Posted on 08/06/2025 8:24:29 AM PDT by whyilovetexas111
The Kokutai principle played a decisive role for Japanese surrender in 1945. The Japanese lived within a spiritual/political fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Subjected to this authority, average citizens forfeited individuality to a collective soul defining Japan and awaited the Empire’s decrees. With such national unity committed to Total War beneath the slogan of the “honorable sacrifice of 20 million Japanese lives”, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Hirohito foresaw inevitable defeat. However, his government of peace and war factions conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, firebombing of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
When they reached impasse after the two atomic bombs Hirohito assumed an unprecedented roll to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the palace bunker. The bombs became a force of nature; equivalent to earthquakes or typhoons against which even a god/king was impotent. Only Imperial submission to such a catastrophe could match the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit because he held the heavenly Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable and conclude the war. The war and peace factions relented and no one lost face, but importantly Kokutai, the spiritual essence of Japan, was preserved. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the negotiations.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Twenty Million”
. “When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
The Russians didn’t have the experience with amphibious operations like the history of and the WWII experience of the U.S. Army did they, nor the massive navy the Army had in WWII, and with access to and backup from the U.S. Navy?
“”””Had we followed the ideas of others and cut off oil supplies from the likes of Borneo early then cut off raw materials Japan and Japanese would have starved to death.””””
My dad’s ship was in Borneo when Pearl was attacked.
Paul Fussels excellent article on the bomb. Well worth the read.
https://archive.org/details/thankgodforatomb00fuss
Taking the Japanese home islands would have been Iwo Jima × 100.
I’d say with their tiny navy, the Soviets would have had a hard time even getting to Japan.
Yes, which is why the nukes were used.
Just a note - kamikazes weren’t likely to have been a major issue at the end of the war the Japanese only had a few hundred aircraft left that were flight capable, most of which were obsolete. The few “thousand” outside of those were unable to fly due to poor maintainance and lack of pilots and fuel. They’d have used them up pretty quickly. (Source: US strategic bombing survey Aug 1945)
In addition, what few remaining ships they had were either not capable of putting to sea or had already been turned into makeshift shore batteries (Nagato for example).
If you notice my reply #3, I was referring to a hypothetical scenario in the world where Oppenheimer did not invent the atomic bomb.
It would have been basically impossible to invade Japan in 1945.
Interestingly, most young Japanese have no idea that they started the war with us when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They are not taught that until graduate school. I was asked why we dropped the bombs by my students there and they were ANGRY. I explained that Japan had launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning our involvement and they were in shock....disbelieving. Sad, but true.
Although the Japanese generally do not smile in photographs, when they visit Pearl Harbor they DO smile. I haven’t been there in years, but I remember seeing the information printed in Japanese ABOVE English and their smiling faces which I never saw in Japan at that time. It hurt me greatly. Perhaps things have changed. I don’t know. That was thirty years ago.
My sister in law’s family are third generation Japanese, living in Hawaii. Their relatives are from Hiroshima and they still visit them. Talk about being caught between two worlds!
My own father in law was part of the occupation force in Japan. If things had gone otherwise, my husband would probably never have been born.... Nor my children.
So many dominoes could have fallen differently.
We would have had a half-dozen or more bombs by the time we landed on the big island. They would have been used tactically on the Kanto Plain heading for Tokyo.
That would make an awesome alternative-history movie.
It’s not the USA that I’m worried about. It’s the rest that have nukes.
Before the invasion, the US would have almost certainly have dropped more A bombs including wiping out Tokyo.
A bombs including wiping out Tokyo.
If Godzilla didn’t get there first, that is.
Polmar & Allen ran across references to this meeting in their research and put in a Freedom of Information Act request for related documents. Eventually they received, too late for use in their book, a copy of a document labeled "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic." The word "retaliatory" was penciled in between the words "possible" and "use".
Apparently there were only five of these documents circulated during World War Two. The document was requested by the Chemical Corps for historical study in 1947. In an attempt to "redact" history, another document was issued to change all the copies to emphasize retaliatory use rather than the reality of the US planning to use it offensively in support of the invasion of Japan.
The plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of poison gas on Japanese cities in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu, then another 23,935 tons every 30 days thereafter. Tactical air support would drop more on troop concentrations.
The targets of the strategic bombing campaign were Japanese civilians in cities. Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were five million dead with another five million injured. This was our backup to nuking Japan into surrender. If the A-bombs didn't work, we were going to gas the Japanese people from the air like bugs, and keep doing so until Japanese resistance ended or all the Japanese were dead.
Genocide is defined by treaty as the murder of a large number of people of an identifiable group, generally a nationality or religion, which number comprises an appreciable percentage of the total group. Five million dead is 6.4% of then 78 million people in the Japanese Home Islands, so this proposed gas attack would certainly have qualified as genocide.
What brought the United States government to that decision was the prospective casualties of a prolonged ground conquest of Japan against suicidal resistance, after Japanese Kamikaze attacks and suicidal ground resistance elsewhere had thoroughly dehumanized them to us.
The American people certainly would have supported such tactics at the time, especially as Japanese Imperial General Headquarters issued orders a month later, provided to us courtesy of code-breaking (MAGIC), to murder all Allied prisoners of war, all interned Allied civilians, and all other Allied civilians Japanese forces could catch in occupied China, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Malaya, etc., starting with the impending British invasion of Malaya in late September 1945. The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal. They'd probably have killed at least an additional 50 million people, more than had died in all of World War Two to that point, before Allied armies could eliminate Japanese forces overseas.
The horror would not have stopped there. An estimated ONE THIRD of the Japanese people (25-30 million) would have died of starvation, disease, poison gas and conventional weapons during a prolonged ground conquest of Japan. The Japanese Army planned on locking up the Emperor, seizing power and fighting to the bitter end once the US invasion started. Thank God for the atom bomb - killing 150,000 - 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved 75-80 million lives. One of whom would have been the writer's father, an infantry lieutenant who survived Okinawa.
And...for those unaware there was a 3rd bomb already prepped and ready to be flown in 2 parts into the theater. Flying it in 2 parts would have allowed a reduced time in getting it there apparently.
I disagree with that about the teaching on who started the war. What grade were you teaching?
My wife is Japanese (started as HS penpals...long story). She was well aware and never went to graduate school. She said it was part of her HS history lessons.
And every Japanese person I know has smiled in photos independent of where they were taken.
First time I was in Japan was in 1990, so our timeline for thirty years ago are about the same.
Great post, thank you.
I taught English for kids ranging in age from elementary through high school. I can only relate my own personal experiences and conversations I had with Japanese people living there at that time. I lived there for five years.
Understood. My wife grew up in Nagasaki so that may have been part of the reason for the difference.
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