1.None of the writers you're citing are peer-reviewed scholars. These kinds of writers could get away with fabricating such drivel before 1985, but after that they had to stop because the archives were opened in the 1970s and real scholars put this garbage to rest. You are wrong, and the perponderance of the works cited date after 1985.
2.All the scholars I've cited in the links are professionally peer-reviewed scholars writing for the acedemic and informed audience. Bruce Lee and David Glantz conducted original research that subsequent authors cite. See below.
3.There is no controversy about the point that Hirohito agreed to surrender only after he was promised he wouldn't be imprisoned. There's no controversy about that. Nothing you've cited supports your claim. Hirohito asked that the surrender not impinge on his prerogatives, yet the American reply, in accordance with Potsdam Declaration, stated that the Japanese people would choose what form of government would exist after the war.
Secretary of State James Byrnes authored the U.S. reply: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms. ...The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people."
Hirohito was guaranteed nothing.
Forget what McArthur said. Forget what John Toland wrote. Go to the documents...go to the archives. Cited earlier: http://www.dannen.com/decision/index.html
btw there's a huge controversy about what happened to the trillions of dollars in gold Hirohito plundered, and who still has it. Some day the documents on that will be released and that will be settled as well, but as for now the documents remain sealed.
Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
From your sources:
Alperovitz refers frequently to the subsequent diplomatic correspondence between Japan's foreign minister Shigenori Togo and his ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, an exchange of enormous importance because United States intelligence intercepted, decoded, and made it available to American policy makers.
One would never know from this account that Sato-safe from the threat of assassination and perhaps with a more realistic perspective than his embattled superiors in Tokyo-warned Togo from the start that the initiative to the Soviet Union would be rebuffed and that unconditional surrender was Japan's only option. On July 12, driven by a sense of urgency and foreboding, he cabled Togo: "We ourselves must firmly resolve to terminate the war.... Is there any meaning in showing that our country has reserve strength for a war of resistance, or in sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of conscripts and millions of other innocent residents of cities and metropolitan areas?"
Rebuked for his insubordination, Sato was warned against giving any indication that Japan was prepared to surrender unconditionally.Just possibly, Truman and other American policy makers who read this and similar exchanges might have taken them as signals to offer some concessions, but it seems more plausible to read them as indications that Japan was determined to fight fanatically on to a bloody end. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hamby.htm
Wainstock deals with the Japanese side of the final months of the war more thoroughly and competently than does Alperovitz. He persuasively depicts a Japanese regime always a step or two behind the curve of the war, denying the certainty of defeat and unwilling or unable to state peace terms that might have been compatible with the American demand for unconditional surrender. At no point before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the Japanese government prepared to surrender on the sole basis of the personal safety and nominal continuance of the emperor. . . News of the Nagasaki bomb was decisive, not in changing their [the military's] minds, but in motivating the civilian leaders and Emperor Hirohito to face reality. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hamby.htm
Another note from your sources, and note how it undermines Alperovitz's argument that the bombs were not necessary:
In a communication to H-Diplo, Alperovitz has asserted that space considerations made it impossible to devote extensive attention to the Japanese side. One must note, however, that a full and accurate treatment would provide scant support for his argument. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hamby.htm
Contrary to your claims:
Rhodes, Richard. The Making Of The Atomic Bomb. 1986
One hundred other authors cite Rhodes; he also won the Pulitzer Prize for this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-...pe=cited#cited
Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against The Sun. 1985
One hundred other authors cite Spector: including John Keegan.
http://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Against-...pe=cited#cited
Toland, John. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire1936-1945 1970
One hundred other authors cite Toland: including the National Archives and Max Hastings.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rising-Sun...pe=cited#cited
Glantz, David. The Soviet Strategic Offensive In Manchuria, 1945: ‘August Storm’. 2003
The book is remarkably well researched. It should be in every university library, because they are vital to any scholarly specialist or graduate student who wishes to understand either the Second World War or Soviet military thinking..
–Dr. Dale R. Herspring (Political Science) -- Kansas State University/Distinguished Professor, 9/2004
http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Strateg...e+In+Manchuria
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...t/1986/RMF.htm
Lee, Bruce. Marching Orders: The Untold Story Of World War II. 1995
Already acclaimed as "one of the most important books ever published about World War II,"* this brilliantly written book reveals a host of previously untold stories: how the American breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple ciphers led to the defeat of Germany and caused Eisenhower not to capture Berlin, as well as why America and Great Britain agreed to employ nuclear weapons against Japan.
In researching Marching Orders, Bruce Lee had access to 1.5 million pages of U.S. Army documents -- plus 15,000 pages of Japanese decrypts -- detailing Germany's most sensitive military secrets. Japanese diplomats and military attaches in Europe sent these reports daily to Tokyo, believing falsely that their ciphers could not be broken. In turn, Tokyo sent its diplomats plans for the military expansion of the Japanese Empire.
In Marching Orders, Bruce Lee takes these decrypts and shows, with an overlay on wartime chronological events, what their impact was on Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (plus a handful of others) and how they influenced his strategic prosecution of the war. New light is shed on myriad issues, including the ceding of Berlin to the Soviets, the wars in Africa and on the Eastern Front, the invasion of Europe, and the atomic bombing of Japan.
Challenging conventional wisdom, this book concisely documents the dreadful casualties both American and Japanese forces would have suffered in an invasion and occupation of Japan. Marching Orders demonstrates, through its interpretation of the supposedly secret communications between Japanese leaders, that Tokyo was adamant in its refusal to surrender. The difficult choices facing the Americans about how to end the war quickly are explained on a day-by-day-basis.
http://www.amazon.com/Marching-Order.../dp/0517196069
Twenty-one other authors cite Lee.
http://www.amazon.com/Marching-Order...pe=cited#cited
Frank, Richard B. Downfall: The End Of The Imperial Japanese Empire. 1999
Twenty-seven other authors cite Frank.
http://www.amazon.com/Downfall-The-I...pe=cited#cited
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing The Enemy: Stalin, Truman, And The Surrender Of Japan. 2006
The long debate among historians about American motives and Japanese efforts at ending World War II is finally resolved in
Racing the Enemy, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's brilliant and definitive study of American, Soviet and Japanese records of the last weeks of the war. (
Richard Rhodes New York Times Book Review)
Will we ever really know why Japan surrendered in World War II? In this judicious and meticulously researched study of the endgame of the conflict, [Hasegawa] internationalizes (by a thorough look at American, Japanese, and Soviet literature and archives) the diplomatic and political maneuvering that led to Japanese capitulation...No study has yet to bundle together the myriad works on the war's end in such a complete manner...This work should become standard reading for scholars of World War II and American diplomacy. (Thomas Zeiler
American Historical Review )
This book is a well-researched and provocative analysis of a fascinating yet neglected aspect of World War II: the American public's conventional assumption is that Japan surrendered to the Allies because of American atomic bombs...Hasegawa's conclusion raises tempting hypothetical questions for further research of this topic, and he provides intriguing answers to them. (Sean Savage
Historian )
