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Originally posted by Strange Famous
they were at the very point of the attack trying to negoiate a surrender - this is an easily proveable historical fact.
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I just love how you say things like this, its kind of cute. Perhaps you don't understand but the only surrender possible was an unconditional one, the entire government of Japan had to be removed from power. We did give in enough to let the Emperor not face charges, but that’s it. To call the Japanese 'helpless' shows a horrible lack of understanding of the Japanese psyche. Read about the battle of Iow Jima and Okinawa (where the first Japanese civilians came into contact with ground forces) and tell me how 'beaten' they were and how ready they were to surrender. Families committed suicide in their shelters rather then be captured, wounded soldiers, who could have been easily saved, held onto live grenades hoping to get a US soldier close enough to kill them both. When the final advance was taking place thousands threw themselves off cliffs to avoid the Americans who they thought would kill them (and based on how Japan treated their prisoners its of little surprise in this thought).
Don't place your own biases into the mindset of a WWII era Japanese civilian or soldier. The Japanese were brutal and cruel to the extreme, but no one can deny their bravery and willingness to die. Their hope for an invasion of the mainland was they would make it so bloody, that the American people, sick of war, would be willing to make a negotiated peace. Women and children were armed and ‘trained’ to charge allied troops with basically spears. Caches of weapons were hidden all over. Single fighters set for Kamikaze missions were hidden all over the island.
After the two bombs were dropped, the high command didn’t change their plans at all, it didn’t matter to them if a city was destroyed by one big bomb or 10,000 little ones, they expected the major cities to be destroyed. It was only the realization that Japan might cease to exist as nation and a culture that changed the emperor’s mind, and even then it was a razors edge between surrender and a coup to kidnap the emperor and continue the fighting.