>I don't know why you seem to believe that the only path to surrender was the exact events that transpired.
Maybe dropping the bombs in Tokyo Bay would have changed things. Maybe writing the emperor a love song would have changed things. We don't know. There are two aspects that get mixed together with this.
>Given the situation and knowledge at the time, was this or that military action reasonable and necessary?
>Knowing things unknowable at the time, can we now say this or that military action was unnecessary?
I think it is clear that the first question is yes, it was a reasonable and necessary decision at the time.
The second question is interesting to think about, but I think you are getting so much pushback because you are mixing both questions, using after the fact "what ifs" to say what people should have done at the time, as if they could just try different things and get a do over if it didn't work.
>I think you are getting so much pushback because you are mixing both questions, using after the fact "what ifs" to say what people should have done at the time
What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings? If anything, that other person's insistence on focusing on the exact votes of Japanese leadership is more reliant on hindsight than anything I have said.
> What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings?
Of course they could, and they did consider many options. But they only had a couple of bombs and any additional ones were weeks away. We know now that the bombs helped to end the war but they didn’t know then that they would. Detonating the bombs with no result could be looked at similar to firring your limited ammunition over your enemy’s head to hope it makes them surrender, but if it doesn’t, you have less ammo to fight them.
Firebombing leveled over 60 Japanese cities and killed between 330,000 and 900,000 people (though we will never know for sure because the very records needed were obliterated in the conflagrations). Yet leading up to the atomic bombings, Japan was well underway preparing Operation Ketsu-Go, the Japanese defense of the home islands, meant to inflict immense casualties on the American troops and undermine the American publics’ will to continue fighting [1]. Japan planned to lose a million men in this operation, and enlisted every male age 15 to 60 and every female age 17 to 40 in and around Kyushu [2]. There is no reason to believe this wouldn’t happen, given what we saw in Okinawa, where children were mobilized, civilians died by the tens of thousands in the crossfire (since Japan would not evacuate them intentionally to increase casualties), and civilians killed themselves by the hundreds rather than be captured [3].
Americans and Japanese were dying every second the war went on. Wasting your most powerful weapon, that you have almost none of, with your fingers crossed that this will make the country, where not one military unit has surrendered during the entire course of the war, just give up. This is naiveté and hindsight bias at its finest.
[1] “We will prepare 10,000 planes to meet the landing of the enemy. We will mobilize every aircraft possible, both training and "special attack" planes. We will smash one third of the enemy's war potential with this air force at sea. Another third will also be smashed at sea by our warships, human torpedoes and other special weapons. Furthermore, when the enemy actually lands, if we are ready to sacrifice a million men we will be able to inflict an equal number of casualties upon them. If the enemy loses a million men, then the public opinion in America will become inclined towards peace, and Japan will be able to gain peace with comparatively advantageous conditions”- IGHQ army staff officer in July 1945, from “The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945” by Stanley Weintraub
What happened to those two distinct questions? What point were you trying to make in your previous comment? I specifically asked for clarification on your comment and instead of answering that direct question, you went right back to debating the original issue, even merging the two questions in the exact way that you complained about me doing it.
It is also bizarre how much of this discussion is had purely from a US-Japanese perspective as if the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan wasn't even worthy of a footnote.
>What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings?
That is what you asked and I answered that those things you mentioned were considered and address multiple things you mentioned in your other comments.
Maybe dropping the bombs in Tokyo Bay would have changed things. Maybe writing the emperor a love song would have changed things. We don't know. There are two aspects that get mixed together with this.
>Given the situation and knowledge at the time, was this or that military action reasonable and necessary?
>Knowing things unknowable at the time, can we now say this or that military action was unnecessary?
I think it is clear that the first question is yes, it was a reasonable and necessary decision at the time.
The second question is interesting to think about, but I think you are getting so much pushback because you are mixing both questions, using after the fact "what ifs" to say what people should have done at the time, as if they could just try different things and get a do over if it didn't work.