8/6, 7/7 and 9/11

[Iconoclast]

Re: 8/6, 7/7 and 9/11

@mAd_ScIeNtIsT

Opinion, not fact. There were other American officers who believed that Japan was not ready to surrender unconditionally as Germany had done so.

Japan had been trying to make peace, but on Japan’s own terms. The Potsdam declaration between the Allies stated that only the unconditional surrender of Japan would be accepted.

On July 7th, Japan offered to surrender as long as only a small occupation force was sent.

Only July 8th, Japan offered to surrender as long as the Emperor was allowed to retain office.

These offers were short of the unconditional surrender required by the Allies.
.

Why was the unconditional surrender required?

The most important thing for japanese was to retain the King.

And there were many people who thought it was not needed:

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, “**When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” **Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71