese navy was largely sunk, and they had no fuel for the ships still surviving. They were trying to power their airforce with gasoline made from turpentine! Middle-class japanese peoplewere making trips into the countryside-bartering family treasures for food! The leadership was raising a militia (armed with bamboo spears) to repel the invasion force. The only intact force was the army in Manchuria-and they had no way of resisting Russian tanks.
So, it gives me a good laugh when people say how cruel the bombings were-the japanese leadership was fully prepared to have 8 million civilians die in the anticipated American invasion-Tojo and the emperor didn’t bat an eye!
What i don’t understand-why Churchill and Truman encouraged the Russians to declare war-it set the Russians up in asia and Korea-and made the Korean War possible.
They had been after Russia to declare war on Japan for years to take some of the pressure off. They assumed they needed Russia to provide a second front when the invasion took place.
After the success of the atomic bomb and it became obvious that an invasion wouldn’t be necessary, they tried frantically to prevent Russia from declaring war. Not a chance. Stalin wanted his share of the spoils for little cost. He invaded Manchuria on August 8, two days after Hiroshima.
…that Emperor Hirohito was so innocent? Hirohito approved the rape of naking, the Invasion of China, and countless atrocities. He also stood by while Tojo planned a "glorious’ end for the japanese people-suidcide by trying to resist with bamboo spears!
They were pushing for a Russian declaration of war up until July 1945. The estimates were that an invasion of Japan would cost a million casualties and they were hoping that at least 500,000 of these would be Soviets. But after the atomic bomb was successfully tested, the need for Soviet troops suddenly dropped and Churchill and Truman became much tougher with Stalin. Stalin realized this as well and the Soviet negotiations did a 180 - going from trying to hold back on a declaration of war to gain as much as possible from the allies to trying to push forward a declaration of war before the allies won it without them.
The how wasn’t that complicated. Some of the Emperor’s close confidants took the bullet (figuratively).
But it was useful to ole Duggie to have Hirohito around. He’d sotrt of lost his Imperial halo, but the Emperor still had a lot of authority which made certain things the Americans wanted easier to get down. Some Japanese criticized this move, since it let the Emperor off the hook. But it was probably the right move in that it was better for Japan’s future.
I would guess that most, probably the overwhelming majority, of mainstream historians dispute this contention. It is of intense debate mostly because one side intensely puts it forward and the other side wearily says no over and over.
I am still somewhat shocked at what the US and it’s allies were able to do to Japanese culture at the end of WWII. Japan had a long military history, and were a proud and fierce culture in which fighting was honorable and natural.
It appears that we bombed them all the way into anti-militarism and pacifism. I don’t mean just by fiat (you can’t have an army anymore because you were bad); it seems like the people (for the most part) truly lost their taste for war, after centuries of being pretty damned good at it and enjoying it.
Is that too simplistic? I’m not sure how to express myself on the thought.