Is it true that Japan surrendered before Atomic Bomb?

I just heard that from someone about the old US top secret files.

and Is Little Boy and Fat Man drop was done for an experiment?

I can't believe that..

No, they didn't surrender before the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima which was uranium. But the Japanese were going to surrender after that, but they **say** America wanted to test the plutonium bomb, so they dropped it on Nagasaki. After the bombs, a lot of scientists and doctors sent from allied countries went there to observe the effects of radiation, etc. on the Japanese civilians. It stopped the war though, and millions of lives were saved.

What your friend was likely referring to is not that the Japanese had surrendered prior to the bombings, but rather that the Japanese were doomed to defeat before the bombings. The Russians had declared war on Japan and joined the fight in Asia right after Hiroshima and were pleged to do so before, the Japanese Navy and Airforce were no longer able to keep the war off of Japanese soil, and the outcome was not particularly in doubt.

The problem is that during planning of an invasion of the mainland, it came up that the US should order several hundred thousand purple hearts to be distributed to those who would certainly be wounded.

It also just so happened that the bombs had been completed earlier than expected. The agreement at Yalta, in which certain concessions were made in order to bring the Soviets into the war in the Pacific after Germany fell, was made under the impression that the bomb would not be ready until at least 1947. When the bomb suddenly came to be ready earlier, it presented an opportunity to save many American lives, prevent a Russian occupation of Manchuria hopefully, and establish the US military as beyond challenge, as well as, of course, field testing the bombs against humans and realistic large-scale infrastructure.

So, we dropped them. That being said, I am under the impression (based on a show on the History Channel which I do not recall the name of nor sources for) that we invited the Japanese to come observe a test, in hopes of procuring their surrender, but that the Japanese refused the offer, since it was WWII and everyone had a "secret weapon" of some kind.

They refused to surrender even after Hiroshima though. The Russians immediately launched their attack, just 2 days after Hiroshima, hoping to get Manchuria before Japan was beaten into submission.
They were talking about surrender when we hit Nagasaki, but even that didn't do the trick.

Between August 8th and August 18th, the 3 Red Army Groups destroyed the Japanese Army in Manchuria, which had consisted of over 1 million men.

It was in the midst of that relentless assualt that Japan actually surrendered on August 15th, 6 days after the second nuke was dropped. The prospect of facing a joint Russian/US invasion, with the way being paved by nukes, was simply too much.

Frankly, the US didn't nuke Japan enough to completely fulfill all of its goals. The 9 days that passed between Hiroshima and the Japanese surrender were enough for the Russians to get into Manchuria, and the Russians were able to occupy North Korea in the 3 days after the surrender, which laid the foundation for the Korean War.
If we'd dropped 3 of them on the first day, then promised more, or "accidentally" hit the Russians during an attack on the Japanese Army in Manchuria, we may have saved ourselves some headaches.

I was nine months old.

Mr. Vagabond is correct; the Japanese did not surrender until after the second bomb was dropped at Nagasaki.

And thank God we dropped the atomic bombs! We already had our plans in place for Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, starting with Kyushu and Shikoku in late 1945 and then, in mid-1946 (if all went well) an invasion of Honshu via the south as well as landings on the Kanto Plain. I'd read that we expected casualties of up to a half-million wounded with five to ten times that number of Japanese casualties

The Japanese had their own defensive plan, Ketsu-go ("White Crane"). It turned out after the war was over that the Japanese had several surprises up their sleeves that we hadn't know about, such as almost twice the operational fighters, and the ability to move their troops rapidly from one area to another. We'd still have won, of course, but the cost would've probably close to a million American casualties (killed and wounded) and ten million Japanese dead.

In Spring 2001 I visited that city which tragically needs no introduction. There is a park by the Genbaku Dome, and the cherry blossome were in bloom. Families were picknicking on the grounds, and a few were trying to fly kites in the breeze. Several people nodded and smiled at me; I'm sure I wasn't the first American they'd seen.

We had to do it. I knew that now and I knew it then.

It just didn't help me stop weeping.

Supposedly we had a third bombing site planned. Nara. I'm not sure if this is true or not but I was told this when I went to Japan in high school (toured the country one summer with a friend who was born there).

I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even as a snot nosed punk teenager I felt oddly guilty for what my country did to the two cities and the country.

Originally posted by Crakeur


I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even as a snot nosed punk teenager I felt oddly guilty for what my country did to the two cities and the country.

Don't be. The Japanese sure wasn't merciful to those they occupied.

I think what may be referred to here is that Japan wanted to surrender, but not unconditionally - they wanted their Emporer to be able to keep his throne, but the U.S. wanted an unconditional surrender. Unfortunately, this resulted in the dropping of the devestating nulcear bombs. Eventually, I believe the Japanese did surrender unconditionally.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Don't be. The Japanese sure wasn't merciful to those they occupied.

two wrongs don't make a right.

