Japan was by no means on its knees. The choice was bombing or invasion. And the US didn’t have enough bombs. That was a secret, and we at the time wanted Japan to think we had the bombs, but those are the facts.

The US had just enough bombs to head fake Japan into surrender. We are all lucky they didn’t call that bluff.

But please continue with your discussion of the injustice of the Nurmburg trials or whatevs.

The “Atomic Bomb” as “Deus ex machina”, “Might makes Right”, Vae Victis and things like that.

So let me put it as a hypothetical;
Germany has the atomic bomb and manage to explode one in the harbour of New York, but too late to change the course of the war.
So, would the USA have considered those responsible for the atomic bomb and for the attack to be war criminals?
If yes, then the question of Hirosjima and Nagasaki is answered, if not, then I think you delude yourself.

To repeat myself, in war sh*t happens. It doesn’t stop me appreciating the USA, especially since the US armies were truly liberating armies, they even liberated Japan and Germany (part of anyway) itself. And for that you have my full, 100%, adminiration.
What does take my regard for the US down a few notches (temporarily at least) is the hubris involved. We are the USA, we are good. Since it is us who dropped the bombs it was only right and proper. We really liked it. …

To repeat myself, again, I really shouldn’t have mentioned it, but then the thread was about, to quote the quote in your article;

“That is why we must beware of giving ruthlessness a reason to be ruthless. For the moment you have done this, for however noble a purpose, you have fallen into its own fantasy world, and you are seeing an act of catastrophic senseless killing as a legitimate expression of a political grievance. To mistake ruthlessness for desperation is the fundamental error of those whose sympathies are unclouded by judgment.”

And my last “repeat” (wiki: Nuremberg Trial);

“In an editorial at the time The Economist, a British weekly newspaper, criticised the hypocrisy of both Britain and France for supporting the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations over its unprovoked attack against Finland in 1939 and for six years later cooperating with the USSR as a respected equal at Nuremberg. It also criticised the allies for their own double-standard at the Nuremberg Trials: “nor should the Western world console itself that the Russians alone stand condemned at the bar of the Allies’ own justice. … Among crimes against humanity stands the offence of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. Can the Americans who dropped the atom bomb and the British who destroyed the cities of western Germany plead ‘not guilty’ on this count? Crimes against humanity also include the mass expulsion of populations. Can the Anglo-Saxon leaders who at Potsdam condoned the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homes hold themselves completely innocent? … The nations sitting in judgement have so clearly proclaimed themselves exempt from the law which they have administered.”

Ps. Also from the wiki article of the Nuremberg Trials;

“Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. “(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” he wrote. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”

I quote this because; a) I like it; b) I agree fully with the opinion expressed; c) It shows what I so admire in the US, Harlan Fiske Stone being a Republican who simply refused to preside over a mockery and who wasn’t shy to express his opinion on that. We could use people like him today. Btw, I don’t call the Trials a sick mockery because some nazis got hanged but because their Russian accusers and judges weren’t hanged beside them.

That was always a false claim. FDR and Stalin had ever intention of replacing the Emperor of Japan with a stooge or puppet. Show trials were their thing, after all. Well the Japanese Americans and the Admiral at Pearl Harbor, didn’t even get a trial or advance warning via intel.

They had every intention of going broke on the matter. Only two people stopped that later on. Truman and MacArthur, mostly MacArthur.

If you want to know what you are talking about I can’t recommend Giangreco’s book more highly.

On the other hand I realize some people think the fun lies in not knowing what they are talking about. Which limits their opponents to playing half-court b-ball, the half of the court where truth rules.

The idea that Japan would resurrect itself in only 20 years, is a miracle that most Japanese pre or post WWII, would never have believed in.

And it wasn’t technically democracy that did it, it was MacArthur reforming the system in several ways using “Christian morality”. Christian morality and reforms, not “democracy”. Although it ended up looking like a Western democracy at the end.

1980 Japanese culture and 1945 Japanese culture was fundamentally different. 1945 was a military regime dominated culture that utilized the glory of expansion and liberation of European colonies as a justification for glory and expansion. 1980 Japanese culture focused on self defense and non military, non expansionist policies and philosophies.

I cannot say for certain that a negotiated surrender, even if the Emperor Hirohito, Truman, and others would have been capable of accepting it, would have increased or decreased the chance for MacArthur to reform the system.

For the most part, Americans think American philosophy reformed Japan. But that’s not really true. Half of it was domestic, half of it was foreign, but the way the Japanese used democracy was not the way FDr would have used democracy or the way Democrat KKKers would have used democracy or the way Planned Profit would have used democracy. And that’s why Iraq looked like it had issues. The Stat Department was in charge of reforming Iraq, not the US military, and look what happened.

Is military rule “democracy”? If not, then MacArthur’s GHQ wasn’t spreading democracy, it was a kind of autocracy that stabilized the system using Security and Authority, along with cultural affinity and cooperation.

If America had realized why Japan changed, Vietnam and Iraq might have been done. But the lessons of the past, were forgotten. They fired MacArthur in the end, after all, he was just a “warmonger” that the peaceful, prosperous American people found obsolete.

Very well stated.

1. Yes, the US did call for unconditional surrender.

2. Yes, the US did allow the Emperor to retain his position, which is a condition.

3. Therefore, yes; the US did accept a condition, and they did not inform the Japanese that they were prepared to do that,

Therefore :

4. The US was morally liable for the fact that they didn’t tell the Japanese that they were prepared to be more reasonable than they had said they wouild be.

This argument ignores several things :

Japan had, over a period of two generations, committed acts of aggression against Korea, China, Tsarist Russia, Manchuria, China (again), the Soviet Union, Vichy France (Indochina), The Dutch (the East Indies), the British (Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, and India) and the United States (the Phillippines, Guam, and other places, especially Pearl Harbor).

Japanese forces routinely violated every rule of civilised warfare, in their treatment of enemy prisoners, conquered civilians, and occasionally their own troops.

Japan routinely lied about its actions and intentions.

Japanese soldiers routinely fought to the death even when doing so served no valid strategic purpose. In the Phillippines, they did it even after having been ordered not to do so.

No major Japanese force ever surrendered, under any circumstances, and no enemy who was aware of their history and doctrine would have expected them to do so.

In their defense, it might be argued that the Japanese had intended to deliver their declaration of war against the United States prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor – About three whole hours before, after they had already moved their forces into position.

In short, the entire Asian War was a criminal act by the military government of Japan, who frequently conducted it using criminal means.

Under the circumstances, the US was under no moral or legal obligation to show the government of Japan any consideration whatsoever.

Yet in the end they did, by allowing the Emperor to remain.

Of course there were alternatives. We could have invaded, and killed millions of Japanese civilians. We could have waited for the Russians to participate, and killed millions of Japanese civilian. We could have used a “Bomb and Blockade” strategy… and killed millions of Japanese civilians.

ALL of the likely alternatives to the Atomic bombs would have killed more Japanese than the bombs did.

A negotiated peace was not a likely alternative, because a rational enemy would have surrendered at least a year earlier. Their strategic position was arguably untenable after the loss of the Marianas, and certainly after the loss of the Phillippines.

We would have been perfectly justified in continuing to insist on a completely unconditional surrender.

In fact, by traditional standards of behavior, we would have been completely justified in demanding massive reparations.

We didn’t do either of those things; we were in fact more merciful than we needed to be, and more merciful than the Japanese had ever been when they were winning.

To suggest that US actions constitute a moral lapse, let alone indicates any kind of moral equivalence, appears somewhat dubious at best.