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At 2/18/13 07:11 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 2/15/13 07:33 PM, Ceratisa wrote: This Professor Pyle is a stuttering idiot.

Why should I trust your opinion? I will trust that of numerous well known history scholars over some anonymous person over the internet. Especially over a person who can't tell that not only are the two quotes he provided NOT mutually exclusive, but are quite likely to both be 100% correct. Which is odd, because with how much you disagree with the US government's actions, you seem wholly unable to realize that maybe the Japanese people didn't agree with their government's actions. Governments often are at odds with their people and in some cases, 1944-45 Japan likely being one, the governmentand the people are like two ships passing in the night.

Since you don't seem able to understand it was from your fucking source
"The Japanese aspiration to create their own regional order depended primarily on raw power. Trying to create a new order while they were at war, their resources stretched to the limit, the Japanese were unable to offer the public goods required to bring them lasting support from the Asian states they sought to govern. Although recognizing that the cause was lost, the Japanese Army by 1944 clung desperately to the hope of a "decisive battle" for the homeland so bloody and costly that the enemy would accept a negotiated end to hostilities-one that would avert an occupation, leave the the military intact, and allow Japan to rise again. Only after the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan did the emperor intervene and insist that fighting cease.
The civilian population was homeless, starving, and weaponless (They couldn't fight a well fed//armed military that was prepared for its glorious final defense of the homeland)
It doesn't matter if people who are too weak to even work their fields wanted the war to end. The government didn't and that was all that mattered. Your assumption is based on someone else stating they believed the Japanese were ready to surrender. BUT if you look at the time line between those statements, right before the atomic bomb was used, and the actual sources on the Japanese government's stance before the atomic bomb was used (They wanted to keep fighting)
So no the assumption the Japanese government -The ones with guns which is the one they want to surrender because it is the Japanese government they were fighting- was ready to surrender is incorrect.

On a separate note, I still fail to see exactly how the A-bombs were any more forceful toward surrender than conventional bombing. The A-bombs together killed about 150,000. One attack on Tokyo with incendiary bombs killed almost that many. I find it hard to see how one devastating attack is really more surrender inducing that the other.

Your question basically amounts to why is nuclear warfare worse then conventional warfare. When a weapon of unparalleled strength is suddenly unleashed upon you it tends to have a stronger effect. The atomic bomb had never before seen power in a single bomb. The Japanese government through false information also had reason to believe we possessed hundreds of atomic weapons.
Weapons when first revealed that are unlike anything before tend to have a lot of shock value. (Greek fire, and tanks among other examples)

That hardly sounds like internet worthy (i.e. economical to post) material. It's more of an annals and a JSTOR type thing. And, like I mentioned before, Its been close to a decade since I last saw these sources.
I quoted your supposed professors book. (From the book) The things I most recently had mentioned were typed out by me from books.

The last point is a pretty good one. However, the bombing of Dresden shows that on an even smaller raid (no WWII Birtish Bomber could even compare to the load of a B-29) could kill 25,000 in 4 days in a brick and mortar area, not a wood and paper area. I'm pretty sure the Japanese leadership did get news of that attack. But,the point about the power of incendiaries and the Bomb on brick and mortar buildings (i.e. masonry and better) is a pretty good one.

You just aren't getting the real value shock has. It has a tangible effect, and honestly no one here can speak to witnessing or experiencing the actual feeling of the only nuclear weapons used in a conflict wiping entire cities out in seconds. I'm not sure what is unnerving if not being under the assumption that the enemy force has the power to wipe out your entire country within moments with a few weapons.

I don't think the time it took for either attack holds too much water as the Tokyo firebombing took place of a matter of just over 1 day. Instant compared to a week or a month is a notieable difference, but an instant compared to a day isn't that big of a difference when seeing the prospect of an entire nation being bombed off the map.

It also undercut the militarists' strategy of forcing a land invasion because it showed the US could effectively destroy every major Japanese city far more quickly and cheaply than it could have before with conventional bombs. With such power, the Japanese leaders figured the US would probably just keep dropping A-bombs and hope for a surrender rather than bother with an invasion.

Yes, but the Tokyo firebombings took only a day and only cost 14 airplanes. That's cheaper than dirt in terms of WWII bombing raids.

Also, though this was probably a much lesser factor, a few of the militarists considered surrendering in the face of overwhelming technological superiority to be less shameful.

Very true. However, in the end, I think the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had a ton more to do with surrender than the A-Bombs did. The US was open for some positive surrender, but the Soviets would have gone crazy with the place and the Japnese leadership was scared shitless of what they would do (especially seeing how nicely the Soviets treated Berlin during the invasion).

I've actually given sources to actual conversation and testimony about it being both.