" radar won the war, the atomic bomb ended the war." This is a brief summary of the role played by technology in World War II by the Western scientific community. So, is it true that the United States deliberately used the atomic bomb as a trump card to deal a fatal blow to the beleaguered Japan, and that the release of two atomic bombs eventually led to Japan's surrender? Is this conclusion final? If we carefully explore the details of history, we will find that things are not that simple. The casualties caused by the atomic bomb were not "particularly" large.
Michael Gordon, a scholar at Princeton University, and Takeshi Hasegawa, a Japanese-American scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, believe that Japan’s rapid surrender after the United States used atomic bombs was not an outcome that the American scientific community, military circles, and political decision-makers could accurately predict in the final stage of the war; from Japan’s perspective, the atomic bomb’s attack was not the main factor that prompted its decision to quickly surrender.
Title of the book on the left: Gordon's "Five Days in August: How World War II Turned into Nuclear War".
Title of the book on the right: Hasegawa's "Confrontation with the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan"
In terms of the instantaneous destructive power of a single atomic bomb explosion, compared with conventional bombs, the difference in effectiveness between atomic bombs and conventional bombs is "quantity" rather than "quality".
Here we can compare the Tokyo bombing on March 9, 1945 with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9: 1945 From the night of March 9 to the early morning of March 10, 2011, the US military dispatched a group of B-29 bombers to carry out carpet bombing of Tokyo with napalm , killing approximately 88,000 to 97,000 people, injuring 41,000 to 125,000 people, and leaving more than one million people homeless. The Tokyo bombing was the single non-nuclear military operation that caused the most casualties in human history.
In comparison, the Hiroshima atomic bomb caused about 70,000 instant deaths. By the end of 1945 after Japan surrendered, about 140,000 people had died from burns and radiation. By the end of 1950, about 200,000 people had died. The consequences of the Nagasaki atomic bomb were slightly smaller, causing a total of about 39,000 to 80,000 deaths.
It can be seen that from a practical perspective, the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be regarded as a continuation of the Tokyo bombing-style conventional attack. The short-term casualties after the atomic bomb attack did not greatly exceed that of conventional attacks. So if the spring bombing of Tokyo, which caused huge casualties, inspired Japanese decision-makers to "shatter" the determination of the people to resist the United States, I am afraid that the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused similar or slightly smaller casualties, would not have made Japan decide to surrender in just five days from August 9 to 14. Looking to the Soviet Union for mediation, the Soviet Union declared war and Japan was desperate
If the atomic bomb attack was not the direct factor that led to Japan's surrender, why did Japan make the decision to surrender within just five days after the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki? After studying relevant archives of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Japan, Takeshi Hasegawa, an American scholar of Soviet history and Cold War history, came to the conclusion that
the Soviet Union’s participation in the war made Japan desperate and made the decision to surrender.
In early 1945, before Germany surrendered, there was no suspense about Japan's defeat and surrender. The question was when and how it would surrender. During the Second World War, the Soviet Union maintained diplomatic relations with Japan, and the "Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Treaty" was still valid. Japan hoped to avoid the Soviet Union's participation in the war, and negotiated with its allies through Soviet mediation to end the war on terms that were beneficial to itself.
After the Potsdam Proclamation was issued urging Japan to surrender unconditionally, the Japanese cabinet held a meeting to discuss how to respond. In view of the wrong signal sent by the lack of Soviet signature in the Potsdam Declaration, Japanese senior officials, including Emperor Showa , believed that they should wait for further contact and consultation with the Soviet Union before making a decision.
Therefore, on July 28, the Japanese newspaper "Yomiuri Hōchi" published a statement made by Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki about the Japanese government's "ignoring" of the Potsdam Proclamation. This statement was later considered to be Japan's "rejection" of the Potsdam Proclamation.This provides rationality for the United States to continue planning the atomic bomb attack that has entered the countdown.
After the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki held a cabinet meeting. However, the cabinet members did not discuss in depth the issue of accepting the Potsdam Declaration. Instead, they sent a telegram to the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union to urgently request the latter to clarify the Soviet attitude as soon as possible.
htmlOn August 7, the Soviet Union's " Pravda" did not have any report on the Hiroshima atomic bomb. On August 8, it only published Truman's statement about the atomic bomb without any comments. This shows that Stalin must be angry at the United States for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is obviously because the United States wants to abandon the Soviet Union, enjoy the fruits of war victory alone, and curb the Soviet Union's right to speak as an ally. Therefore, after an emergency meeting of the Politburo, Stalin ordered Vasilevsky to launch an attack in the early morning of August 9, Transbaikal time.
Schematic diagram of the Soviet offensive
The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly concluded that Japan had no other choice but to accept the Potsdam Declaration. In the following days, after several negotiations with the United States and the Soviet Union on the terms of surrender, and after the attempted coup by the Japanese military faction, the recording of Emperor Showa's " Final War Rescript " was released to the Japanese people on the radio at noon on August 15, marking the end of World War II.
Japan now holds events every year to commemorate the atomic bombings, trying to portray itself as a victim of the war. This attitude cannot be exchanged for forgiveness. Japan should give an answer to the people of the Far East who imposed the disaster on the countries in the Far East and finally Japan itself.
