Here are some more thoughts about World War II that came up while reading The Rising Sun by John Toland.
One of the more controversial decisions that was made during the war was the use of nuclear weapons. The fact that this decision was even contemplated shows how far all powers had moved to the concept of total war. In the early days of the war, believe it or not, there was a general understanding that civilian populations were not to be intentionally bombed.
That was certainly laid to rest when Nazi Germany bombed London during the Blitz. The English Bomber Harris and the American Curtis LeMay made sure that the Axis countries were more than paid in kind with the destruction of their population centers. It didn’t help matters that the Japanese, in response to having their manufacturing plants destroyed, decentralized their manufacturing into very small shops located in their citizens’ homes. This was the fig leaf necessary for LeMay to claim that all civil population centers were valid military targets.
By the time that LeMay was done, there was virtually nothing left of Tokyo. One of the reasons that Tokyo was not chosen as a nuclear target was because it was already devastated.
The question was, did dropping the nuclear weapons shorten the war and save lives?
On the one hand, it certainly appears so. If the Okinawa battle was a preview, it was going to be horrendous, especially if you consider that Japanese really didn’t consider Okinawa as part of the real Japan. There were millions of soldiers on the Japan islands ready to repel all invaders. There were tens of millions of other auxiliaries, sometimes armed with only bamboo spears. There were plans to sacrifice all one hundred million Japanese citizens in some grand heroic gesture. Although hundreds of thousands of people died in the two nuclear blasts, a credible case can be made that an invasion would have results in millions of deaths.
But…
The Japanese government understood that the war was lost. Except for some rabid lower officers, most of the military, especially the senior military officers, knew that the war was lost. Even the Emperor, who was steadfast about never interfering in the function of government, now was speaking up in meetings to demand (at least as much as a soft spoken man who only spoke in vague generalities could demand) to end the war.
The Japanese were actively sending out peace feelers. They tried to make contact with the Soviets (who had not yet entered the war against them) as well as neutrals such as the Swiss. The Japanese knew that they were going to suffer harsh peace terms and were willing to suffer them. They knew that they’d give up all of their territorial gains. They knew that they would have to effectively de-militarize. This they were all willing to contemplate.
There was one thing that they could not contemplate. They could never accept the removal of the Emperor. In fact, they were concerned (and according to some US survey results, rightly so) that the Emperor would be condemned as a war criminal and would be executed. Since the Emperor was the symbol of the state and of the Japanese people and was thought of as a living god, this was unthinkable.
At the Casablanca conference in 1943, the Allied leaders decided that unconditional surrender was the only way to end the war. They were trying to learn lessons from World War I. With the WWI Armistice, since essentially all of the fighting had taken place off German soil, German citizens never really felt that they lost the war. So, when the harsh terms of Versailles were delivered, Germans felt that their nation had been treated unjustly. With WWII, there would be no questions who were the victors and who were the conquered.
Unconditional surrender meant exactly that. When the Japanese sent out their peace feelers, their only real condition was that the Emperor still maintain his role. This condition was deemed unacceptable.
Mere days after this negotiation, the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. At that point, Japan had no choice but to surrender unconditionally.
Here’s the thing. Emperor Hirohito was never tried as a war criminal. He was never hung. He kept his throne. He ruled for 40 more years after WWII. In fact, his grandson is reigning as the current Emperor.
The one thing that the Japanese were holding out for was exactly the one thing that they ended up with. If you read about postwar Japan, you’ll see that Douglas MacArthur, the Allied occupation leader, never seriously contemplated treating Hirohito as a war criminal. He understood that Hirohito’s continuing role was critical for the successful rebuilding of Japan.
Given that Hirohito was going to continue in his role of Emperor anyway, what was the point of insisting upon unconditional surrender?
If dropping a couple nuclear weapons saved millions of lives, how many more lives could have been saved if the Allied powers hadn’t insisted on unconditional surrender?
How would our world be different today if the US had not dropped nuclear weapons on civilians?
dorkenstein 