Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: People don't know their history Message-ID: <5848@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 15:39:13 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.5848 Posted: Wed Jul 31 15:39:13 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 15:39:13 EDT References: <307@looking.UUCP> <3306@garfield.UUCP> <228@watmum.UUCP>, <2260@watcgl.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 136 There's been enough interest, I think, for me to post the following. This is a lengthy note I sent to fa.arms-d some years ago when this issue came up. It touches on a number of other issues, but does address the point: it is doubtful whether a demonstration of the atomb bomb would have sufficed, because the people whose opinion was most important -- the Japanese Army -- would not have approached it with open minds from a rational viewpoint. ----- atomic bombs on Japan The various flames on this subject have all ignored one key issue: the Japanese view of the situation. It may well be true that the American decision to use the bomb was motivated by political considerations such as one-upmanship with respect to the Soviets. It is a mistake to assume that the bombs therefore did not accomplish anything useful. It is true that Japan was in bad shape in the summer of 1945. Submarine warfare had imposed an effective blockade. Food was short. What navy Japan had left was helpless in port for lack of fuel. USAAF firebombing raids were systematically devastating the cities (causing, by the way, far more death and destruction than the atomic attacks ever did). Japan was suffering very badly indeed. But it is a serious mistake to assume that the Japanese viewed the situation the same way the US did. (It seems to be a standard mistake of Western countries to assume that everybody else thinks the same way they do.) Oh, it is entirely possible that the average "man in the street" thought the situation was hopeless and surrender inevitable. It is not in fact clear that this was the case, but it's not important. Because the man in the street had NO SAY in the matter. None. Zero. The political power in Japan in 1945 basically rested with the armed forces. The Cabinet and other related bodies had major representation from the Army and the Navy. There were still civilians in key positions, including the Prime Minister, but their situation was increasingly precarious. The armed forces had enough men in the inner circles of the government that they could, at any time, (a) force the equivalent of a Vote of Non-Confidence, and (b) win such a vote, thus toppling the government. Given the political realities of the situation, the new government (Cabinet, etc.) formed after such an event would inevitably have been totally controlled by the armed forces, and in particular the Army's General Anami would almost certainly have become Prime Minister. What did the Army think about the idea of surrender? Well, most of them had been trained in the precepts of Bushido, in which surrender was the ultimate form of disgrace, such that it was literally better to die fighting than to surrender. This is why the Allies did not get many Japanese prisoners, why the reconquest of some miserable little pieces of rock in the Pacific was so difficult, and incidentally was also a large part of the reason why the Japanese treated Allied POW's so savagely -- by their standards, men who surrendered were craven cowards, barely human degenerates. The Army's view of surrender in summer 1945 was, basically, total and unconditional opposition. To even voice such thoughts was to betray that one was a "Badoglio" (Badoglio was the man who negotiated Italy's surrender to the Allies), both a coward and a traitor. If one was too highly placed and had been too intimately involved with the war for such an accusation to ring true, one had obviously been corrupted, seduced by the Badoglios. The Army was determined to fight to the last man, not because they thought they could win but because there was NO other honorable course of action open to them. The Prime Minister and most of the civilian higher-ups were in favor of surrender, but they dared not force a confrontation. It took direct intervention by the Emperor himself -- unprecedented and technically illegal, since the Emperor was in law essentially a figurehead -- to break the impasse. And despite his intervention being, LITERALLY, the Word Of God to the Japanese of that time, he had to intervene TWICE in the Cabinet and then PERSONALLY broadcast the orders -- the first time most Japanese had ever heard the voice of their emperor/god. And at that, if he'd simply ordered a surrender, he'd have been ignored, on the grounds that he had been tricked by the Badoglios. Such an attempt would probably have triggered a military coup; this was being seriously considered earlier (no, this would not have been a revolt against the Emperor: it would have been against the Badoglios who were misleading him). At that, there WAS an attempted military coup after the decision was made to surrender; it failed for lack of support by senior officers. (What has all this to do with atomic bombs? I thought you'd never ask. I'm just coming to that.) The reason the Emperor was able, in his broadcast, to convince the Army to go along with him was that he offered an escape from the moral dilemma of surrender-is-disgrace. Basically, he argued that the atomic bomb was something utterly new under the sun, so totally different from anything that had come before that the old rules could not be expected to apply. The new weapon was so terrible that Japan had no alternative but to "bear the unbearable" and surrender. The situation was quite literally unbearable to some Army officers: they committed suicide after hearing the Emperor's broadcast. But few disobeyed; even half-plausible reasoning sufficed, coming from their personal deity. This is why the attempted coup failed. Could the Japanese have been convinced without actual atomic attacks? It's unlikely; as it was, the Army did its best to minimize the seriousness of the situation until the evidence overwhelmed them. The early reports from Hiroshima were widely belittled or taken to be exaggerations. Perhaps a demonstration could have been sufficiently convincing, but I doubt it. In short, the atomic bombs were a key event in making Japan's surrender possible (not desirable, POSSIBLE!). Possibly the pro-surrender faction could have swung it without them, but it's not likely. The military coup would have been almost inevitable, and substantial parts of the Army would have fought to the last man regardless. Don't forget, also, that the surrender saved more than just the lives of the Allied invasion troops. Probably an equal number of Japanese would have died in the fighting. And until the atom bombings, both the Allied POW's in Japan and the Allied intelligence agencies charged with their welfare considered it almost certain that final Japanese defeat would result in the massacre of all Allied soldiers in Japanese hands, orders or no orders. For more details on the matter (a couple of hundred pages of them), the best book by far that I have found is Thomas Coffey's IMPERIAL TRAGEDY. Part 2 of this book is an attempt to reconstruct every detail of the events in Japan leading up to the surrender. (Part 1 is a similar treatment of Pearl Harbor.) Coffey is the only author whose work I've seen whose primary sources include first-hand accounts from the men involved (or their immediate associates, for those no longer alive). Another good (although more limited) discussion of the subject can be found in NAGASAKI: THE NECESSARY BOMB? (author's name forgotten, dammit, and my copy isn't handy). Both published circa 1975, possibly still in print. ----- [Addendum: Thomas M. Coffey, Imperial Tragedy, Pinnacle Books 1970. Joseph L. Marx, Nagasaki: The Necessary Bomb?, Macmillan 1971. Older than I thought. Probably both out of print by now, alas.] -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry