A quote from General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
“Japan at the moment was seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
There are more quotes, but basically everything you were taught about the necessity of wiping out hundreds of thousands of people in a flash was after the fact American propaganda to justify a war crime.
> "Japan at the moment was seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of face"
Not really; some in Japan were seeking a surrender and some, notably nearly all of the Japanese military, were quite definitively not. Had the internal coup intended to prevent the surrender succeeded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident), Eisenhower's quote would have been entirely false instead of a half-truth.
The Eisenhower quote is from 1963. He was not a general in the pacific theater, and was not involved in postwar Japan.
IMO, his quote should be read as that of a politician (which he was, at that point, having served two terms as president), rather than that of a military general.
So you do think you know more than Eisenhower. Fascinating belief.
The strategic bombing survey of 1946, subject to no objections about Eisenhower’s relative objectivity compared to your own, concludes that the Japanese government was well into the process of determining how to surrender, with predictable resistance from the military but endorsement by the Emperor as they were in the process of determining how to stand down. It also points out that the majority of the populace had already lost hope for the war effort, which is now the bomb’s justification.
I did not say or imply I know more than Eisenhower. I was contextualizing his words; something that’s necessary when you pull quotes from 60 years ago.
The document you link to would also benefit from the same treatment, being written in 1946 by the Strategic Bombing survey (a group that notably preferred precision bombing of industrial infrastructure, to the indiscriminate destruction of napalm and atomic weapons).
It not only makes the point you describe (that the Japanese population was war fatigued), but it also concludes that the use of atomic weapons (plus the Soviet declaration of war) gave the peace-seeking factions of the war council a platform to strong arm the army (which wished to continue the war) into accepting the Potsdam terms (unconditional surrender).
Prior to the use of atomic weapons, Japan was seeking a conditional surrender where they kept Korea, Taiwan, and parts of Manchuria. They were also sincerely developing strategies to prolong the defense of a home invasion. Even the emperor (who was pro-surrender) encouraged the simultaneous development of both plans. It is true that there were influential factions who preferred peace. Without the atomic bombs, we cannot know how long it would have taken for them to gain ascendancy in the government, and how many would have perished before they came to an unconditional surrender.
Again, I’m not saying it’s cut and dry that they were necessary. I’m saying it was and is complicated and nuanced.
Dwight was being disingenuous, as the terms the Japanese were seeking to “save face” including keeping all their conquered possessions, especially in China.
