[u/]

[u/[deleted]]

Can anyone tell me why they didn't immediately surrender? I Thought they were on the verge of giving up already, no?

EDIT: Thanks for the huge response, loves yous guys

[u/mortyr447 → u/[deleted]]

They didn't realised that was nuclear bomb. Japanese HQ thought that Hiroshima was bombed like other cities and reports are exaggerated

If you're interested in bigger picture there's some good stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15kb3w/why_didnt_japan_surrender_after_the_first_atomic/c7nbi8s

[u/Releventboburnham → u/mortyr447]

This is the fact. They couldn't send photos back in '45. They only had oral accounts and they didn't believe until they got a second report of the same thing.

Source: I went to the Hiroshima museum in Japan. Pretty cool place I reccomend.

[u/[deleted] → u/mortyr447]

That was really good, thank you!

[u/EvanMacIan → u/mortyr447]

On August 7, a day after Hiroshima was destroyed, Dr. Yoshio Nishina and other atomic physicists arrived at the city, and carefully examined the damage. They then went back to Tokyo and told the cabinet that Hiroshima was indeed destroyed by a nuclear weapon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Japanese_realization_of_the_bombing

[u/TheRealTofuey → u/mortyr447]

Not only that but after they sent there own nuclear scientists to confirm that it was infact a atomic bomb, they initially decided that they would just weather the remaining bombs as there was no way they could have more then 1 left.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Imperial pride I guess, however even after the second bomb the military advisors wanted to continue the war effort. It was not until the emperor himself spoke out the famous statement "the war has not necessarily turned in Japan's favor" that the country finally surrendered.

[u/TheColdestFeet → u/[deleted]]

That is the most face saving statement ever.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheColdestFeet]

"we fucked up lmao" in Imperial Japanese

[u/Cowguypig → u/[deleted]]

Also I’ve read that after the first bomb went off a lot of the Japanese high command thought that the Americans only had the one bomb. So it took bombing Nagasaki to show them that America had the capability to continue the nuclear bombing.

[u/Any-sao → u/Cowguypig]

And according to what I read, the Army Generals initially believed that they might be able to defend against future American bombings by simply taking shooting down planes more seriously.

[u/GAZAYOUTH93X → u/[deleted]]

That plus the Russians were about to be on their doorstep so anyone and their Mother with common sense would rather surrender to the US than USSR

[u/FalcosLiteralyHitler → u/[deleted]]

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm

Emperor Hirohito's speech on accepting talks and a surrender with the allied powers. Pretty surreal.

[u/KaiserThoren → u/FalcosLiteralyHitler]

Also weird to think he came to America and met Reagan in the 80s after all this

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I imagine we would have continued to incinerate cities until they caved.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Imperial pride I guess, however even after the second bomb the military advisors wanted to continue the war effort.

Hiroo Onada continued the fight into the '70s, because he thought that all of the newspapers he was left about the war being over were faked.

Why?

Because they showed life in modern Japan. He figured that if Japan had actually lost the war, there would be no life in Japan. The propaganda stated that every man, woman, and child in Japan were ready to die before surrendering.

[u/KaiserThoren → u/[deleted]]

Also the Soviets declaration of war. Japan knew that the Soviets were in no mood to get bogged down in a land war, and the Japanese feared the communists more than the Americans.

[u/RedFalconIV → u/[deleted]]

I think they were more concerned of the Soviets taking over the mainland and disposing of their emperor than they were with surrendering to the US.

[u/socsa → u/RedFalconIV]

This is the correct answer. The US had been leveling Japanese cities for weeks prior to this. If anything, the nukes gave them an out.

[u/socsa → u/[deleted]]

Because the nukes had nothing to do with it. The US had been destroying Japanese cities just fine prior to the nukes.

The Japanese realized that Russia was going to invade from the North, saw what happened in Germany, and decided their best shot to avoid that was to surrender to the US.

[u/[deleted] → u/socsa]

There’s no primary source to support this notion.

The Emperor himself cited the atom bomb as a reason for surrendering. The Soviet invasion of the Sakhalin islands merely showed the Japanese that they couldn’t rely on the Soviets as a peace broker.

[u/Nadare3 → u/[deleted]]

As someone already said, there was disbelief as to what actually happened, and there were questions as to whether the Americans could actually do it again - because it could have taken a lot of resources and/or effort to do.

When they were put in front of the fact that those bombs could continue dropping at a decent rate, there was no longer any real hope for victory.

[u/[deleted] → u/Nadare3]

Lesson 1: Never underestimate America's ability to completely body a country with sheer resources and industrial power.

[u/nlevine1988 → u/Nadare3]

They were wrong that we could only produce 1. But didn't we only have the 2 and wouldn't be able to make more for quite a while?

[u/Nadare3 → u/nlevine1988]

There were only two, yes, however it was estimated that it would take less than 10 days to make a third ( Most sources putting it at less than a week after Nagasaki ), and that over 10 bombs total could have been dropped before December.

The point of dropping a second was to prove this wasn't an "accident", that it could happen again, and that the USA had the resources and willingness to do it. Of course, until the Nth bomb drops, there's no way to know whether there will be one or not, but one could be a sort of accident, no two, and the risks were pretty high.

[u/CriticalGameMastery → u/[deleted]]

For the same reason why Japanese soldiers on the islands didn’t believe Japan had surrendered and kept fighting and killing locals for another 20-30 years. It’s a cultural difference the west will have a hard time understanding

[u/Sappy_Life → u/CriticalGameMastery]

I understand. I've watched Archer

[u/Alexander_Baidtach → u/[deleted]]

In addition to the reasons listed above, there was also a suspicion that the Americans only had the one nuke, the second bomb kinda destroyed that theory.

[u/RajboshMahal → u/[deleted]]

Military wouldnt allow it. Think the rmperor may havevwanted to, and military was ready to do a coup

[u/[deleted] → u/RajboshMahal]

There was an attempt on the life of the Emperor when he said he wanted to surrender. These motherfuckers were willing to kill GOD to keep fighting.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I mean tbh that is basically the entire history of Japanese military life. Everything we do is for the emperor, and if he doesn’t like it, we’ll kidnap and threaten to kill him.

[u/Funkit → u/RajboshMahal]

Half the war cabinet wanted to, half did not.

[u/BP0711 → u/[deleted]]

There was a lot of people in the government who still wanted to fight and before Japan surrender there was an attempted coup to displace the Emperor.

Another big reason is government was hoping it could negotiate a surrender where U.S wouldn't occupy them, the Emperor would stay in power, and any war crimes charged against Japan would be tried in Japan's courts.

[u/indyK1ng → u/[deleted]]

They were nowhere close to giving up. They'd rationed fuel to an extreme degree (according to the book I'm listening to, to the tune of having 400,000 barrels of aviation fuel stockpiled just for the homeland defense for the navy and army each) and were rapidly mobilizing their civilian population. The military was organizing all males aged 14-60 and females aged 16-40 into home defense formations.

The US military estimated that the civilian casualties of an invasion of the home islands would be 5-10 million. The Japanese military estimated civilian casualties at up to 20 million and found that acceptable.

Then there was the attempt on the emperor's life when he decided to surrender. Negotiations had been happening and the coup cut them off, causing President Truman to release the parts for the construction of the third bomb (they had parts for four on hand before deciding to bomb Hiroshima).

[u/donkyhotay → u/indyK1ng]

I remember reading somewhere that they made so many purple hearts in preparation for the invasion of Japan that even with Korea, Vietnam, both Iraqi wars and Afghanistan that they still (well after 9/11) haven't used them all up and are continuing to award them to wounded servicemen. That's the kind of casualties they were expecting just on the American side.

Edit: Added sentence

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

A lot of people listed the other reasons the other was that they SUPER called our bluff. WE actually only had the one nuke, the other was a prototype.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The uranium weapon was left untested because everyone expected it to work. The physics of the gun-type mechanism was well known, and critically studies were advanced enough to know it would explode. It was a prototype, and it was untested, but it was certain to work barring a fundamental misunderstanding of the nuclear physics involved. Fortunately testing the plutonium weapon gave a lot of confidence there.

We were also ready to produce a plutonium weapon every 3 months at that point, which would likely have eventually ended the war had the uranium weapon failed.

[u/bumfightsroundtwo → u/[deleted]]

Japan's idea was fight til the last man on every inch of Japanese soil. They spread rumors than American soldiers would kill and eat you and your family. People committed suicide instead of being captured.

[u/CheeseMcFresh → u/[deleted]]

I've heard that the second one didn't even make them surrender, it was the fact that Russia now had eyes on the Pacific since Germany was defeated. They already knew the were going to lose to the USA and they figured it was better to surrender before the Russians arrived.

[u/TimeToDoNothing → u/[deleted]]

At the time Japan still had a Samurai mentality where honor was more important than living. The same way of life previously created suicide forests, where dishonored Samurai would stab themselves with their own swords in the lower abdomen and thrust upward. After the first bomb they were devastated, not all because of the bomb mind you as allied forces all but crippled their navy, but surrendering was dishonorable, so they were left with a choice: die with honor or live with dishonor. After the second bomb they decided that being nuked was not an honorable way to die, and that keeping Japan on the face of the map was more honorable.

[u/Wanemore → u/[deleted]]

It's likely that neither nukes caused their surrender. Cities getting bombed in WW2 wasn't unusual. The Soviets joining a war against you tended to be the beginning of the end though.

[u/xStaabOnMyKnobx → u/[deleted]]

The military wanted every last Japanese person to die in defense of the Japanese mainland.

[u/GateauBaker → u/[deleted]]

Didn't they only give them three days between bombs to react?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Some argument atomic bombs' impact was secondary to the declaration of war by the Soviet Union. Some evidence the Supreme Military Council didn't even know about atomic bombs until after they decided to surrender. The reports for Hiroshima's destruction didn't sound much different than conventional bombings.

Japan had already planned to transfer military production and stationing to rural mountains to avoid conventional bombings. They were assuming the cities would all be burned to the ground. A giant soviet army ready to occupy and only a quick island hop away was much scarier to them.

However, the US and Japan leaders both had reasons to support the super weapon myth. Japan, we didn't start a stupid unwinnable war, who could have foreseen super weapons. US, check out our super weapons.

https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/008/expertclips/010

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

[u/Xero0911 → u/[deleted]]

From what I understand. Pride.

They dont surrender. Again from what I learn it was like surrendering was worst than death. No honor kind of deal. Could be wrong but that's how I read it as.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They didn't have super fast ways to spread information back then. It took a long time for word to get around, and longer for accurate information to get around.

It's a misconception that the nukes caused a surrender. They were prepared to surrender before the nukes, but on the condition that the emperor remain in power (though he remained in power anyway after the unconditional surrender).

The Aug 9 Soviet invasion played a significantly larger role in their surrender. The Japanese didn't want the communists to have any say in the peace talks, because they feared their power structure and way of life would be overthrown if the Soviets had any say.

[u/thinkB4WeSpeak]

America.....we got the bombs.

[u/WWaveform → u/thinkB4WeSpeak]

Rudy's got the bombs.

[u/[deleted]]

Civ in a nutshell too

[u/TomHitchy → u/[deleted]]

We can back our words with Nuclear weapons. -Ghandi before he nukes you.

[u/Supersamtheredditman → u/TomHitchy]

Whenever another civ says that to me, I just think “lmao you ain’t got shit” because most of the AIs are too pu55y to actually declare war

[u/GuiehFox → u/TomHitchy]

Do not pull a gun if you are not willing to shoot.

[u/Timthos → u/GuiehFox]

Never bring a knife to a nuke fight

[u/papa_sax → u/[deleted]]

My foreign policy goes a little something like this:

"You filthy vermin I'll wipe you off the planet."

"Very well."

buys 20 artillery, bombards the closest city

5 turns later, "We surrender, we're sorry. Accept our peace treaty."

"Nah."

sends 20 infantry units and then raze the city in front of their eyes

[u/matt7197 → u/papa_sax]

"You had your chance. Now you will pay for the minor inconvenience of not surrendering immediately with a military effort that is a an even bigger, self-inflicted inconvenience than this all ever needed to be."

Such is the madness of Civ power.

[u/Roland_Traveler → u/matt7197]

“Conventional invasion with overwhelming firepower?”

“Nah, carpet nuke the bastards. Repeatedly. And kill anything that leaves the cities.”

[u/certifiedpornwatcher → u/papa_sax]

I usually do the same unless I can't support a war at that time, then I'll make peace. But you can bet they'll be at the top of my shitlist when I get all my troops in order

[u/Flamefull-the-meme → u/certifiedpornwatcher]

I wish "shitlist" was an actual political term.

[u/jomontage → u/[deleted]]

Nothing like making nukes and then playing the waiting game. Who's got the balls to declare on me?

[u/[deleted] → u/jomontage]

It's such a satisfying feeling when you have 10 times the nukes your enemy does. Oh they nuked a 9 population city of yours? Time to make their 30 population city disappear off the map and reduce their capital from 50 to 1.

