Upon defeating Japan, Stalin said: “For forty years we, people of the older generation, waited for this day” — reclaiming the whole of Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and the Kurils. There was no way the USSR would aide with Japan. Truman had a horrible choice on his watch. What-if is easyhttps://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027574332044783616 …
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True. Still seeing kamikazes, lone wolves fighting to the death in the islands, etc., and the history of treacherous attacks without warning, atrocities everywhere the Japanese army went, how could the US believe anything they would promise? The choices were stark.
Not sure what you mean re: promising. Japanese were looking for a way to surrender that preserved the Emperor, a condition the US, in the end, was willing to give them. What they wanted would still involve occupation, surrender documents, etc.
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I mean how could the US believe them as negotiators unless they were completely crushed? Same happened with the Nazis, who stopped only thoroughly destroyed with Hitler’s body burned to surrender unconditionally.
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And (as I pointed out in thread) there were plenty in US high command, including experts on Japan, who thought that if this condition would make it easier for Japanese to surrender, it should be explicitly given.
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(And they knew about splits in Japanese high command through intercepted and decrypted Japanese diplomatic cables.) I'm not saying they ought to have done one thing or another — just that these were the options on the table, as seen at the time.
End of conversation
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