Comment by whatisthiseven | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whatisthiseven | Hacker News Reader

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"Whether it was the use of nuclear weapons or Soviet invasion that more forcefully led to surrender has been hotly debated between historians. Hasegawa places greater emphasis on the Soviet invasion, suggesting that Japan would likely have stood steadfast under multiple atomic bombings as it had done in the face of firebombing. Asada directly references and disputes his account, claiming that nuclear weapons and the threat they posed to the homeland reflected a much more "direct" impetus to end the war rather than the invasion of Manchuria, and offered an easier way out for the leadership. Further, they came as a complete surprise to Japanese leadership, whereas eventual conflict with the USSR was expected. Frank's account, and most other anti-revisionist historians support this thesis." [1]

I think it can be fair to say that the perception of the Allies/America was the bombs would lead to surrender, but from the Japanese perspective that isn't so cut-and-dry.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15kb3w/why_d...

Your source is a reddit post without a clear overall source and only a few anchor tags in some of the paragraphs.

I’d like to know what the Japanese thought at the time not what certain historians think after the fact.

The Soviets invaded a part of Japan and a few hours later the second bomb dropped. It’s inconclusive. From the American perspective it still worked.

I am not sure I understand your criticism here. Your original assertion was "The sentiment was the bombs would cause much less casualties on at least one of the sides", which you quoted a family member. That is fine, but I am confused what you want to know.

If you want to know what people thought, who weren't leaders, then assuredly most people thought the bombs would stop the war, but probably the same way they thought the fire-bombing would stop the war, and all other actions before that like basically wiping out the Japanese fleet. So, your family member's perspective is fine, but it doesn't tell us why the war did actually finally stop. Just what random people thought caused it to end.

If you wanted to know what leaders, who were making decisions about the war and trying to decide what to do, you could see from the Historian's report that many Japanese leaders were in conflict over whether to surrender and how to surrender before the bombs dropped, after the bombs, and after the Russian invasion. Even after the Emperor agreed to surrender there were still factions vying to prevent such a surrender for different reasons.

On r/AskHistorians, sources are not required to be given when composing a post, however they must be given upon request. If you are really interested in the sources and not my blase summary, I recommend just pinging the Historian directly for the kinds of sources you are interested in. Even if their post wasn't to your liking, they surely know where to find the sources you would want given their expertise.

For that matter, you could even open a question on r/AskHistorians itself!

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