I agree with much of that. I would just say that the indoctrination of the population, and the training of civilians to resist invasion, took the form of kamikaze attacks and mass suicides/murder-suicides on Okinawa. It is one thing to train citizens to resist invasion, it is another to encourage them to blow up their families with grenades to avoid capture.
The only point to that paragraph is to show once again that the Japanese were not going to give up willingly under the terms of the Allies.
The terms of the surrender offer were set forth at the Potsdam Conference. They were pretty straight forward and on re-reading, did not mention the Emperor. The last part of the surrender demand stated that it had to be unconditional and, short of that, Japan would be annihilated.
Japan rejected this and sought conditions to the terms, such as the retention of the Emperor as head of state (basically) among others. Even after two A-bombs and Soviet invasion, the Japanese hierarchy was split on surrender. Some in the military actively resisted.
A very determined people to say the least.
BTW, I have absolutely no doubt that military leaders in the west (the US) wanted to use the bomb as soon as it was deployable. It's what they do: kill people, break things, occupy territory. They are the sharp end of the spear.
I will also say that one can tell a lot about a culture by the way they treat those they have conquered. MacArthur and the Allies treated the Japanese much better than they expected.
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Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt
I agree with those of you saying that it seemed to be the lesser evil under those circumstances. Not a lot was known about the long lasting effects of radiation, so planners thought "invasion of Japan: 5 million dead, atomic bombs:200000 dead...ok, let's drop the bombs".
On the other hand, i can't see what more could Japan have done. They were under a very effective submarine blockade, their industry was mostly destroyed and their cities razed in a way that would make RAF's bomber command jealous (funny how the US was all about precision in the ETO, even to the detriment of their own crews' well being, but had no qualms about using the RAF style of bombing in Japan). Simply leaving them blockaded for a few more months might have done the trick.
However, this snippet here i don't see the problem with
It's what every self-respecting population does when faced with foreign occupation. Just like the elderly and teenagers fighting in the streets of the German cities during the final weeks of the war, were they all Nazis? I doubt it.
It's been so ingrained in the collective mind of the west that we are always the "good guys", that we don't only expect to win every time, but we also expect to be greeted as a godsend by the population of the countries we invade. I can't describe how much i disagree with this train of thought.
It's the duty of every able-bodied individual who wants to be free to resist foreign occupation armies on their soil, no matter if they hate their own government to an equal degree. I had a small diatribe ready on the reasons behind my opinion, but it's taking things a bit too off-topic. Having been used by both "enemies" and "allies" in our history however, there's nothing that jolts the collective subconscious in my country like the threat of a foreign occupation, wether it is overt and outright military in means, or covert and waged by means of economy, diplomacy and behind-the-doors blackmail.
Back on the topic of the A-bombs, reading from the scientists involved in the project would be an eye-opener for many. A few years ago i was reading a book by Richard Feynman, a world-reknowned physicist that was involved in the manhattan project (he was also in the comittee investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster that identified the problems that caused the fuel leak and explosion).
It wasn't a complete autobiography, more like a series of chapters from his life, but a lot of it centered around science and the moral implications regarding its application. According to this guy, most of the scientists involved in the manhattan project were believing, hoping and downright advocating to use one of the weapons for display purposes.
The idea was to arrange a meeting with a Japanese delegation, drop the first bomb on an uninhabbited atol and tell them that unless they surrender, the rest will be dropped on their cities (Japan didn't know how many bombs the US had in stock). However, the military denied it because they wanted to observe the bomb at work on a live target. That's it, straight from the horse's mouth, the people who built the bombs and asked the authorities to conduct a display drop but had their request denied.
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