Abraham SammaAug 13, 2023

It's been more than a week since my wife and I watched #Oppenheimer at our local cinema and I still can't stop looking into it. Most importantly, the moral question of the bombings themselves. If indeed the bombings didn't influence the thinking of Japan's government as some new narratives suggest, then why did Emperor Hirohito mention it in his speech announcing Japan's surrender? Obviously it did play a role in conjunction with the USSR's war declaration.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast

Wikiwand - Hirohito surrender broadcast

The Hirohito surrender broadcast was a radio broadcast of surrender given by Hirohito, the emperor of Japan, on 15 August 1945. It announced to the Japanese people that the Japanese government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military at the end of World War II. Following the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, the Soviet declaration of war and the Nagasaki bombing on August 9, the Emperor's speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on 15 August 1945, and referred to the atomic bombs as a reason for the surrender. The speech is the first known instance of a Japanese emperor speaking to the common people . It was delivered in formal Classical Japanese, with much pronunciation unfamiliar to ordinary Japanese. The speech made no direct reference to a surrender of Japan, instead stating that the government had been instructed to accept the "joint declaration" of the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and the Soviet Union. This confused many listeners not familiar with the declaration about whether Japan had actually surrendered. Both the poor audio quality of the radio broadcast and the formal courtly language worsened the confusion.

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@absamma It was the one-two punch of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki plus Soviet declaration of war. Important to remember is that the Japanese war council was deadlocked on whether to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. Hirohito himself broke the deadlock to decide to accept the terms of surrender. Even then, that was followed by a failed coup to prevent the surrender.

Point is, Japan barely surrendered. I'm not convinced that if we change one aspect of how things went (don't drop the bombs, drop only one bomb, Soviets don't declare war) that a surrender happens. That leads to either further atomic bombs or a mainland invasion, both of which lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. Soviet intervention could even lead to a division of Japan similar to how Germany was handled.

This sounds horrible to say, but the way things went may have been the best case scenario, at least if you only look at this as a metric of how many people have to die. You can object to the usage of atomic weapons in any capacity, which I don't think is necessarily a wrong opinion, but I don't think there was a clean way out of this.

Aug 15, 2023 at 3:42pmWeb