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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

The question of the role of the atomic bombs in compelling Japanese surrender is one that is still debated among historians to this day, and will continue to be debated for as long as I live.

The indisputable fact is that Japan had thoroughly lost the war at that point--it was either losing or had already completely lost in every theater. I tend to think that the atomic bombs played a big role in the decision to surrender in that it showed that the Americans were capable of devastating entire cities with a single bomber: air defenses are unlikely to score any hits against a single bomber unlike a large fleet of bombers carpet bombing cities into oblivion, robbing Japan even of the chance to die in a blaze of glory.

But this also raises a tricky moral question. The decision to end a war is not made by the victor but by the loser. What should you do if the loser refuses to admit the loss?

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By the time the atom bombs were used the 60 or so major cities in Japan had been destroyed by the firebombing. Whether it was done with one bomber or dozens didn't really matter. Japan didn't have the capacity to stop either at that point.

On the Japanese side there were multiple factions. Everyone in leadership understood the war was lost, but a large fraction still had hope of making things costly enough for the US to negotiate a conditional surrender that preserved the Emperor.

From what I’ve read I think the japanese strategy, from the very beginning was to bleed the americans. They new they couldn’t compete with the US industrial strength, even before perl harbor. The idea was that if they killed enough soldiers and “showed horrors” to enough of them, then the US public would falter and withdraw.

Because you know democracies are weak and monarchies are strong kinda thing.

There was a real feel of “we’ll be a 110M martyrs, before japan surrenders its land”. And as vietnam war later showed us, a strategy like this can potentially work.

The bombs I think showed that the US appears to have the ability kill those 110M people without setting foot on the island.

Nobody can predict what would have happened without the bombs, it was a very complex situation, but after listening to dan carlin’s Hardcore History account of the pacific war, I’d say I’m convinced they played a major role for sure.

The only slight correction I would add here is that the Japanese were not playing to win the war at this point. They were simply playing to not lose. Their calculus was that they could inflict enough casualties on invading forces that any surrender would take into account them, continuing the whole China, Korea, and all of the other Pacific islands that they had seized. casualties were not a bug, they were a feature.

This is what all of the constant debates on hacker news failed to take into regard. If you look at the correspondence and the commentary of the people making decisions, it is quite clear that prior to the atomic bombing, the only side that was trying to minimize casualties was in fact, the United States. In fact, even on the allied side, neither Russia nor the United Kingdom, were particularly concerned with minimizing casualties. Since Stalin felt that he would gladly trade Soviet lives in favor of land that he could hold after the war, and the United Kingdom government was determined to make an example to justify their occupation of Asia .

It’s also worth noting that Nimitz and King, were proposing a path that would’ve led to an order of magnitude more death than either an invasion or the atomic bombs. A fleet blockade of Japan would’ve starved everyone in Japan.

Keep it up until they cry uncle.

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