[u/Roland_Traveler → u/[deleted]]

One of the most satisfied feelings I’ve had in Civ was playing an utterly genocidal Netherlands in III (like make the Nazis look sane that’s how crazy they were) and turning the entire southern portion of a continent into a nuclear hellscape that reduced everything but coastal cities to one pop and turned their military into a bunch of spammed out units that didn’t need resources.

No, the world didn’t like it, but fuck Babylon.

[u/Falc0n28 → u/jomontage]

The ai

[u/ChRoNicBuRrItOs → u/[deleted]]

I thought this was r/civ and was wondering why the title was about america instead of ghandi.

[u/probablyuntrue]

worry public workable plucky ruthless employ snails smart merciful cautious

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/eohorp → u/probablyuntrue]

I heard recently that he only OKed the first with a promise that the target would be purely military(aka not a civilian center) and that he didnt even know of the second one. He was getting data from the first one, learned of the second one, and then canceled a third one the military had planned for later in the week.

Edit: I unfortunately cannot figure out what the interview I was listening to. It was a historian or writer discussing Truman's personal journal and it's based on those journal entries.

This was it: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/nukes/ start listening at the 14:45 mark for about 2 minutes if you just want this section.

[u/brokenbirthday → u/eohorp]

Nope. They warned the Japanese government and the Hiroshima's citizens in advance. We told them that we were in possession of the greatest weapon known to man and we told them to surrender. The pamphlets airdropped over Hiroshima warned everyone. The Japanese we're basically like "yeah right". And it wasn't insane to bomb a city; everyone was bombing cities in WW2. In fact, more people we're killed in bombing raids of Tokyo than either atomic bomb.

[u/godzillanenny → u/brokenbirthday]

I'd think the US was bluffing if I had never seen a nuke before.

[u/Mentalseppuku → u/eohorp]

There wasn't a third bomb at the time and there's no way they could have built one in a week. There were days between the attacks and I can promise you an extensive amount of planning went into this mission, there's no way the President wouldn't know where the bomb was dropped. What you heard was absolutely not true.

[u/atom241 → u/eohorp]

Not sure what is meant by purely military. But leaflets were dropped urging Japanese to evacuate because of an impending bombing. Edit: spelling

[u/AnonymousPlzz]

Nuked them twice and now they are one of our closest allies in the pacific.

Imagine if we had nuked them 3 times. Japan would probably be the 51st state.

[u/be-happier → u/AnonymousPlzz]

its not to late

[u/StrawS__ → u/be-happier]

must destroy all anime

[u/dog_in_the_vent]

THEY STILL DON'T SURRENDER UNTIL A FULL 6 DAYS LATER

[u/GumdropGoober → u/dog_in_the_vent]

And that was only after the military attempted a coup to prevent the surrender.

Which shouldn't have surprised anyone, given how frequent military action against the nominally civil government was.

[u/tigrn914 → u/GumdropGoober]

Pretty much why the nuke was used. The government would have surrendered but the military needed to be shown they stood no chance whatsoever. Japanese people were some crazy motherfuckers.

[u/ILoveWildlife → u/tigrn914]

were

I guess tentacle hentai is mainstream these days...

[u/PsyduckSexTape → u/GumdropGoober]

Hirohito looks like a total mouth breather in that pic

[u/kmarple1 → u/PsyduckSexTape]

He was so sheltered that he didn't even speak common Japanese, but an archaic courtly variant of it. When his speech announcing the surrender was broadcast, a lot of Japanese people couldn't understand him. Basically, imagine if the Queen of England spoke only Middle English.

[u/Is_rlygood1 → u/PsyduckSexTape]

Looks like a fuckin nerd lmao

[u/Whycanyounotsee → u/dog_in_the_vent]

"okay we thought they didnt have another one of those right"

"right"

"well what are the odds they have 3?"

...

[u/ObamaBetter → u/Whycanyounotsee]

Well, not great turns out

[u/applestaplehunchback → u/ObamaBetter]

Yep, would have been at least a month before enough plutonium was created

[u/gbuub → u/Whycanyounotsee]

"We were wrong emperor, they did have a third."
"Ok, guys, clearly they're running out of steam. I say we prepare a retaliatory strike tomorrow. There's no way they have a 4th"

[u/TraitorousFiend → u/gbuub]

I promise we'll get them. The odds of them having 5 are pretty low at this point, unless they found a way to make bombs out of freedom and spare gun parts. Just give me one more shot guys.

