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FirmhandKY -> RE: Threat to world peace??????? (1/18/2007 5:42:42 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sinergy
While I can understand the use of the one on Hiroshima as a means of saving American lives, the Japanese were suing for peace through the Swiss and the United States refused to meet with them until they tested the plutonium device on Nagasaki. So the logic of using nuclear weapons to save American lives breaks down when you apply it to Nagasaki. That was an the US government using Japanese civilians as guinea pigs in a freakish experiment.
Hey, I found a couple of links.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm
and
http://www.answers.com/topic/surrender-of-japan
I read both articles. Interesting stuff. It's been a while since I actively studied WWWII.
The "Answers.com" article was more factual and relevant, I think. It was sourced from Wikipedia and gave a detailed chronology and contents of messages back and forth between the principals, so that is reliance on primary source material.
I see no agenda in this source.
The Commondreams.org article however, is much less convincing. First, it doesn't source it's material very well, and from the context of its origin and reasoning, it's obviously an agenda piece. It's in the school of "American Hegemonist" political thought, which makes it automatically partisan and suspect to me, and most serious historians.
It is also the one on which you are basing your claims.
According to your Answers.com source, here are the events concerning any "Japanese surrender" attempt through Switzerland, and the results:
On July 27, the Japanese government considered how to respond to the Declaration [the Allies' final demand of Japanese surrender]. The four military members of the Big Six [the Japanese ruling politicians] wanted to reject it, but Togo persuaded the cabinet not to do so until he could get a reaction from the Soviets. In a telegram, Kase Shunichi, Japan's ambassador to Switzerland, observed that unconditional surrender applied only to the military and not to the government or the people, and he pleaded that it should be understood that the careful language of Potsdam appeared "to have occasioned a great deal of thought" on the part of the signatory governments—"they seem to have taken pains to save face for us on various points." The next day, Japanese paper reported that the Declaration, the text of which had been broadcast and dropped on leaflets into Japan, had been rejected. In an attempt to manage public perception, Prime Minister Suzuki met with the press, and stated,
"The Joint Proclamation ... is nothing but a rehash of the Cairo Declaration. As for the Government, it does not find any important value in it; the government will just mokusatsu it."
The meaning of the word "mokusatsu", literally "kill with silence", is not precise; it can range from 'ignore' to 'treat with contempt'—which actually described fairly accurately the range of effective reactions within the government. However, Suzuki's statement was taken as a rejection by the press, both in Japan and abroad, and no further statement was made in public or through diplomatic channels to alter this understanding.
The first Atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, in line with the Allied warning that failure to surrender would result in the utter destruction of Japan.
Even that wasn't sufficient to bring the Japanese government to a decision to surrender, and there was even an attempted coup.
So, I'm sorry, but I must reject your interpretation of events.
FirmKY
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