The military became increasingly uncontrollable, and Japan was gripped by the politics of assassination. Please refrain from using meaningless buzz words, as they identify you as someone who derives your opinions from DNC Talking Point memo's or Air America. Regards, If you believe he has a case, it would be "lazy or mindless" to foist the job of documenting that case on those YOU want to convince of it. The US has also failed to understand the Iraqi mindset. By David Powers The Field Service Code issued by General Tojo in 1941 put it more explicitly: Apart from the dangers of battle, life in the Japanese army was brutal. Bix, not "Blix" is the author you quote. And these historians are driven by ideology (US = bad) and must ignore a mountain of evidence to maintain this point of view. It is true enough that his main point has to do with the determination of Japanese leaders to hold on to power following the war, but he himself introduces the tangents to which others have responded with references to the Magic intercepts. The central and west of Iraq where the heavy fighting is underway has estimates ranging between 20,000 and 100,000 fighters. (Casey, 118). when I say "partial exception", I mean to Mr. Ebbitt's post, not to my point about disagreeing with PCism. In the early morning hours of August 10 they made their decision and over the next four days crafted the myth that the emperor had saved the nation by his heroic intervention in favor of peace. “.in the endgame of the war against Japan, long-range B-29 bombers systematically undertook fire-bombing raids that consumed 66 of Japan's largest cities and killed as many as 900,000 civilians--many times the combined death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So if you suspect that he didn't and you want to ding him for that, you'll have to read it or at least check the bibliography and footnotes carefully. If Japan was given their surrender terms they would have room to move, but the Allies pushed for an unconditional surrender in order for the Emperor could be prosecuted for war crimes. Mr. Rodriguez, Even today, Hiroo Onoda insists they believed the missions were enemy tricks designed to lower their guard. I will nonetheless consider it as a possibility, but am not going to take the undocumented opinions of a few HNN posters as a definitive conclusion without some better substantiation, nor will I do their homework for them in trying to evaluate their questionable case. The great classic of Bushido - 'Hagakure' written in the early 18th century - begins with the words, 'Bushido is a way of dying'. It is odd for me to support an administration who does not have any leaders, other than Don Rumsfield, who served in the military. But the Soviet factor carried greater weight in the eyes of the emperor and most military leaders. Why did Japan surrender? Perhaps for the simpleminded, it would be easier just to stick to the broader term hypocrite, as in George W. Hypocrite Bush, Donald Hypocrite Rumsfeld, etc.. Conversely, the insurgents will remain active trying to dislodge the US presence. Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely different view, regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. If the military posed no threat to the imperial house, the people did. It was the mission worth making the people fight to the death. In waging and losing the Vietnam war, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon never once placed the interests of the American or Vietnamese people first. The south is controlled by 25,000 to 50,000 men under control of various warlords. Please provide the solid numbers of the Iraq security forces you write of. 3.) So we come to the question of ideology, or the national polity and essence, which they called kokutai. I continue to disagree with the "PC" view that the use of a small number of particular descriptive adjectives suffices to define the user's political or philosophical or idelogical views writ large. He was the sole survivor of a small band that had sporadically attacked the local population. Tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained in China, either caught in no-man's land between the Communists and Nationalists or fighting for one side or the other. I hit the submit button prematurely, I was not commenting on your views, but that of the author. There was little left to be destroyed: the crisis abroad and at home had merged. These spin masters, hammering home the message that the emperor mourned for his subjects, played a crucial a role in crafting the myths of the emperor as pacifist and the lost war as a legitimate, unavoidable war for self-defense, self-preservation, and the"liberation of Asia." Thus for them, the kokutai was always more than a mere slogan for unifying the nation. ""Unite . Washington has believed ever since that the atomic bomb decisively forced Japan's surrender. Nuclear weapons shocked Japan into surrendering at the end of World War II—except they didn’t. The American presidents you point out, weren't and aren't defeated in the field with cities reduced to rubble and no armies in the field. And he ended with an admonishment to" continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith of the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of the heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. FDR himself explained, "unconditional surrender means not the destruction of the German populace, nor the Italian or Japanese populace, but does mean the destruction of a philosophy in Germany, Italy, and Japan which is based on the conquest and