would be interested as well

all i know is that certain military leaders tried to have the soviet union negotiate a peace, but there was never anything official

This post was edited by ampoo on Dec 20 2017 12:05pm

Usa has to bomb quick, before Japanese effectively surrender or do a peace threaty with Russians (the point) .
So Usa decided to kill hundreds of thousands civilians, children, women, elders, just to "win" the tactic over the Russians, not because of Japan...

... and I've just stated that it would be highly unlikely that the Japanese could have mounted any opposition to the terms imposed in their surrender as evidenced by their complete military defeat and the surrender terms demanding that Japan have no standing military. They could not have 'openly rebelled' as they had nothing to openly rebel with.

Your assertion that somehow nuking two largely civilian populations makes them more likely to become an ally rather than a 'bitter enemy' seems preposterous to me.



It's common knowledge. You can google it.
Some quick notes from my research for a recent essay -
December '44 - Japanese approach Chiang-Kai-Shek to discuss peace with the US
April '45 - Suzuki Kantaro takes over the Japanese government with the explicit mission of ending the war.
US intercepted multiple messages from the Tokyo foreign office to Japanese diplomats in other countries indicating Japan was seeking peace.
April and May '45 - Japanese make three overtures through Portugal and Sweden asking what terms the US would accept for peace. US tells Swedish officials to 'show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter'.
April 19th 1945 - Article in Chicago Tribune and Washington Herald details memorandum given to Roosevelt. Memorandum details peace offers by Japanese, terms 'virtually identtical' to those agreed by Japan in their eventual surrender. (Winter 1985-86 Journal of Historical Review, pp. 508-512) Reporter, Walter Trohan, who broke the story had to withhold it for 7 months due to censorship from US government. General MacArthur corroborates the story.

There's a lot more but if you verify that these notes are accurate then I think that should be more than enough to convince anyone that the Japanese were seeking peace long before the atomic bombs were dropped.
It's just not a story you hear because it paints the US decision to use nuclear weapons in such a bad light. The popularly accepted story is that the bombs were necessary for the Japanese surrender because if they weren't then most people would see their use as unjustifiable. That's simply not the case. That's what I meant when I said earlier that 'You're subscribing to a popular narrative when the evidence tells a different story'.

This post was edited by Scaly on Dec 20 2017 02:29pm

I can clear all this up pretty quickly:

The U.S. demanded total surrender, which the Japanese wouldn’t take because it’d mean giving up the Emperor.

And then the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered and the Emperor stayed where he was. So the exact terms the Japanese offered back in April were the exact terms the US agreed to after bombing them in August.

no, its not.







those are interesting details, but it's no proof that the peace feelers actually had the authority/power to negotiate a peace treaty.

more details are found here:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8785716

takeaways:

- there are always peace feelers in any war. this does not mean that they actually represent the majority opinion within their administration and actually have the power to carry out a surrender.
- the newspaper in which this article appeared was very biased and anti-FDR.
- FDR dismissed the initiative and MacArthur because he didnt trust MacArthur's instincts as a politician. The subsequent Korean War and MacArthurs involvement there confirms this view.


So yes, I concede that you have a point here. It's more questionable than I thought whether Japan would really have fought to the bitter end without use of the atomic bombs. But the sources you gave here are far from being "hard proof" for the contrary, for the assertion that a Japanese surrender would have been a sure thing if only the Americans had agreed.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 20 2017 02:35pm

Yes.

However, the Japanese agreed to total surrender. We let them keep the Emperor after that. I don’t remember the exact reasons why we did that, but that’s how it went down. Probably had to do with the heat of the moment and that Total Surrender was promised to the U.S. for both Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan.

How very human of you. Many animals use utter domination as a way to bind allegiance. You think wolves decide the pecking order based on who brings who a nice snack for dinner? there is a gut animal instinct to follow someone at all costs if it means your life to disobey. first you must fear for the life of every one of your citizens, however.

again, you can argue the moral correctness of this all you want, the logic however seems clear to me. and again, forcing utter allegiance and surrender aren't mutually exclusive motivations to "sending a message", "revenge", or "conducting an experiment". If i want to test out some lactose pills I can still get the flavor of ice cream that tastes the best.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 20 2017 02:52pm

Never gonna happen

Dropping Nukes on Hiroshima & Nagasaki was never justified, it was a political decision.
Hopefully we are in the North Korea tread so Kim will fix all this shit quickly