Hindsight being 20-20, and with EVERYTHING being called into question nowadays by historical revisionists, usually only to further a left-wing political agenda, there has been a lot of talk and second-guessing over the decision of President Harry S. Truman to authorize the use of atomic weapons against Japan in the summer of 1945.
    It's time to end the debate, for better or for worse. I am going to try to explain things as best I can. I will do it by presenting a number of unchangeable facts. Debate their veracity all you wish to, gentle reader- but the fact shall remain, just as the fact that the sun shall rise again tomorrow, whether you wish to argue it or not.


     UNCHANGEABLE FACT #1: There was no third choice aside from the Americans invading the Japanese home islands of Kyushu, Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, or using the atomic bomb. Diplomacy was NOT an option. Surrendering, without having lost a massive climactic battle, or without the Emperor himself ordering it, was not even in the realm of thought for the Japanese High Command- or the people. PERIOD.

   EVIDENCE:     Look at the Japanese mindset. Surrender was not an option to them short of devastating defeat. Their major cities, by June, 1945, had been so thoroughly obliterated by American incendiary raids that the Army Air Forces were running out of legitimate targets. Yet they fought on. All the major waterways through which the dwindling Japanese Imperial Navy could travel were heavily mined or completely dominated by American naval and air forces. Yet the Japanese prepared to fight on. The Japanese people were on the brink of starvation. Yet they hung up posters declaring that there were "80 million ready to die" on the home islands in the coming battle (1) Their military was unable to procure the necessary munitions and materiel needed to effectively conduct an effective defensive campaign. Did they quit due to this? NO. There are miles of footage of women and children being trained with bamboo spears to defend their homes against invading troops. Understand that- six-year-old boys willing to strap grenades to their bodies and charge towards American lines. Think they wouldn't do it? Kids just like them did it to American troops a couple of decades later- in Vietnam.
   
EVIDENCE:    Casualty figures from battles in the dozens of islands in the Pacific between the Japanese forces and the Allies. Let's look at Tarawa, also known as Betio Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands, which was assaulted by over 10,000 American Marines on 20 November, 1943. This little chunk of coral, less than five square miles, was defended by 3500 Japanese. SEVENTEEN surrendered, and it took nearly four days to secure Betio. The commander of the japanese defenders, just prior to the battle, claimed the he would defend the island so viciously that "a million men in a hundred years" could not conquer it. I'll also point out that he sent this message to his higher-ups AFTER his lines of supply had been cut for quite some time by superior American forces in their drive across the central Pacific.
    Simply put, the Japanese would NOT just up and quit. Look at the German Armed Forces, by comparison, and compare casualty rates in regards to POWs taken, and how often they would retreat, even with Hitler continually ordering troops to stand their ground and die there.
     
FURTHERMORE:    The American government, on at least one occasion, not only considered offering the Japanese a conditional, and not total surrender- they also discussed it on some level with the British, if only taking baby steps towards the proposal.
   
A FINAL THOUGHT OR TWO:   The last Japanese soldier to surrender did so not in 1945, but in 1974- in the Phillipines. He continued on, despite being cut off from all contact with his superiors, without any allies near him, and with virtually no resources with which to fight. But he didn't give up for 29 years after the war's actual end. Even after the two bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an ultra-nationalist clique of militarists in the Japanese government, on the night of 15/16 August, 1945 (which would be 14/15 August in the US), attempted a coup to depose the Emperor who was about to tell the Japanese populace that the war was over.
     Two million Japanese troops nearly kept fighting on mainland Asia even after the surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945- thousands were still cut off all over islands in the Pacific, waging guerilla campaigns against their enemies, after V-J day, and even into 1946.
     Surrender was simply not part of the Japanese mindset. Anyone who can cite sources otherwise must have read a heck of a lot more than I have about it, because in over 15 years of (admittedly) casual research, discussion with historians, veterans and aficionados, I can NOT find any proof to the contrary. The well-documented mass suicides of CIVILIANS on islands such as Saipan should help to illustrate the point- the Japanese would not surrender short of Armageddon.
     
WHERE DID I GET THIS?    Source information includes Code-Name Downfall, by Normal Polmar, et al.
0816 Hours, 6 August, 1945:
The World is Forever Changed
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