On Aug. 6, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped its payload on Hiroshima, leaving the signature mushroom cloud and devastation on the ground, including something on the order of 100,000 killed. (The figures remain disputed, and depend on how the fatalities are counted.)
As Hasegawa writes in his book “Racing the Enemy,” the Japanese leadership reacted with concern, but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a “sense of urgency,” Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same.
Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japan’s strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing Japan’s traditional imperial system to continue. Better to surrender to Washington than to Moscow.
By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender. (During the meeting, the second atomic bomb killed tens of thousands at Nagasaki.) On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally.
Obviously this argument has political overtones related to whether the atomic bombing was in any sense justified. Hasegawa himself has publicly said that US bombing attacks on Japanese cities were war crimes. I used to think that, as awful as it was, the bombing of Japanese cities got Japan to surrender before a US invasion that would have been even more terrible. I no longer have that sort of confidence in counterfactuals: perhaps we could have starved Japan into submission with a blockade, coupled with destruction of Japan's railroads, or perhaps the massing of US and Russian invasion forces would have done the job. Who knows? I think the best lesson to take from World War II is that total war is an awful thing, and that we should not ever do it again.
1 comment:
Hear, hear.
Perhaps it's worth noting that the peace feelers that the Japanese sent out in July 1945 included the demand not only to keep the imperial system but that the army would demobilize itself. The army minister made clear that his interpretation of this provision was that peace would not be made on the basis that Japan had been defeated. The main offer to the Allies was that Japan would retreat from all its conquests. The Japanese ambassador to Moscow actually cabled back to Tokyo saying that such an offer was not serious--considering the Japanese were about to lose their conquests anyway--and that they had to make up their minds to offer surrender with keeping the imperial system. The government replied that Japan was not offering to surrender and that no such offer would be forthcoming. At no point before the events of August did the Japanese government offer the formula surrender with keeping the imperial system; it is clear the reason for this was the army's refusal to acknowledge defeat. (Note that, under the Japanese system, both the Army and Navy ministers had a veto over all cabinet decisions; the navy was willing to accept surrender.)
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