Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron Goldstein  We knew the Japanase would not surrender, their very Military Code precluded this, and we knew that many more of our forces would be killed. |
The question of surrender is an interesting one. It wasn't clear cut, and it certianly wasn't the case that all Japanese were unwilling to surrender, and instead dight to the glorious end.
The clearest indications that the Japanese were split were the attempts by the "peace party" of the Imperial Cabinet to get Stalin to assist in negotiating with the Allies. Two issues that were the basis for failure of these attempts from the start were (a) Stalin had no desire to help negotiate a peace as he was preparing to cancel the Russo-Japanese Non-Aggression Treaty, and enter the war himself, and (b) just like with Germany, the idea Allies had forced their hand by demanding an Unconditional surrender.
The Americans knew that the Japanese had been making contact with the Russians through the Ultra intercepts well before the A-bombs. However, by that stage they knew that they had the upper hand, and were willing to force Japans.
Another issue is whether the bomb was really about forcing a Japanese surrender and saving lives (considering those same Americans could have been saved by opening negotiations with which the Allies could possibly have achieved a lot, instead of an invasion of the Japanese mainland), or was it an early signal to the USSR? Truman was much less an idealist than Roosevelt, and less susceptible to Stalins "charm". He was probably the first real-politik politician of the Cold War in the West (as was Churchill but he had lost power by then).