What made Japan surrender in WW2?

[crookeddy]

Conventional wisdom says nuclear weapons ended the war with Japan, but I recently had a conversation with a Russian friend of mine, and he claimed that it was the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan that actually ended it. Here is an article supporting this idea:

https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/008/expertclips/010

If this is the truth, does it mean that the war would have ended with the Soviet's entry regardless of the bombing? And if so, does it mean that the bombing was unnecessary? Does it mean that the conventional bombing of Tokyo was unnecessary? All the US really needed to do was blockade and wait for Stalin?

 

[AlanC9]

It's not quite clear what the mechanism of action is there. The Soviets were going to take Manchuria and Korea, sure, but with Japan's merchant marine gone they were of no value. Hokkaido too, maybe. But I don't see how the Soviets break into Honshu.

OTOH, Imperial Japan's decision-making was never all that rational.

But I do agree with the central point that barbecuing civilians with nuclear weapons is not different from barbecuing them with napalm.

 

[Jax]

You would of thought the idea of Tokyo being nuked and wiping out the Imperial Family would of been a big reason for their surrender.

 

[Dryson]

Japan surrendered because the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on major cities in Japan. I can be certain that if I were to ask the Japanese government directly the reason for surrendering, the reason would not be Russia.

The fact that Imperial Japan had attacked the U.S. during a time neutrality between each country, not to mention that the Imperial Japanese had given the U.S. friendship medals as a sign of non-aggression is the reason why the U.S. went to war with Imperial Japan.

There is no thought of Russia being a factor of stopping the nukes being dropped on Japan as means to make it sound like the U.S. was wrong for what we did. The decision to use nukes was to keep from millions on both sides, men, women and children, infant and old alike from dying in the landfall the U.S. intended.

The entire country of Japan at the time would have thrown themselves at U.S. forces. Babies become roadside IED as a concerned soldier picks the baby up, old men and women become suicide bombers while the young men and women fight from behind them.

The brutality that Japan would have unleashed to stop the U.S. from making landfall is the only the reason that nukes were dropped. Russia had no involvement with the Japan making the decision to surrender.

If anything the Russians would have met a similar fake as the U.S. forces landing on mainland Japan would have if they had launched an assault.

 

[Amos]

As I recall the Japanese civilian population was expected to fight the Allies as well as the military when Allied troops hit the Japanese shores. Now how many civilians would’ve actually fought is debatable but some definitely would have. I doubt very much it would have mattered to the regular army or civilian partisans, whom they were fighting (Americans, Chinese or Soviets). The Soviet Union’s declaration may have played a small part in Japan’s surrender, but I think Fatman and Little Boy were the main reasons.

 

[Doctor Bombay]

It was the Emperor who decided to chuck it all in after two cities were lost, IIRC.

 

[crookeddy]

The stuff being mentioned here is certainly what is being taught in our American schools, but the articles I read said that the Japanese population had actually had enough and had no heart for a last stand type of confrontation. USSR entering the war gave the Japanese no chance to even sue for peace because they were in no position to hold any of the conquests they'd won earlier in the war. Also it claims that they saw Germany fight to the end, and it was all for nothing. They weren't as interested in dying for honor as our history tells us.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There's a lot of revisionist nonsense out there.

 

[J.T.B.]

If this is the truth, does it mean that the war would have ended with the Soviet's entry regardless of the bombing? And if so, does it mean that the bombing was unnecessary? Does it mean that the conventional bombing of Tokyo was unnecessary? All the US really needed to do was blockade and wait for Stalin?

The blockade had already done its job, Japan had basically nothing left that could float. Japan was starving.

It was a complex situation. Certainly the Soviets rolling up the Kwantung Army so quickly was one of the strongest signs yet that Japan was already defeated. But no one knew if Japan was even capable of surrender. Most military and intelligence opinion was that the Empire would not capitulate until all its armies were defeated and the home islands occupied, and that the invasion would be resisted by every last Japanese subject.

