Apparently Japan offered surrender 7 months prior

[vendic]

I came across the digital copy of the Chicago Tribune's 1945 newspaper

In it it says the reporter knew had information that Mac Arthur had passed a memo to the President that Japan was willing to surrender seven months prior to the bombing of Japan by nukes. Their conditions of surrender were almost identical to the ones finally used after the bombing.
There was a war time gag order on news that was lifted on the 18th of August and the article was printed the next day.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

When he was informed in mid-July 1945 by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson of the decision to use the atomic bomb, General Dwight Eisenhower was deeply troubled. He disclosed his strong reservations about using the new weapon in his 1963 memoir, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (pp. 312-313):

During his [Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face."

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon," Eisenhower said in 1963.

Shortly after "V-J Day," the end of the Pacific war, Brig. General Bonnie Fellers summed up in a memo for General MacArthur: "Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan's unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place."

The actual documents relevant to the decision are still sealed as part of the US's secrecy program. Even after 70 years. Must be some pretty incriminating evidence in there.

So let's lay to rest the old notion, "we did it to save lives".

[grapes]

Is this part of that article? I found the transcript here: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html

It was explained in high official circles that the bid relayed by MacArthur did not constitute an official offer in the same sense as the final offer which was presented through Japanese diplomatic channels at Bern and Stockholm last week for relay to the four major Allied powers.

No negotiations were begun on the basis of the bid, it was said, because it was feared that if any were undertaken the Jap war lords, who were presumed to be ignorant of the feelers, would visit swift punishment on those making the offer.

That seems to explain, that the five feelers passed on by MacArthur were from low-levels.

Looking for details

[vendic]

So let me get this straight. They claim that they didn't act on the initial surrender proposals because they feared that the Japanese would kill the people that were making the offer. So instead, they continued aerial bombing for months killing hundreds of thousands and then dropped two nukes killing hundreds of thousands of civilians?

I'm so glad they had the best interests of the Japanese at heart. Imagine if they wanted to just be nasty!

[grapes]

I think that's from the text of the 1945 Chicago paper, right? I'm looking around trying to find the sources of those feelers--were they military, diplomats, business folk, politicians, royalty?

[grapes]

From: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/pu ... -surrender

Trohan reports on a November 1944 peace bid conveyed by Swedish ambassdor to Tokyo Widar Bagge. He notes also that in 1948, Rear Adm. Ellis M. Zacharias, wartime director of the office of naval intelligence, revealed that Japan had made five secret peace bids through the Vatican and the Kremlin.
In 1947, Trohan writes, " the Japanes disclosed in Tokyo that Premier Kuniaki Koiso proposed to discuss peace with Britain and the United States in 1944 and 1945. After the Koiso government fell, it was replaced by the government of Adm. Kantaro Suzuki, who undertook the negotiations for peace through Russia."


Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/pu ... z3tELOkVUF
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Also:

Hoover quotes the memoirs of White House chief of staff Admiral Leahy, who wrote:
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
It was my reaction that the scientists and others want to make this test because of the vast sums that had been spent on the project ... 


Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/pu ... z3tEMPOqgH
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Fucking scientists...'mirite?

[vendic]

lol

I really doubt that scientists wanted the tests done. From things I've read a lot of the upper military were convinced there was no need to drop the bombs. Why they were dropped however is still classified.

[SciFiFisher]

One of the factors that may have been in play is that the U.S. and other western powers did not want to allow Japan to "save face". Having no real equivalent in the Western culture it was thought that it was better to break Japan so that in 20 or 30 years they would not be fighting another war.

[vendic]

The problem with that is idea is that the US in particular pushed the Japanese to breaking point by sending war ships into Japan demanding they open trade with the USA using a show of military force. As the old saying goes, you reap what you sow.

Basically, Trade with us or we declare war to make you trade with us. Capitalism in action. Then people wonder why the US has a bad reputation for dealing with foreign nations...

There is quite a bit of evidence that the US forced Japan's hand into war in WWII as well. Blockades, trade restrictions etc.

There is only so much you can break before it whips back at you.

[SciFiFisher]

The problem with that is idea is that the US in particular pushed the Japanese to breaking point by sending war ships into Japan demanding they open trade with the USA using a show of military force. As the old saying goes, you reap what you sow.

That was at least 100 years prior. They should have gotten over it.

There is quite a bit of evidence that the US forced Japan's hand into war in WWII as well. Blockades, trade restrictions etc.

There is only so much you can break before it whips back at you.

There is actually a fair amount of truth to this. U.S. protectionism did help set the stage. But, even if the U.S. had not contributed to the situation the Japanese were almost "doomed" to that course of action. They still had a very strong military/bushido culture that did not see war as evil. They were desperate to secure resources that they needed to continue their entry into the industrialized world. And unlike many "third world" countries they already enjoyed a reasonable standard of living and they were not highly motivated to be just a cheap source of labor. They had their honor. They were not about to go begging for the resources they needed when they could simply take them.

If you look at the history even during WWI the Japanese had been very aggressive in China and other parts of the far East. They had been dreaming of an Eastern empire led by the Japanese for quite some time.

I am not privy to any special knowledge but I think there may have been a feeling that Japan really needed to be punished very strongly for the atrocities they had committed. By the time we dropped the A bombs many of their most serious atrocities were known to the leadership of the Western world.