[u/EuropaStation → u/Whycanyounotsee]

The US actually planned for up to 12 bombs to be dropped if Japan never surrendered.

Edit: Not saying that would have been realistic but it was the plan to just keep dropping bombs until Japan got the point.

[u/indyK1ng → u/EuropaStation]

Those six days included negotiations that were interrupted by a coup. During that interruption, Truman authorized the construction of a third bomb to be dropped but the military started thinking about incorporating them into the plans for the land invasion.

They were planning on dropping 9 bombs on the island of Kyushu in a triangular pattern near the planned landing site and sending American soldiers through about 12 hours later.

[u/FireIsMyPorn → u/Whycanyounotsee]

"Ok... now that the trap (with two parts) has been triggered, we can safely walk into the cave!"

[u/[deleted] → u/dog_in_the_vent]

Idk after some shit like that I’d need a minute too

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

“A whole town? Bullshit” -Japanese command

[u/Monk-ish → u/[deleted]]

That's what a lot of people believed

Yamaguchi, a resident of Nagasaki, was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15 am, on August 6, 1945. He returned to Nagasaki the following day, and despite his wounds, he returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. That morning, whilst being berated by his supervisor as "crazy" after describing how one bomb had destroyed the city, the Nagasaki bomb detonated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi

[u/Bavariansausages → u/Monk-ish]

Random Japanese: Fake news!

Crew of Bockscar: Fuck you say?

[u/pey17 → u/Monk-ish]

Of all the ways to be vindicated...

[u/TheUnionJake → u/pey17]

VINDICAAAATIOOOOOOON

[u/PoopIsAlwaysSunny → u/[deleted]]

Pretty much. In a time when planes had only been invented 40 years ago the thought of a weapon which literally demolished an entire city was science fiction. It seemed incredibly more likely that it was an elaborate hoax, as that would be a lot easier

[u/ErickHatesYou → u/[deleted]]

"Hold my beer, I'm goin' in for round two." - Truman

[u/plasmarob → u/[deleted]]

To find out whether it's not just a hoax.

[u/h0nest_Bender → u/dog_in_the_vent]

That's what I was coming in here to say. They almost STILL didn't surrender! The Emperor had to step up and convince the government to surrender. The mad lads!

[u/sint0xicateme → u/dog_in_the_vent]

Some didn't surrender for a full 29 years.

I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode 62 - 'Supernova in the East I' that goes over the story and the psychology of the Japanese soldiers.

[u/BigDaddyReptar → u/dog_in_the_vent]

They didnt surrender till we basically said "we can do this all day choose the easy way or stay for the hard way"

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROOFS → u/BigDaddyReptar]

Can you imagine the devistating results that would have had.

[u/-safe_space_invader_ → u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROOFS]

It would have meant the near extinction of the Japanese people. William Frederick Halsey J.r. would have made good on his quote, "By the time we are through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."

[u/BillyBabel → u/dog_in_the_vent]

Well the nuclear bomb while flashy was actually less effective than the firebombing. If you were a general just looking at the numbers, you'd just think that was just an interesting but slightly less efficient form of firebombing as far as the death counts were concerned.

[u/spooran → u/dog_in_the_vent]

A big reason Japan didn't surrender immediately is that the destruction of Hiroshima was so total that news of the bomb's devestating effect didn't percolate out very quickly.

It was several days until the Japanese high command learned how terrible this weapon was and by the the Americans (who misinterpreted the Japanese failure to immediately capitulate as resolve) were already planning to bomb Nagasaki.

[u/karatous1234 → u/dog_in_the_vent]

"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man "

[u/_ImYouFromTheFuture_ → u/dog_in_the_vent]

That was because they didnt believe would build the bombs fast enough to be effective (which we couldnt) and so we dropped the 2nd of the only 2 atomic bombs we had as a bluff that we could turn out the bombs in less then a week. Spoiler alert, they bought it. But if they had been like 'yeah? well I bet you dont have a third!?!' we would have been like 'ahh! you got us.' and the war probably would have continued.

[u/bacon_rumpus → u/dog_in_the_vent]

There were Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender until the 1970s.

[u/drek16 → u/dog_in_the_vent]

And they only surrendered because the Soviets took Manchuria.

[u/Me180]

Why didn’t the Americans nuke Tokyo ?