subjugation of other people." They were indoctrinated from an early age to revere the Emperor as a living deity, and to see war as an act that could purify the self, the nation, and ultimately the whole world. Or a combination of both? In the last, desperate months of the war, this image was also applied to Japanese civilians. These people had many reasons to bring the lost war to an end short of Japan's further destruction and unconditional capitulation to the Anglo-Americans. Other portions of that same forum, I was not surprised to discover, indicate ambiguity within the Magic transcripts re Japanese intentions. It was a war without mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in 1945. Mr. Siegler, Last updated 2011-02-17. The Bush administration steamrolled any military leader who posed questions about the planning phase to the run up of the Iraq War. How can our leaders know the cost of war if they have never been there? I now see the Republicans attack Paul Hackett an Iraqi Vet running for an Ohio congressional seat with the same vigor. This includes an extensive discussion of the decoded Japanese messages and is almost certainly the inspiration for Will Richardson’s original comment (#66141) which began the prior thread. And during the entire month of June and well into July, when U.S. terror bombing of Japanese civilian targets peaked, he resisted and showed no determination to do so. As a Libertarian I neither support the Democratic platform nor have I ever listened to Air America. At this moment, with the war all but over, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the civilian center of Hiroshima; the Soviet Union entered the war; and the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on the civilian center of Nagasaki. The other enduring image of total sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship. The link to Frank's article is here: Japan’s leaders said Hiroshima forced them to surrender because it made a terrific explanation for losing the war. in this PBS forum: "Regardless of what historians now say..." Only some historians say that this was not a valid basis for the use of the bomb on Japan. Today, in the era of inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq, the highest U.S. officials who foisted the war on the American people face a similar situation. Read more. The likelihood of (1) a major unresolved 60 year old historical debate being solidly cleared up by yet another incremental set of recently uncovered or declassified documents, and (2) the mainstream press (e.g. Are we reading the same article ? Zooey72 last edited by . But by this time Japan had virtually no oil, its cities were in ruins and its navy and naval air capability virtually non-existent. in history, Japan's civilian population did not pressure the government to surrender, industrial workers did not abandon their jobs, and Army disci-pline remained excellent. Of course, if the "Magic" decrypts really seriously contradict Bix, then he should have acknowledged that, even in a short article, but this is not clear to me. Leaders of an imperialist state in the process of going down to defeat in war invariably behave this way. With defeat imminent, Japan's leaders feared that without the imperial house, the state and their own power would be devalued and diminished in the eyes of the people, and that the state would ultimately disintegrate. Go pedal your defeatist nonsense elsewhere please. This would make little sense and the argument against the bombs use is badly discredited on this foundation of thought. "Chicken-hawks"? As Napoleon marched through Russia decisively winning battles he failed to comprehend the Russian mindset until Moscow was ablaze and he was buried under a cold blanket of snow. Especially memorable to many Japanese was the emperor's expression of"profound solicitude" for"those who fell on the fields of battle""or those who met with untimely death and all their bereaved families." If nuclear weapons are a religion, Hiroshima is the first miracle. And a few posters here seem to strongly support civilian leaders calling the shots for our military. The weapons that incinerated those two unfortunate cities represented a technological innovation with fearsome consequences for the future of humanity. Delving into ancient myths about the Japanese and the Emperor in particular being directly descended from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, they exhorted the people to restore a past racial and spiritual purity lost in recent times. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa (sp? http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm, For the record, I have not claimed that Frank's article resolves anything. But"kokutai clarification campaigns" intimidated people and instilled a sense of crisis such that no one dared to publicly question the emperor's rescripts on national affairs: they were sacred and inviolable just as he was. I can't speak for the Weekly Standard, but I'd say it's worth noting that the article by Frank is linked by the Chronicle of Higher Education in their column on things to read from the wider press. that Hirohito et al were not self-sacrificing heros who bravely faced up to Japan's defeat, but instead delayers of the inevitable wanting to salvage their own hold on power. As historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa puts it, “The Soviet entry into the war played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation.” That’s the key point: the Japanese weren’t fighting to win. The Soviets had a large army that could be deployed, by land, against that occupation. They did not surrender after the first atomic bomb due to the amount of time it usually would take to officially declare surrender, which in this case would have been a bit longer considering japan was not so keen on surrender. However, the Pentagon and defense contractors such as KBR called the shots in Southeast Asia. I believe in a strong, well trained and well equipped military but a military that is used with discretion, has well defined operational objectives and uses maximum force when required. 