This guy:
Only makes sense in the context of post-war Japan.
Japanese Intransigence Provoked the Atomic Bombs
The Atomic Bombs: The Japs Had It Coming
No Apology for Japanese Intransigence
The Kokutai principle played a decisive role for Japanese surrender in August 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 and appointed a Peace Faction. However, his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, firebombing of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
As the political factions reached impasse, the atomic bombs allowed Hirohito to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the sweltering 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 heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War and Peace Factions could then relent, and no one would lose face. 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 leading to surrender.
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 Hundred 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
This guy:
Only makes sense in the context of post-war Japan.
After Hirohito's surrender recording was made, mid-level officers in Tokyo got wind of it and staged a coup d'etat that was barely suppressed.
Not just 10s of thousands of US soldiers' and Marines' lives were saved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but millions of starving East Asians, including Japanese.
The notion that this was done to wave a saber at the Soviet Union is revisionist hogwash. That was mentioned in exactly 1 meeting in the many held to decide about the final conduct of the war.
Maybe the internal face-saving was important, but I still think the biggest factor is that the US demonstrated it had both the means and the will to annihilate the entire Japanese people and give them a death without meaning or honor.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved untold numbers of lives—both Japanese and American—that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan.
They also shortened the war—allowing most American troops to demobilize and go home in 1945—not 1948!