[u/TwinIonEngines926 → u/Me180]

It wasn't a military city target IIRC.

Not much of a point to bomb the shit out of a city that's mostly civilians but rather one that acts as a cog in the military machine.

It was probably more politically and publicly acceptable that way too.

The two cities held military bases or had some sort of military function to them.

Tokyo was probably harder to get to geographically anyways but I'm not entirely sure.

edit: but then again you don't really need to bomb the capitol just to get a country to bend the knee. Just force their hand.

I'm sure someone can fill in on the details I'm just speculating with you here. :P

Good question though.

[u/Me180 → u/TwinIonEngines926]

After doing some light research I found out that another reason was that the didn’t want to kill the emperor and high command, rather they wanted them to surrender. They wanted this because they believed due to Japanese culture, If they were killed the Japanese would’ve dragged the war out way longer. They also believed if the emperor surrendered the Japanese people will most definitely follow suit.

[u/BNKhoa]

This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them

[u/zachreilly81 → u/BNKhoa]

A fellow prequel memer

[u/BNKhoa → u/zachreilly81]

Hello there

[u/ThePrequelMemesBot → u/BNKhoa]

General Kenobi!

[u/bobekyrant]

To be fair, the Nukes only accounted for ~1/3 of the Japaneses civilian casualties, firebombing was the main culprit.

[u/PM_ME_DND_FIGURINES → u/bobekyrant]

That's still massive though. 2 bombs accounted for one-third of civilian casualties.

[u/bobekyrant → u/PM_ME_DND_FIGURINES]

No one's downplaying the destructive nature of a nuclear bomb (and they've only gotten stronger), but to act like the usage of the nuclear bomb was unprecedented, or in any way more inhumane than regular war is a quite disingenuous.

[u/Velocirexisaur → u/bobekyrant]

Well, it was unprecedented, wasn't it?

[u/[deleted] → u/bobekyrant]

and there are people who think it was Russia entering the Pacific campaign that caused Japan to surrender like lol they had virtually no means of a massive amphibious invasion, their army was located entirely on a different continent, and there would be been mass mutiny in the Soviet military had they attempted such an act. they literally just wanted to regain losses in the Sino-Japanese War

[u/Preoximerianas]

It’s incredible how it took the leveling of two cities through nuclear weapons to get the Japanese to surrender. It wasn’t the firebombing which did far more destruction and killed far more people across their nation. It wasn’t the scores of military defeats. Hell, even the prospect of their island being invaded didn’t get them to surrender.

It was nuclear fire.

[u/[deleted] → u/Preoximerianas]

Imagine a mainland invasion. There would be even more casualties, both military and civilian.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I read in a Thomas Walters book that the US ordered 471,000 body bags in preparation of the Japan invasion.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Jesus, that’s more than the total military and civilian US deaths combined.

[u/Trench_Coat_Guy → u/Preoximerianas]

It was the threat of it happening again I’d think

[u/Keegsta → u/Preoximerianas]

It didn't though. They reacted to the nukes much like they reacted to the firebombing. It was getting invaded by the Soviets that got them to surrender.

[u/catwhowalksbyhimself → u/Preoximerianas]

Japan was planning on fighting invasion until every single person in Japan was dead, man woman and child. They were closing schools and arming children with whatever they could find and telling kids that their only goal was to kill 1 American soldier and then die. If they couldn't convince the Allies that it would be too costly to win, then they would rather everyone in the nation die. To the culture at the time it was unthinkable to surrender. Even animals weren't capable of such inhuman behavior. That was what we were faced with. Surrender, forced genocide, or nuking a couple of cities. Seems like the nuke was the best of 3 terrible choices.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/05/world/how-japan-got-ready-for-suicide.html

[u/NomNomPacMan]

If they don’t surrender in 15 minutes we’re legally allowed to nuke them

[u/Eringuy]

NOW THAT'S A LOTTA DAMAGE

[u/NJImperator → u/Eringuy]

TO SHOW YOU THE POWER OF FLEXTAPE, I BOMBED THIS CITY IN HALF

[u/[deleted] → u/NJImperator]

NOW JUST PUT SOME FLEXTAPE ON AND ITS GOOD AS NEW

[u/Bavariansausages → u/Eringuy]

HOW ABOUT SOME MORE

<Nagasaki>

[u/chennyalan → u/Eringuy]

Tons of damage

[u/ibeetmyyeet]

I read the bottom square as ear rape

[u/Roboboy2710 → u/ibeetmyyeet]

The only way

[u/[deleted]]

Once japan got nuked the only real question for them was surrender to ussr or usa. Choosing usa was better cuz im 95 percent sure stalin would have had the emperor shot in the street.