1. The atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion gave Japanese decision-makers a good justification for ending the war. Comments on your post: It implies a consistency and integrity that does not exist. Further discussions ensued in Tokyo over what course of action the Japanese should take and “even in the face of these blows, it took nearly a week to reach the point of surrender”. Granted both Kennedy and Nixon served. But for all who participated in the last imperial conferences that produced the surrender decision, kokutai meant a sovereign, politically empowered monarchy based on the orthodox State Shinto view of the state, in which the people existed to assist the imperial destiny. -- Bix makes superfluous and unfounded claims throughout his article about the role of the US in recent world history. Grateful to Washington and GHQ for protecting Hirohito and preserving the monarchy, Japan's ruling elites never demanded that the U.S. apologize or show contrition for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. was Nixon actively talking about intervening in the Watergate affair shortly after the June 1972 break-in ?, or what did Washington know about what Japanese military movements in the first few days of December, 1941 ?) But if they were to control the immediate postwar situation, the surrender had to be very carefully choreographed. None of them contradict anything I said before here, and I agree with most of your points. It was a classic piece of understatement. When Emperor Hirohito made his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, and enjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', he brought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that had wracked his country for 14 years. Your suggestion to the contrary is not supported by anything in the text. To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. No wonder Iraq smells like Vietnam revisited. Enjoining the Japanese people to adapt to the new situation, it left them no room to clarify their leaders' responsibility for repressing their speech and making them fight a reckless war. He does also say, without explaining, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were somehow "unncessary", but I am still not ready to assume that he means by this that Japan would have surrendered RIGHT AWAY in early August without any use of the atom bomb. It is sad that some live in an pipe dream altered reality while our troops are being killed daily. Yes, I'm simpleminded enough to point out that your comments are deviod of actual content, but instead rely on emotioanlly empty terms like "chickenhawk", "neo-con" and "traitor". The same cannot be said of the Special Attack Forces, more popularly known as kamikaze. Bix's position is not very clear in this passage, but he implies that since (according to him) it was the Soviet entry forced the change in Japan's position, therefore the dropping of the first bomb (which preceeded Stalin's declaration) WAS at least indirectly important in changing the Japanese government's mind. Other, smaller groups continued fighting on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and in various parts of the Philippines right up to 1948. Read the translation instead of depending on Cole (who since corrected his mistake). By the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was beginning to catch up with the world's great powers, and even enjoyed its own version of the Roaring Twenties, a period known rather more prosaically as Taisho Democracy. Yet they rejected the four-power ultimatum, feeling as former prime minister and navy"moderate," Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa, said to his secretary on July 28,"There is no need to rush." They were clearly dissembling. his position that most of Japanese big shots were not eager to throw in the towel prior to Hiroshima. Getting back to the article as to why Japan delayed surrender is that the militarist truly believed the Japanese mainland was well enough fortified to prevent being overrun. Its basic thesis is that only a samurai prepared and willing to die at any moment can devote himself fully to his lord. The other enduring image of total sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship. As expected, the intercept messages (most of which were made public three decades ago) are an ambiguous jumble, but on balance tend to support Frank’s argument, though not to the extent hyped by him. I'm starting to feel a draft after the 2006 election cycle. ), but the main issue raised on this page is actually not the much ballyhood evergreen & unresolvable question about whether the 1945 A bomb drops were justified, notwithstanding the efforts of several posters here to make it so, nor the desire of the HNN editors to cast things in that light, nor the money to be made (by Frank etc) recycling old debates. Suggestion that the atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki on August 15, 1945, many! 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