Some people.push revisionist history, and tell us Japan was on the verge of surrender. Not sure of their sources in that. But even if true there was no way for us to have known that at the time.
“and tell us Japan was on the verge of surrender.”
Yeah right. They were so close to surrender that they didn’t surrender after the Hiroshima bomb. We demanded unconditional surrender, they wouldn’t. The second bomb made them rethink
I’d like the revisionist historians (obviously you are NOT one) to explain to me this: If the Japs were on the verge of surrendering unconditionally before Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, then why did it take them until August 14, 1945— five days AFTER THE SECOND BOMB WAS DROPPED on Nagasaki— to surrender? I hate these anti-American revisionist historians./rwa
The U.S. had broken Japanese diplomatic codes. Towards the end the Japanese were trying to get the Russians - who only made war on Japan in the closing days, and seized islands in Northern Japan which they still hold - to act as an intermediary with the United States, a role the Russians declined. The U.S. learned of these approaches through deciphered cables. The Japanese terms were continued Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and no occupation of Japan by foreign troops. Both of these terms were non-starters with the U.S. The Japanese were completely unrealistic in their appraisal of Western attitudes. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender almost to the end. In the event Truman agreed not to depose the Mikado, but other than that Japanese capitulation was complete.
Prior to Hiroshima, the Japanese cabinet was split on surrender, with the majority voting to hold out. After Nagasaki, not one vote had changed. What did change was that the Emperor took the unprecedented step of speaking during a cabinet meeting in order to announce that it was time to surrender. Even then, there was a last minute coup attempt by young army officers, suppressed by the commander of the Imperial bodyguards, who then went home and committed Hari-Kari.
Under conditions that actually obtained in August 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were godsends for all, except the unfortunate inhabitants of those two cities.
I’ve read some of that revisionist history, and I don’t believe it. The Japanese leaders, including the emperor, had to know by the fall of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that the war was hopeless. Yamamoto knew it before he was killed in 1943. They were hoping for a grand conflagration that would have killed millions of Japanese citizens and soldiers and probably over 100,000 thousand American servicemen. The bombs stopped all that.