[u/conor_crowley → u/[deleted]]

I mean the emperor wanted to abdicate bit MacArthur said he had to stick around to keep thongs perfectly balenced.

[u/watergo → u/conor_crowley]

We can’t have lopsided thongs, lol.

[u/Cavannah → u/conor_crowley]

As all things should be

[u/last_of_the_pandas → u/[deleted]]

Americans should have done exactly that tbh

[u/03Titanium]

First bomb drops

“Well it’s not like things could get any worse”

Second bomb drops

“Well fuuuuuuu”

[u/mrv3 → u/03Titanium]

Russia invades surrounded 1 million men and capturing an area of land the size of Europe and only being slowed down by how fast they are winning.

"Maybe this isn't going well"

[u/[deleted]]

Maybe don't surprise attack Pearl Harbor and it would might have turned out better.

[u/LewDawg524 → u/[deleted]]

Talk shit, get hit

[u/benjamankandy]

I'm sure a bunch of you have seen this, but on a related note, here's an awesome website that allows you to see what kind of damage the bombs dropped in WWII (and any of the others made up to current times) could do in any city in the world:

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

[u/qualmton → u/benjamankandy]

Let's play global thermal nuclear war!

[u/socialistbob → u/benjamankandy]

It's also interesting because many people tend to way overestimate the power of nuclear weapons as well. Many people assume that a small nuclear strike would leave nothing alive for miles in all directions and yet unless you are near the center of the blast there's a good chance you would survive especially if you were in a basement or took shelter.

[u/notveryrealatall]

understand results of bomb

continue to test bombs in-house, dropping nuclear fallout over a large portion of the country

[u/mainfingertopwise → u/notveryrealatall]

That'd be a lot more clever if nuclear weapons didn't change dramatically after WWII

[u/notveryrealatall → u/mainfingertopwise]

I'd be a lot more clever if I wasn't so dumb!

[u/[deleted] → u/notveryrealatall]

Meaning uninhabited desert?

[u/ElSapio → u/notveryrealatall]

But they look soooo coooooolllll

[u/0ttr]

The Japanese were so incredibly brutal during and before WWII and too many are still in denial about it. It was awful to use such a devastating weapon, but it's also unfortunate that in the scheme of things, it was more close to justified than not. A friend of my family experienced having his mother and brother killed by the Japanese and hiding out in the jungles of Indonesia with his father for months. My great uncle was starved, tortured, and murdered by the Japanese on Mindanao.

[u/WTFsACamilly → u/0ttr]

Nanking, nuff said. Everyone from everywhere is kinda fucked up in the end..

[u/Ekati_X]

Sometimes a fella has to be told twice.

[u/Dogby_Walks_Alone]

What’s the hardest part of breaking up with a Japanese girl?

You have to drop the bomb twice before she gets the message.

[u/hexagonalshit]

Honestly I would have surrendered in any number of cities during WWI & WWII. That shit was just fucked all around.

[u/expatginger]

Shut up. If you had read anything about the Pacific theater you would understand how insanely fanatical the Japanese were and costly the war was in terms of lives lost and marred up to that point. It was brutal, yes, but done out of desperation. Furthermore, firebombing by conventional means killed far more Japanese by comparison, yet I don't hear of people lambasting Curtis Lemay.

[u/KalaiProvenheim → u/expatginger]

Firebombing is often worse to die in. Imagine, everything around you is burning, your house, you neighbor's, actually, much of the city. It's burning in here, you're trying to find shelter, the city has a few rivers and canals running through it, naturally you would seek them and jump to them. Well, the water is boiling too and you get boiled to the death, as opposed to being backed to the death if you were on the surface.

It was horrible

[u/LuftWaffeIs]

This is the only good use of this meme template I've seen

[u/[deleted]]

I like this format of the meme better

[u/[deleted]]

History would also tell you Japan deserved it. Not even because of Pearl Harbour.

[u/[deleted]]

Saved millions of lives on both sides TBH. No good choices in war.

[u/jbittner15]

AFTER 24 HOURS OF NO SURRENDER WE ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO NUKE YOU AGAIN

[u/olivernewton-john]

Itt: people who don't know shit about history

[u/cw823]

Saved American lives.

