While researching U.S military spending I came across an article arguing that the common narrative that Japan only surrendered because of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not entirely accurate.

Article Link

It has some interesting points but it mainly boils down to 2 main things (I’ll explain them and then give my opinion).

The first thing they mention is how it happened at a time where every other day, a Japanese city was being bombed. This caused Japan to see the nuking on Hiroshima (and 3 days later Nagasaki) as more or less just an upgraded and slightly more powerful attack, and therefore weren’t going to surrender just because something that was already going on had slightly changed.

The second reason is the Soviet Unions plans to invade Japan from the north, combined with Britain and the U.S’s invasion from the south was looking to be increasingly devastating for Japan. The USSR has only recently declared war on Japan and had already proven that they could easily sweep into and take critical Japanese city’s. For Japan, a joint Allied invasion from the north and south was un-winnable.

One of the reasons that people see the bombings as the final stroke is because the Japanese surrender came 6 days after the bombings and it seems easy to connect to two. Something the article points out though is that the full report on the Hiroshima bombing didn’t reach the Japanese leadership until the day after they surrendered.

It then goes on to explain the reasoning for each countries pushing the idea of the nukes being the deciding factor.

OPINION PART THAT I WILL PROBABLY REGRET ONE DAY STARTS HERE:

I think the bombings did have an impact on the surrender. The article talks about the statistics of how much each bombing destroyed of each respective city but I think this is a bit misleading. If you look at how many people died in the Hiroshima bombings and compare that to the other, standard bombings, the nuclear bomb did far more actual damage.

I also think implying that the report not getting to the leadership until after they surrendered meaning that they had no idea that it happened is a bit weird. They would definitely had gotten some reports if a city was destroyed, even if it was a common occurrence.

I do agree however that it wasn’t as big a part of the decision as most people make it out to be. It was certainly a part of why the surrendered, but the impending invasion by England, the U.S, and most importantly the Soviets would have been the main reasoning.

I would like to state that I have no credentials to be making these opinions but this is my blog and I make the rules ‘round here.

I recommend you read the article and I will probably read more on the topic and might write another small opinion piece on it when I’m more informed.

Thanks for reading.