I'm afraid it's another of those creepy co-incidence things - again! Just a few days back, the navigator on the Enola Gay aircraft which delivered the A-bomb to Hiroshima died at the ripe old age of 93. Today, of course, is the anniversary of the Nagasaki A-bomb which followed the one on Hiroshima three days earlier. That war ended but the war between the historians - and their less qualified acolytes (that includes me!) - continues today with a vengeance. I'm sorry to say that it includes a man I much admire, Don Boudreaux, 'proprietor' of the Cafe Hayek, who, just a few days ago, took an uncompromising - one might say 'passionate' - stand against the decision of Harry Truman to use these weapons of mass destruction. Alas, he is wrong and the reason he is wrong is that the people he uses for sources of support are mostly American academics most of whom concentrate their efforts on who said what to whom, and who decided this or that - in Washington! They seem to forget, or to ignore, that the absolutely key events to this drama took place in Japan - NOT America!
For as accurate a view of exactly what happened in Japan it is necessary to rely on a Japanese-born and Japanese-speaking historian capable of reading and carefully analysing what remained of the Japanese government's archives after great efforts had been made to destroy as much of them as possible before the American 'conquerors' arrrived. Only from these remains and from individual diaries and testaments written by the main Japanese actors of the time can a reasonable judgment be made as to the comparative effect the A-bombs and the Rusian declaration of war made on the Japanese government. And for that you need look no further than the work of Sadao Asada and his meticulous summary of evidence here:
http://www.mconway.net/page1/page15/files/Shock%20of%20Atomic%20Bomb.pdf
That piece of scholorship is well worth reading but if you wish to see him responding to criticism from another Japanese - but naturalised American! - author you can read both sides of the argument and judge for yourselves, here:
In essence, Sadao tells us that there was indeed a 'peace party' inside the ruling cabal in Tokyo, in fact, the emperor himself was an early starter, coming to the conclusion that the war must end with some sort of peace deal as early as 1943. However, he lacked the willpower to drive it through. As time went on and Japanese losses rose, the 'peace party' grew inside the top levels of government but always they were stymied by the military, navy as well as army, leaders in the top level war cabinet. Because of the peculiarities of the Japanese system there had to be unanimity before major decisions could be taken.
When the Hiroshima bomb fell the first re-action of the army was to deny that it was an atomic bomb! Their own scientific experts had assured them that no country could produce such a weapon during a war and so when the realisation sank in it was an incredible shock. Of course, when the Russians declared war and immediately invaded Manchuria that, too, was a shock but given that the Russian had been shifting hundreds of thousands of men and munitions to the east immediately Germany surrendered in May it was not a totally unexpected shock. However, many post-war historians, especially those of, shall we say, a Left-wing bias, eager to puff up the importance of the Soviet effort, attempted to suggest that it was the Russian move that brought about the Japanese surrender.
The Japanese were shocked by the first bomb which they had never expected but the second one was an absolute clincher. They simply didn't know how many bombs the Americans had and were now forced to assume the worst, that is, that the Americans could take their time and just nuke their way across the Japanese islands turning them into a wasteland. However, and this is a bitter irony, it wasn't just the destructive power of the A-bombs that forced the military chiefs to concede defeat but - the fact that America had obviously won the scientific war! Now, the mad, purblind generals and admirals had an excuse to surrender without losing face - so critical to oriental peoples. Yes, they could say, we were defeated in the laboratories but not entirely on the battlefield!
To sum up, any suggestion that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria alone caused the Japanese to surrender is tosh! Yes, it added to the general feeling of malaise that Japan was losing the war but it was the two American bombs that truly clinched the inescapable truth of what was to come, and by offering a scientific fig leaf to the Japanese military brought the war to an abrupt halt and avoided an American invasion of Japan in which, I venture to suggest, many, many more would have died than were killed at Hirsohima and Nagasaki.