What the atomic bombs did was break the deadlock in the Imperial ruling structure, allowing the hardline never-surrender faction to hang its hat on the idea that the Japanese forces hadn't been defeated in a fair fight, but by a revolutionary new technology that the world had never seen.

 

[AlanC9]

You would of thought the idea of Tokyo being nuked and wiping out the Imperial Family would of been a big reason for their surrender.

But Tokyo wasn't going to be nuked. Tokyo was so wrecked that it wasn't worth bombing anymore.

As for bombing the Imperial Family, killing them make it harder for Japan to surrender, not easier.

 

[Tribble Threat]

The bombs were certainly the reason for the surrender. It stands to reason they would have surrendered eventually without those bombs though.
What I find mysterious though, is how the Japanese state and Japanese people were so quick to become friendly with the US after the war. There are few things in history that puzzle me as much as that does. I wouldn't have been able to shift to friendship so quickly after losing such a large war, with so many losses.

 

[StarCruiser]

Emperor Hirohito...

General MacArthur knew that the people of Japan deeply respected the Emperor and made sure that he was excluded from any retaliation or punishment after the war (was mainly a figurehead anyway). He helped smooth the transition over enormously.

Since the general society was inherently polite by tradition, that helped as well. Then, you add US efforts to rebuild the country into one of the most prosperous nations in the world and - guess what, they like us!

 

[crookeddy]

The bombs were certainly the reason for the surrender. It stands to reason they would have surrendered eventually without those bombs though.
What I find mysterious though, is how the Japanese state and Japanese people were so quick to become friendly with the US after the war. There are few things in history that puzzle me as much as that does. I wouldn't have been able to shift to friendship so quickly after losing such a large war, with so many losses.

Absolutely incredible. I am not aware of a single terrorist attack against US forces after the attack! Not a single one! And this was by an absolutely decimated population who suffered firebombings, nukings, and were generally convinced that Americans were devils by propaganda. Twenty years later, the Beatles were playing at the Budokan!

 

[Tribble Threat]

It gives me hope for the future.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Perhaps threat of a possible Soviet attack may have figured into the calculation somehow, but clearly the Soviet Union was not positioned to make an amphibious landing across the Sea of Japan in Summer 1945, and the atomic bombs were merely the next evolution of US raids on Japanese cities.

 

[plynch]

This rings a bell with me about our timing: that ather than starving/quarantining the islands, we used the atomic bombs before USSR could credibly get in there somehow and get it or some of it long term like N Korea and central Europe.

 

[crookeddy]

This rings a bell with me about our timing: that ather than starving/quarantining the islands, we used the atomic bombs before USSR could credibly get in there somehow and get it or some of it long term like N Korea and central Europe.

I was just thinking that... What if the USSR "liberated" China and Korea? The cold war would have been over before it even started, and it would be the Soviet Union with the biggest empire in history...

 

[StarCruiser]

That probably had a bit to do with the urgency of the matter. Remember that there was already plenty of animosity between the Western Allies and the USSR even at that early point. Patton's concept of handling guns and tanks back to the German soldiers and pushing the Russians out of Western Europe wasn't falling on completely deaf ears at that time.

Just a few years after the war, there was this crazy scheme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Once the Soviets detonated their own Atomic Bomb, the plan was abandoned.

 

[Mojochi]

My albeit limited guess would be that the surrender came because the US had more of them to drop.

 

[Mysterion]

Absolutely incredible. I am not aware of a single terrorist attack against US forces after the attack! Not a single one! And this was by an absolutely decimated population who suffered firebombings, nukings, and were generally convinced that Americans were devils by propaganda. Twenty years later, the Beatles were playing at the Budokan!

For whatever other shortcoming MacArthur may have had in his career, he handled the Occupation of Japan masterfully. That went a very long way toward how the Japanese civil population and government reacted toward us going forward.