The above comment disregards a lot of historical context. To say that Japan was “on the verge of surrender” is not really accurate. To say that Japan only “wanted to keep their emperor” is COMPLETELY false. I’m not saying that the US made the right decision in regards to these bombings, but it wasn’t just to prove a point and it damn sure wasn’t just to test the bomb.
1) Japan was willing to negotiate terms of peace (their demands included way more than just keeping the emperor btw), but they were not willing to surrender. They were not willing to outright surrender until the atomic bombings and subsequent Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria. Until the atomic bombings the official strategy of the Japanese government was to inflict enough casualties on Allied military and civilian populations until the Allied governments had no choice but to accept their terms of peace. That was the official position of the Japanese war council which at that time was a collection of civilian and military leaders that governed the nation. While it’s true that members of Japan’s CIVILIAN leadership wanted to negotiate terms of peace that only included keeping the emperor, Japan’s MILITARY leadership had three more demands. First, demobilization will be overseen entirely by the Japanese military. So the Japanese military gets to decide the scale and timeline of Japan’s demobilization. Unacceptable for so many reasons. Second, Japan gets to keep its colonial land holdings in Korea, China, and Taiwan, where it was committing genocide. Unacceptable. (not to say that Western colonialism wasn’t also genocidal and unacceptable). Third, the burgeoning international community has no jurisdiction to try Japanese war criminals. Those, along with keeping the emperor, were the treaty demands of the military establishment before the bombs were dropped. Because the military establishment held veto power within the Japanese cabinet, those would’ve been the necessary concessions the Allies would have to make to end the war. For a whole slew of reasons they were unacceptable. Even after the bombs had dropped there were hardliners in the military establishment that wanted to refuse surrender and continue to demand these concessions. It wasn’t until after the atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that the more moderate wing of the Japanese government was able to convince the hardliners that surrender was inevitable and had to be accepted sooner rather than later.
2) The Japanese had an example of what total surrender looks like in Germany, and it was not acceptable to them. They saw the occupation, they saw the groundwork being laid for the Nuremberg Trials, they saw the upending of German civil and military society and they found that unacceptable. Most of the leadership knew that total surrender would be a death sentence for them and would mean the total upending of the society they had built and consolidated power in. Even civilian leaders like Minister Togo, informed by the surrender of Germany, were not willing to accept surrender and said as much in internal communications.
3) It is true that the US’ decision was heavily influenced by the need to limit Soviet influence in East Asia, but that’s a legitimate concern. On the European and Middle Eastern fronts the US and other Western “democracies” (in quotes because they were really only democracies in name) had suffered enormous casualties only to see the Soviet Union literally occupying half of Europe and having gained significant traction in the Middle East. To have the same thing happen in East Asia would be nothing short of a strategic military crisis for the US and Western Europe. While it’s true that Soviet influence in East Asia did eventually expand dramatically, that’s something we know in hindsight and it’s understandable that American leadership would want to do everything in their power to prevent this.
4) The post and comment make no mention of China, which was a key ally of the US on the Pacific front, was mostly occupied by Japan by this point, and had lost over 80 million people due to Japanese aggression, most of them civilians. Should the US have subjected China to a grueling invasion and subsequent Soviet occupation? Dropping the bombs before Soviet intervention ensured Chinese independence following the war. The Soviets definitely had designs on Manchuria and it’s very likely that they would have used their efforts on the Pacific front as justification for land grabs in China the same way they did in Eastern Europe.
5) When people say the atomic bombs weren’t “necessary” to end the war they’re right. However, the consensus at the time and even now is that it would have required either an invasion of more Japanese territory or a significant escalation of firebombings to end the war. Were there dissenting opinions like Admirals Leahy and Nimitz? Of course. Were there generals like Eisenhower who had reservations about the wisdom of the decision? Of course. But the consensus based on internal communications of the Japanese military and the actions of the Japanese military were that peace (without accepting the three terms I mentioned earlier) was months away at best and many lives would be lost in the process. Even now there’s not a whole lot of information that contradicts that. I mean even most of the generals and admirals who dissented suggested an invasion or ratcheting up of firebombings as an alternative, both options would have caused civilian casualties on a similar scale the bombings.
Sorry to clog y’all’s dashes with such a long comment but my point is that any discussion about a historical event of this magnitude has to be contextualized. Am I saying the US made the right decision? No. Am I saying the atomic bombings weren’t horrific war crimes? No, they definitely were (so was the firebombing of Tokyo and Hamden and Dresden). What I am saying is that decontextualizing history like this only leads to a black-and-white, linear historical view that doesn’t benefit anyone. To boil this very complex act down to “the US is evil and wanted to show everyone their shiny new toy” the way zamaron is in this comment is at best naive and at worst incredibly misleading and disingenuous.
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