Alex WellersteinVerified account

Of course, the choices of what events/evidence/data we include in a historical narrative are always tricky, even subjective. There is a near-infinite amount of "data" in the world; only a fraction gets recorded for history; only a fraction of that ends up in a narrative.

But the "standard/orthodox" story of the bombings of Japan leaves out so much key context that it just becomes wrong. So in this thread I want to talk about some of the context that historians consider "standard" to include, in even a very basic discussion of this history.

Contrary to the notion that the Japanese high command was fanatically ignorant of this, they were not. They understood the war was not going in their favor, and they had no real pretensions of "winning." The question for them was: what to do about it? How to avoid losing it all?

The militarists, who dominated the Japanese cabinet, believed that they could bleed out the US by making a land invasion costly. This is the "fanatical"/"suicidal" stuff, and it's no joke. The idea was that the US would tire of war, and either leave or settle on better terms.

The non-militarists, including the foreign ministry and the Emperor, didn't love the sound of that. They were exploring ideas of a "diplomatic" resolution of the war — e.g., finding a way to surrender on terms the Japanese could feel at least somewhat good about.

What this meant in practice was that the Japanese were trying, through two separate avenues, to court the still-neutral USSR, with the hope that they could act as an intermediary between the US and Japan in negotiating such an end to the war.

What would that look like? We don't really know, because the USSR never gave the Japanese an audience, because they were already committed to joining the war against them, in exchange for territory. But we'll come to that in a moment.

The core component of what the "peace" faction of the Japanese high command definitely wanted was a preservation of the Emperor system, and guarantees that the Emperor wouldn't be tried as a war criminal.

When I explain this to US audiences, I emphasize that this is kind of like insisting that the US be able to retain its Constitution: it's foundational to the concept of the nation. It was seen as absolutely core to Japanese identity, history, and nationhood; i.e., non-negotiable.

Separate from that, they floated a few other ideas of things they might get to "keep," such as foreign territories and the like. So again, we don't really know what they wanted. It wasn't as simple as an easy guarantee of the Emperor's safety, but that was the core piece.

The US, it is worth emphasizing, knew about these efforts and these concerns. They had cracked Japanese diplomatic codes well before. They incorporated discussions between the head of the foreign minister and the Japanese ambassador to the USSR into their strategy.

This is important when considering the US choices of July 1945, esp. at the Potsdam Conference. Truman was lobbied by both the Department of War and Churchill to give some guarantee as to the Emperor's safety in the Potsdam Declaration, as they saw that this was a sticking point.

Truman, following the advise instead of his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, deliberately decided not to do this. It isn't entirely clear why, but the fact that by then he felt that Japan was likely to surrender without an invasion anyway played into it.

In one of the few remarks he made about this, he emphasized that "unconditional surrender" was essentially required to offset the Japanese perfidy of Pearl Harbor — that he wanted them to grovel. For whatever that is worth.

People have argued since the 1940s over whether the insistence on unconditional surrender, as opposed to granting the one condition the Japanese for sure wanted (Emperor preservation), prolonged the war. The answer, unsurprisingly, is "we don't know." But it's useful context.

Anyway. In July 1945, Truman knew for sure (because of the Trinity test) that the US had a workable atomic bomb. He also knew that Stalin was planning to renounce his neutrality with regards to Japan, and invade by mid-August 1945, because Stalin told him this.

The Americans AND the Japanese, as an aside, both considered a Soviet invasion to be a likely tipping-point for Japanese surrender. The Japanese army knew that they lacked the forces to repel an invasion by the USSR, and that Stalin didn't care about trading blood for territory.

(I only point this out because it was only about a year ago that I learned they had actually been analyzing this scenario for months before it happened. Some accounts make the Japanese military seem quite ignorant of the possibility, but it is very clear they were not.)

It is clear that Truman had a vested interest in trying to use the bomb ASAP, because he was hoping that the war might end before the Soviets got involved. Why? Because he had seen in Europe that where Soviets liberate, Communism stays behind.

Stalin, as mentioned, had an incentive in being in the war, because he would get several juicy bits of territory as a result, in particular the full island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, which gave the Soviets easy access to the Pacific.

(He even contemplated taking the Japanese island of Hokkaido, but was convinced by his advisors that this could be a deal-breaker with the USA.)

Anyway, this is the context. Truman agrees that the first atomic bomb should be dropped as soon as possible after the Potsdam Conference ended — hoping to preempt the Soviets, e.g. August 3rd or so. Weather conditions delay that until the morning of August 6, 1945.

The bombing of Hiroshima occurs, as we know. It was militarily a very successful operation: the city itself was totally disabled by it. This included, incidentally, its ability to communicate easily with the outside world.

The Japanese high command basically did not know what had happened until the morning of August 7th, when Allied propaganda channels broadcast Truman's statement about the atomic bombing. The Japanese high command met on August 7, and decided not to act until they confirmed it.

Just as a note: It's not crazy for them to want to confirm it before believing it completely. World War II was full of propaganda and misinformation by both sides, and claims of fantastical weapons were very common. Sending their own scientists before acting on it was reasonable.

Because of the disruption of the war, and the bombing, this took some time. It wasn't until late on August 8th that the scientists confirmed that Hiroshima was destroyed: "I'm very sorry to tell you this... the so-called new-type bomb is actually an atomic bomb." (Yoshio Nishina)

Back in Moscow, the Soviets had just granted the Japanese ambassador a long-desired meeting with Molotov. Molotov immediately handed him a declaration of war, saying it started "tomorrow." But he was used a different time zone for "tomorrow," so it started in a few hours. Tricky!

So at midnight on August 8/9, Soviet forces stream into Manchuria, overwhelming the Japanese there. The Japanese high command put together a meeting the next morning (Aug. 9). They are clearly VERY distressed by the Soviet situation, and are trying to figure out what comes next.

Now, did the news they had gotten about the Hiroshima bomb play a role in their distress? Maybe! It's VERY hard to disentangle the two. The news of both overlaps in a very real way. There are those who will argue for one or the other being more important. It's a hard call.