Authorities, for example, planned the evacuation of a few hundred thousand school children to spare them the urban conflagrations, but were not prepared for the mass exodus of adults who bailed because they knew the military could not protect them. 19, 1945, America would have had three more atomic bombs ready and had six more in production - it did not anticipate a swift end.Īccording to Garon, the Japanese military was deeply concerned by worsening conditions in Japan because they were undermining the war effort. was surprised by Japan’s sudden surrender, noting that by Aug. Recently, Garon gave a talk in Tokyo about an ongoing book project focusing on how the war was lost for Germany and Japan. Sheldon Garon, a professor of history at Princeton University, takes issue with Hasegawa’s contention that the military was insouciant about Japanese suffering and ready to fight to the last civilian. Having tasted defeat at the hands of the Soviets twice in the late 1930s in Manchurian border clashes, the generals knew that the new front meant further resistance was futile. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in his 2005 book “Racing the Enemy,” provides compelling evidence that the Pacific War ended due to the entry of the Soviets, not the atomic bombings. Military leaders could not contemplate the ignominy of surrender, so they compelled their nation to continue fighting a war that was already lost, subjecting the Japanese to horrific suffering that they could have ended far sooner. But they were not squeamish about the suffering of the Japanese public - more than 60 Japanese cities were subjected to extensive firebombing in 1945, displacing, maiming and killing several hundred thousand civilians. In February 1945, the Japanese military conducted a survey that concluded that Japan could not win the war. The fate of the czar at the hands of communists, and prospects for a punitive Soviet occupation, influenced the calculus of surrender. Soviet entry into the war was an alarming development for a military leadership that vowed to keep fighting to save the Emperor. This came as a shock to Japanese leaders who had been trying throughout July that year to engage the Soviets as brokers in a peace deal with the Allies. 9 before the Nagasaki bombing later that day. He kept his promise, and Soviet troops invaded Manchuria in the wee hours of Aug. In February 1945, Joseph Stalin met with Allied leaders in Yalta, promising to attack Japan three months after Germany’s surrender. Reinforcements had been transferred from Manchuria to bolster the defense of Kyushu where the U.S. This strategy was affirmed in June 1945 as the gruesome and bloody Battle of Okinawa was winding down. This would, at a minimum, safeguard the Emperor, and potentially preserve the armed forces and shield them from prosecution for war crimes. This meant abandoning ketsu-go, the strategy of fighting one last decisive battle intended to inflict so many casualties on a war-weary America that it would relax its demands for unconditional surrender and negotiate a peace. It also allowed military leaders to save face, since they could claim that the war was not lost on the battlefield, and agree to surrender to spare the Japanese people from more suffering. In this narrative, the dawning of the nuclear age brought peace. Emperor Hirohito’s intervention on the side of those favoring capitulation was crucial to winning over those hardliners who didn’t. The use of weapons of mass destruction causing the incineration of large swaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in quick succession backed up that threat, highlighting the futility of continuing the war. In that declaration, there was a promise of “prompt and utter destruction” if the armed forces of Japan didn’t surrender. It’s possible that these finally pushed Emperor Hirohito (posthumously called Emperor Showa) to break the deadlock in the Supreme War Council and accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration for unconditional surrender issued by the Allied leaders on July 26, 1945. 15, 1945, declaration was the result of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is contentious debate among scholars about why Japan surrendered in World War II.
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