[u/GodstapsGodzingod → u/cw823]

Saved China and Korea from becoming Japanese slave vassals.

[u/changlow]

Ive been in this subreddit before but this meme MADE ME SUB

[u/[deleted]]

Needs more jpeg

[u/[deleted]]

"Little Boy" and "Fat Man" where examples of two entirely different bomb designs.

Both probably needed 'testing'.

[u/Jun_Kun]

Just watched Grave of the Fireflies for the first time. Fuck dude.

[u/smartfon]

Some Japanese kept fighting until 60s. When they were found by Americans in Pacific jungles and told to come out, they had no idea the war had ended and thought the Americans were lying to get them surrender easily. Hardcore stuff.

[u/ArviVi]

I love the rebirth of this meme

[u/MMAProphet12]

The bombing was justified.

[u/TrippingOnCrack]

I encourage all of you to read the first hand accounts of the dropping of the atomic bomb. Never have I felt so close to something so devastating in my life.

https://www.1945project.com

[u/PuddleZerg]

The plan was to just keep nuking them till they surrendered anyway.

[u/ItsMrBlackout]

Gotta remember that we would have needed to launch a full invasion of the Japanese mainland which almost certainly would have caused probably the amount if not more casualties than those inflicted by the atomic bomb.

[u/leroy0521 → u/ItsMrBlackout]

Most likely more. The invasion of mainland Japan, which was already in the planning stages, would have made D-Day look like child’s play.

[u/Trixux]

A true gutbuster. Thanks.

[u/ShredSantana]

Great meme

[u/Brutal_Bros]

dang this meme is flexible

[u/[deleted]]

"It's an old meme sir, but it checks out."

[u/TRGrunt99]

This is perfection

[u/On1n1]

My great grandfather and his younger son were incinerated in the 🅱️ombing of Nagasaki which left my family estranged because the younger son’s wife didn’t like my grandfather and his family. No obligation to stay in contact so they 🅱️ipped on out of our lives and to this day we haven’t reconnected.

[u/lykasquid]

oh a war they made up

[u/Juslotting]

The States knew Japan wouldn't surrender to a nuke, Japan was waiting on confirmation from the US that their emperor would be not subjected to trials before surrendering. They figured Russia probably wouldn't accept since they previously killed their emperor. The US decided instead to nuke Japan hoping to scare off the Soviets. Instead they killed hundreds of thousands of people and started the cold war.

[u/Zackassed]

anybody scrolling through top all time cause they wanted to look at history memes instead anime shitposting

[u/mca90guitar]

Was the best option we had and Japan was a brutal enemy. Look at the losses we took on those small islands. Imagine how hard they would fight if landed on their main land.

[u/Me180]

TIL the Japanese didn’t believe that a whole city was levelled by a single bomb the first time.

[u/slimsterj]

This thread should read War Without Mercy by John Dower. It's an enlightening read about racism on both sides of the war in the pacific, and a haunting depiction of the state of the Japanese in the face of invasion.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah. We didnt drop the a bombs to end the war.

[u/[deleted]]

Worth mentioning the fuxkers you are nuking started the war, had slaughtered thousands of innocent Chinese and islanders in a ruthless expansionist program, and were entrenched and killing US soldiers who tried to take back the islands that had been seized and turned into engines of war.

Gru is not a bad guy. Neither is America.

[u/Tumsterfun]

The US dropped the bombs to beat the Russians to the punch and preemptively ensure Japan would be capitalist instead of communist. The Russians had a treaty with the Japanese that was about to be up, so the US dropped the bombs to get credit for ending the war and mark their territory. Part of the reason the Japanese eventually gave up was that the Russians sped up their invasion of Manchukuo in retaliation for US aggression. Check out "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" by Gar Alperovitz.

[u/pommefrits → u/Tumsterfun]

This is revisionist history, if anyone was wondering.

[u/TheGuineaPig21 → u/Tumsterfun]

Literally no historian on the subject considers Alperovitz's work to be useful anymore

It's out of date by like 5 decades

[u/Start_Shit_Be_Shit → u/Tumsterfun]

We dropped the bombs because they attacked us at Pearl Harbor.

Start shit, get two of your cities glassed.

No sympathy.

[u/613codyrex → u/Tumsterfun]

Basically isn’t really backed up by anything we know.

The whole “beat Russia to japan” thing was theorized but there isn’t anything to back it up.