Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
This is fascinating. Thanks for posting. The questions I have are these: Would the Emperor have come to his position without the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was he thinking about whether the USA had more such bombs? Did he realize, deep down, that Japan was truly one of the "bad guys" in the war, and may be facing terrible retribution if it continued to fight? Was he smart enough to see that surrendering to America would offer gentler post-war consequences than what Japan might end up with otherwise (e.g., Soviet occupation)? Apart from the Japanese decision, was Truman misinformed about the 1 million American lives that an invasion would cost?

By now it should be clear that I don't have a lot of patience for revisionist attempts to prove that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mistakes and were unnecessary. They were probably the most tragic, horrible events of WWII* but I think the weight of the evidence strongly supports Truman's decision.

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*The Holocaust was not tragic. It was simply the greatest evil of the 20th century.
I dont know this history in any kind of detail; but i agree with you and USS Utah--it is very hard to second guess the decision, in part because we would have wreaked the same kind of damage (or much worse) through conventional bombing and warfare. USS Utah sure knows this stuff. What about the argument that Truman's real purpose (or secondary purpose) was to keep the Soviets out of the war against Japan and to deter them from moving westward in Europe?