wdolson
Posts: 10398
Joined: 6/28/2006 From: Near Portland, OR Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tocaff The Japanese were playing for time. Remember that they wanted an anvantageous negotiated peace gained from a position of strength. As stated earlier in 1942 they still hadn't come to grips with the fact that they were fighting a war that they couldn't win militarily. Their war plan was to gain the natural resouces that they needed so badly and building outer and inner defensive lines. The problem was that the victories came to easy early in the war and they got greedy and reached for more than they could cope with or the plan called for. Who knows what would've happened if the Japanese stuck with the original plan and there had been no atomic bomb? Is it possible that the fighting could've continued past 1946, 20-20 hindsight causes shoulda, woulda, couldas. There's just no way of knowing if the US would've tired of the war or avoided invasion and starved Japan by blockade, to many unanswererable variables. So a line in the sand was drawn and it didn't matter where it was, it just happened on the 'Canal. The US was very lucky to have the right people in the right places making the right decisions, huge production capacity and code breakers. Plans for the US/British invasion of Japan were well advanced by the time the nukes were dropped. Some have argued that the nuclear weapons were not the thing Japan feared the most, it was the USSR getting into the fight starting in early August, 1945. They were fully aware of the Soviets capabilities and the Soviets desire for revenge. Japan humiliated the Russians in 1905. The USSR wanted the territory back, plus a pound of flesh. They knew that the US and Britain "played fair" and that they would get a better deal if they surrendered to the US than the Soviets. As early as 1944, the Japanese embassy in Switzerland had been talking to the US embassy people. The sticking point was only one. Japan refused to agree to a completely unconditional surrender. The one point they held out on was that they wanted a guarantee that the emperor would remain. At the time, the US was considering trying Hirohito for war crimes, so it was a deal breaker. If the US had understood Japanese culture better, they would have realized that the Japanese emperor is more like the king on a chessboard with virtually no power beyond symbolic. The emperor is also considered a god, so whoever controls the emperor, controls Japan. When McArthur was commander of the occupation, he came to realize this and allowed the emperor to remain. Since he was the one controlling the emperor, he controlled a god and controlled the country absolutely. The occupation of Japan was the most peaceful of any in the 20th century. Bill
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