Comment thread for Debate: The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and

[ctj]

I posted this once before, but it seems apropos here:

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... By the time we decided to use the bombs, the US government was aware that Japan had made a decision to surrender, afaik.

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AFAIK, the militarists in control of Japan had not made a decision to surrender on any terms acceptable to the Allies. They were prepared to defend the Home Islands to the last man.

See 'Why Truman Dropped the Bomb' by Richard B. Frank for a good summary of the evidence. The summation of the article states:

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There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

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To those who say dropping the bombs was about saving American lives, here is another quote from the same article:

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This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.

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