Japan had been trying to surrender for months, if not for years; rebuffed by US ---

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Tue Oct-09-07 03:14 PM
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Japan had been trying to surrender for months, if not for years; rebuffed by US ---

QUOTE . . .
After the war, the world learned what U.S. leaders had known by early 1945: Japan was militarily defeated long before Hiroshima. It had been trying for months, if not for years, to surrender; and the U.S. had consistently rebuffed these overtures. A May 5 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace. Sent to Berlin by the German ambassador in Tokyo, after he talked to a ranking Japanese naval officer, it read:

Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard.{7} UNQUOTE

ALSO ------

Eisenhower saw no need . . ..

QUOTE: Finally, we have Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's account of a conversation with Stimson in which he told the secretary of war that:

Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. ... I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face". The secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.{17}

If, as appears to be the case, U.S. policy in 1945 was based on neither the pursuit of the earliest possible peace nor the desire to avoid a land invasion, we must look elsewhere to explain the dropping of the A-bombs.UNQUOTE

QUOTE:
After the war, the world learned what U.S. leaders had known by early 1945: Japan was militarily defeated long before Hiroshima. It had been trying for months, if not for years, to surrender; and the U.S. had consistently rebuffed these overtures. A May 5 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace. Sent to Berlin by the German ambassador in Tokyo, after he talked to a ranking Japanese naval officer, it read:

Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard.{7}

As far as is known, Washington did nothing to pursue this opening. Later that month, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson almost capriciously dismissed three separate high-level recommendations from within the Roosevelt administration to activate peace negotiations. The proposals advocated signaling Japan that the U.S. was willing to consider the all-important retention of the emperor system; i.e., the U.S. would not insist upon "unconditional surrender".{8}

Stimson, like other high U.S. officials, did not really care in principle whether or not the emperor was retained. The term "unconditional surrender" was always a propaganda measure; wars are always ended with some kind of conditions. To some extent the insistence was a domestic consideration -- not wanting to appear to "appease" the Japanese. More important, however, it reflected a desire that the Japanese not surrender before the bomb could be used. One of the few people who had been aware of the Manhattan Project from the beginning, Stimson had come to think of it as his bomb, "my secret", as he called it in his diary.{9} On June 6, he told President Truman he was "fearful" that before the A-bombs were ready to be delivered, the Air Force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon "would not have a fair background to show its strength".{10} In his later memoirs, Stimson admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb".{11}

And that effort could have been minimal. In July, before the leaders of the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met at Potsdam, the Japanese government sent several radio messages to its ambassador, Naotake Sato, in Moscow, asking him to request Soviet help in mediating a peace settlement. "His Majesty is extremely anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible", said one communication. "Should, however, the United States and Great Britain insist on unconditional surrender, Japan would be forced to fight to the bitter end."{12}

On July 25, while the Potsdam meeting was taking place, Japan instructed Sato to keep meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Molotov to impress the Russians "with the sincerity of our desire to end the war have them understand that we are trying to end hostilities by asking for very reasonable terms in order to secure and maintain our national existence and honor" (a reference to retention of Emperor Hirohito).{13}

Having broken the Japanese code years earlier, Washington did not have to wait to be informed by the Soviets of these peace overtures; it knew immediately, and did nothing. Indeed, the National Archives in Washington contains U.S. government documents reporting similarly ill-fated Japanese peace overtures as far back as 1943.{14}

Thus, it was with full knowledge that Japan was frantically trying to end the war, that President Truman and his hardline secretary of state, James Byrnes, included the term "unconditional surrender" in the July 26 Potsdam Declaration. This "final warning" and expression of surrender terms to Japan was in any case a charade. The day before it was issued, Harry Truman had approved the order to release a 15 kiloton atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima.{15}

Many U.S. military officials were less than enthusiastic about the demand for unconditional surrender or use of the atomic bomb. At the time of Potsdam, Gen. Hap Arnold asserted that conventional bombing could end the war. Adm. Ernest King believed a naval blockade alone would starve the Japanese into submission. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, convinced that retaining the emperor was vital to an orderly transition to peace, was appalled at the demand for unconditional surrender. Adm. William Leahy concurred. Refusal to keep the emperor "would result only in making the Japanese desperate and thereby increase our casualty lists," he argued, adding that a nearly defeated Japan might stop fighting if unconditional surrender were dropped as a demand. At a loss for a military explanation for use of the bomb, Leahy believed that the decision "was clearly a political one", reached perhaps "because of the vast sums that had been spent on the project".{16} Finally, we have Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's account of a conversation with Stimson in which he told the secretary of war that:

Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. ... I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face". The secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.{17}

If, as appears to be the case, U.S. policy in 1945 was based on neither the pursuit of the earliest possible peace nor the desire to avoid a land invasion, we must look elsewhere to explain the dropping of the A-bombs. UNQUOTE

http://www.venusproject.com/William_Blum/abomb.htm