soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article ,
Robert Warinner wrote:
>David Thornley wrote:

>: The nukes did.
>
>There are other possible explanations.
>
>Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's "Racing the Enemy" postulates that it was the Soviet
>declaration of war on Japan and subsequent invasion of Manchuria that did the
>trick.
>
The problem is that, when I started reading Hasegawa, I started getting
put off by the anti-US attitude, and the twisted logic.

I may be judging too hastily here, but "Racing the Enemy" struck me
as yet another anti-US hatchet job. The last page I read dismissed
the normal answer as to why Byrne went with the harsher demands to
Japan (as opposed to the somewhat milder ones Grew, for example,
wanted), which is domestic political pressure. It then contrived
a rather odd argument as to why Byrne wanted to defeat Japan,
that required nuking Japan, and therefore issued harsher terms
lest Japan escape defeat by surrendering.

>I would not defend Hasegawa's thesis to the death but he does marshall a
>certain amount of evidence to support it.
>
I'd like to see the evidence in a setting that strikes me as more
or less impartial. I have trouble reading Hasegawa. It seems to
me that the evidence points to the nuclear weapons as making the
difference, and I'd be interested in conflicting evidence.

>It is a mistake to think that Japan's surrender as some kind of rational
>calculation; destroying X cities, sinking Y ships, capturing Z islands,
>dropping N thousand tons of bombs and incendaries would result in 1 Japanese
>capitulation.
>
Of course. It was a matter of thoroughly defeating Japan, giving them
an excuse to surrender, and a lot of luck, historically. I know
what was going on when they surrendered, but I'm very uncertain about
any other scenario. We simply can't tell.

>The Imperial War Council was a small group of leaders with various interests
>and perspectives, bound by elaborate protocol and precedent. It should not be
>a surprise that the strategic calculations they made did not correspond to how
>US leaders saw them.
>
Or to reality, for that matter. Japanese decisions often had only
the most tenuous relation with the actual situation, more so the
higher you go up.

It's interesting that the naval leaders knew what was happening.
Yamamoto promised to run wild in the Pacific for six months to a
year, and only missed by three days. Nagano said he could hold
the US off for two years - about two years before the start of
the Central Pacific drive.

>In that situation, and given the lack of contemporary records of the decision,
>Hasegawa does make a defensible case.
>
I know that we don't have enough information to be conclusive, but it
seems to me that the evidence all points at the nukes as being the
proximate cause of the decision to surrender. Any attempt at making
a full explanation is going to include some speculation. (For example,
what was going through Anami's mind? Nobody seems to have understood
what he was doing until his suicide, and after that it was too late.)

--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
david@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-