[Sigma_Orionis]

According to this, Japan's attempts to negiotate peace depended on Stalin being neutral in that particular theater of war. (Remember than the USSR declared war on Japan AFTER August 9) and the Japanese were looking for much more lenient terms than the unconditional surrender demanded by the US and its allies. (it's important to remember that the bulk of the Pacific War was carried by the US). The piece in question speculates that Japan was enduring a very intense conventional bombing campaign by the US and that from that point of view Nagasaki and even Hiroshima were not particularly worse than losing a city every day to conventional bombing. It's also important to point out that the bombs were still experimental, they didn't come out of an assembly line. So, had Japan refused to surrender after August 9, the bulk of the bombing would still be conventional (which was lethal enough thank you very much, If the US and the UK had lost the war, General Curtis LeMay and Chief Air Marshall Arthur Harris would have probably been judged for War Crimes, as a matter of fact, General LeMay said something to that effect.

As for the US forcing Japan's hand into WWII, by that argument, France and the UK forced Hitler into WWII with the 1918 Treaty of Versailles and that little incident with war reparations that was one of the causes of the hyperinflation of the German economy in the early 20s, and, let's not forget the great depression of the 30s.

The argument against the latter can be easily found on the 1918 treaty of Brest-Litvosk where the German Empire placed conditions on the USSR as harsh as the ones the Germans got handed down on the Treaty of Versailles.

As for the former, the Japanese were not just "forced against their will" to declare war on the US, they were quite busy working on creating what they called the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere which was as imperialistic and predatory as anything the Belgians did in Congo (just ask China and Korea) and the US stood in their way (for geopolitical reasons of course, not out of the goodness of their hearts, Captain America or not ).

Sure, Commodore Perry forced Japan to open its markets using gun-boat policy in 1854, but it took Japan just 40 years after that to become a world power that could kick Russian Ass in 1905. And Japan was all too happy to join Western Europe and the US against Germany in WWI.

As a matter of fact, AFTER Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War decided to surrender, there was an attempted coup d'etat by officers who wanted to continue fighting till the bitter end.

So, as usual in this matter, it's a "Vanity Fair" situation, there were no good guys, just those who won and those who lost. I'm am not trying to be sanguine, the death toll was between 50 and 80 million dead, which is something I can't wrap my head around.

[vendic]

Not sure how much of LeMay's opinions I'd accept. The guy clearly stated he was aware of doing war crimes and if the US lost he would be classified a war criminal.
In any case, if I had to choose an opinion I'd go with MacArthur and Eisenhower's along with their intelligence reports.

Unfortunately, these things are all still classified so as not to embarrass the USA.

[SciFiFisher]

Not sure how much of LeMay's opinions I'd accept. The guy clearly stated he was aware of doing war crimes and if the US lost he would be classified a war criminal.
In any case, if I had to choose an opinion I'd go with MacArthur and Eisenhower's along with their intelligence reports.

Unfortunately, these things are all still classified so as not to embarrass the USA.

I can assure you that our government does not classify documents to avoid embarrassment. Unless it just happens to go hand in hand with protecting our vital national interest.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Not sure how much of LeMay's opinions I'd accept. The guy clearly stated he was aware of doing war crimes and if the US lost he would be classified a war criminal.
In any case, if I had to choose an opinion I'd go with MacArthur and Eisenhower's along with their intelligence reports.

Unfortunately, these things are all still classified so as not to embarrass the USA.

I can assure you that our government does not classify documents to avoid embarrassment. Unless it just happens to go hand in hand with protecting our vital national interest.

I'm pretty sure that there have been a few times where the two conditions have gone hand in hand

[squ1d]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender ... leadership

[Yosh]

Late to the party.

A quick response: A review of declassified Japanese documents obtained after the surrender outlines the *extensive* preparations being made to resist an invasion of Japan's main islands. It wasn't token efforts and was not insignificant. The civilian populace was being mobilized on a large scale.

Japan had *never* been invaded in its recorded history. The only people to try, failed. Between that and the cultural belief they were "special," a conventional invasion would have been far bloodier, and frankly closer to genocide, than the loss of life from any of the conventional, or the two nuclear bombs. Members of the Japanese military attempted a coup at the 11th hour, to keep the Emperor from making a "mistake" with his capitulation speech. There were senior officers who thought they could still get a better deal. Declassified meeting notes between Truman and staff members who understood the Japanese, openly state an opinion that a conventional invasion would have galvanized Japanese, who might otherwise have been ready for peace, to action against us.

These were *NOT* a people prepared to surrender. If you want the slimmest taste of what it might have been like; take a good, hard look at the battle for Okinawa.

I'll have to go read the newly available info, but I'm betting that either the "offers" weren't officially sanctioned from the top, or they were attempts to get intel on what we might be willing to negotiate.

I realize it's become fashionable to paint the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as done for purely "racist" motives on our part. Usually that position is put forward by someone who hasn't spent much time studying Japan's history or culture to any depth. And while this is just my opinion, I'm frankly willing to bet we wouldn't have let the Soviets move so much as a tank squadron, or a destroyer, anywhere *near* Japan. We had *zero* interest in seeing them get any more involved than they had in Europe.
I think the Soviet's declaration was "pro forma" and probably didn't rattle the Japanese as much as folks now-a-days think it did.

Make no mistake, the nuclear bombings were horrific. But I remain convinced they both shocked Hirohito bad enough to speed surrender; as well as shock world leaders bad enough that they haven't been used since.

[vendic]

Then let them release the documents...