Quote:
Originally posted by Strange Famous
I am not trying to deny Japan in WWII was a vicious, aggressive, and inhumanly brutal force, responsible for terrible massacres... but the fact is in 45 Japan was beaten, they were trying to negoiate surrender, America knew this... they did not drop those bombs to save lives.
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some parts of the japanese citizenship may have tried to surrender, but the fact of the matter is, the large populance wasn't.
Japan at the time had a very strict code of honour, a more evolved sense of chivalry and conduct of medievil knights if you will, which could be seen in the kamikaze raids.
now, as we all know from terrorists today, if you have fanatics who are willing to die for their cause (as the whole of the japanese army just about was), you don't get surrender, you get a slaughter.
as most people will tell you, it's hard to lose an argument gracefully, and when that argument involves several million tonnes of steal and kerosene, it's even harder. the japanese were loyal to the emporer, the emporer wasn't surrendering, so neither would they, thus you get lots of fighting.
if the americans had simply put the japanese isles into quarantine instead of invading (as would most likely of happened while the pacific forces mustered their strength for a later invasion) the natives would have dug in and fought a guerrilla war, akin to vietnam.
put simply, with less randomness, yes some of japan may have wanted to surrender, but there would have been a hell of a lot of bloodshed before that happened. in war fear is the most powerful weapon on the battlefield, you destroy the moral and mind of the enemy, they don't fight and just run away. the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki are testiments to this.
the real question should be, what if japan had known that the americans didn't have another bomb?