a significant date

[totient]

Today is two days shy of 62 years and three months after V-E day.

This is significant because at the Yalta conference in February 1945, the USSR promised to declare war against Japan within three months of the defeat of the Germans, the delay being required to remobilize to the new eastern front. Truman knew the August 8 Soviet invasion was coming when deciding whether to use the Bomb. The obvious conclusion is that we did it not to shorten the war but to make sure that the Japanese surrender was to the US, and thus reduce the Soviet influence in east Asia.

Today's news is predictably full of hand-wringing. I just wish any of the articles would mention Yalta.

Comments

[ceo]

There is a fair amount of documentary evidence to suggest that, as well as forestalling a Soviet entry into the war with Japan, the Truman administration wanted to have the bomb as a demonstrated fact, for its obvious leverage in negotiations with the Soviets. Of course, we all know how well that worked out.

The standard story was the the bomb was used in order to avoid having to invade the home islands, which would of course cost immense numbers of lives. However, the evidence also strongly suggests that an offer to allow the Emperor to retain his throne (as was eventually done) would have been sufficient to induce the Japanese to surrender even without the bomb or an invasion, and that the Truman administration knew it. Despite this, they insisted on a completely unconditional surrender, which the hotheads in the Japanese war command would never agree to (they were split roughly 50-50 on whether to surrender, prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

So, this is the first I've heard of this.

But as I read the wikipedia page about it, I don't see a lot of support for the implications of your statements.

It reads to me like the kind of error that occurs when people in conflict are unable to communicate well. Like the lack of clarity in the Potsdam declarations about the fate of the Emperor.

(No comment on my biases and experiences with such situations. :-)

I suppose your proposed negatives about Truman help explain the ludicrous speed at which the Japanese were being pushed to surrender, but I think I better explanation is just the emotions of war.

[scott-shorter.livejournal.com]

I was reading about Yalta the other day in http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/08/halberstam200708 (incidentally David Halberstam's last article written before his fatal car crash...)