I know the Japanese weren't angels but when you see the memorials, and you see the people, no human being with half a heart would be thinking they had it coming.

Originally posted by Crakeur
two wrongs don't make a right.

I know the Japanese weren't angels but when you see the memorials, and you see the people, no human being with half a heart would be thinking they had it coming.

Well then guess you can feel guilty for the other massive indiscriminate bombing on other Japanese cities as well that seems to kill more than what the atomic bombs did. If the cities were not bombed by the atomic weapons, would you still feel guilty?

why don't you take a trip there, see the memorials, see the birth defects and the destruction and then see if you are still as cold and heartless as you want to seem.

Deltaboy- I know it's easy to take that attitude from an academic standpoint, but when you are looking the victim's grandchildren in the eye and they're smiling politely and going about their business, the academic understanding that it was a necessary evil is a very different animal from lacking remorse for the fact that human beings had to suffer such horrors.

I have not done half the traveling I'd like to (and short of becoming a millionaire, I'll probably never get more than half way through my list of places to go) but I have experienced a much milder form of what Crakeur and Off_The_Street are talking about.

Back when I was a teenager and knew everything, Mexicans were lazy and backwards and their saving grace was that they didn't speak enough english to provoke me into a fight usually, although I'd had my share of scraps with the mexican gangs in my area.

Of course the infallible knowledge of the entire Mexican culture that I was able to gain by exploring 10 square miles of my little spec on the map town gave me absolutely no cause to feel the least bit bad about anything that befell Mexico, be it their economic woes, a hurricane, or the fact that my 4-times great grandfather Taylor killed a few of them doing his part to push the Texas border a little further South.

The thing is that eventually I got around to actually going to Mexico. So I went down there, dug a few ditches so that a charity clinic could have real electrical lines, met some of the people who lived down there, did my best to mind my manners at first, and before long found out that I liked them.

Now I'm not sorry that we won the war, but I'm sorry that the two sides didn't have the collective wisdom to avoid having the war in the first place. It's one thing to think of the word for a nation, be it Mexico or Japan, and just think of a blob on a map and be able to say, "better them than us", but it's another to meet someone every bit as decent as yourself and realize that for all intents and purposes, your grandpa killed his.

A fellow human being does not have to be on the right side of history (if indeed there was a right side- there isn't in all cases) to be worthy of your compassion.

Yet another example, briefly. One of the three dearest friends I've ever had is Vietnamese, and though he never point-blank said it, I'm not lead to believe his family cared much for Diem. For all the awful crap our respective nations did to one another's people I'm sure we've both got our bones to pick. All the same I couldn't help feeling a little bad for him when in the course of an International Relations class I happened across the story that Ho Chi Mihn is said to have shared by admiration for Thomas Jefferson so much that the Declaration of Independence remained on his wall even through the worst of the war.

Originally posted by Crakeur
why don't you take a trip there, see the memorials, see the birth defects and the destruction and then see if you are still as cold and heartless as you want to seem.

I seen videos and read books at my school about the horrors of the atomic bombs and the aftermath of it. Even though its not related to most of my classes I took to complete my Bachelors, I went to the library to study about the atomic bombs on the cities. Yes its a tragedy, but then its war and it seems to me that you have to do it, and not feel guilty. The firebombing of the Japanese cities that killed millions indiscriminately. How are we suppose to feel when we are fighting a nation? Guilty? Are we having this historical revisionism thing?

Originally posted by deltaboy
Yes its a tragedy, but then its war and it seems to me that you have to do it, and not feel guilty.

How are we suppose to feel when we are fighting a nation?

I think this answers itself really. Yes, it is a tragedy, but then it's war and it seems that you have to do it.

How are we supposed to feel when we are fighting a nation.


As I said, I'm not sorry we won the war. When you're fighting a nation you pull out all the stops and you win the god forsaken war. When the war is over though, there's no reason to feel anything but sorrow for the lives lost on both sides.

In 1945, Japan was the enemy. Our respective leaders had failed us, and on either side it was our duty to do what had to be done to protect our countrymen. In 2006 (and in 1946 for that matter) Japan is just a nation of fellow human beings who we should hope to enjoy peace and mutually beneficial relations with.

In as much as that is true, my feelings for the Japanese who died because of American nukes are no different than my feelings towards anybody else who dies anywhere or any way- it's done, it's part of the world we live in, we couldn't change it without changing things that we could not bare to change, but there is still no reason to feel anything positive about the fact that human beings didn't get the chance to live their full lives.


Look at it from this point of view if you like:
You wish your grandpa hadn't died, you wish your dad hadn't died, you wish you weren't going to die some day, you wish your kids would never have to die... but if you had the choice to stop it from happening, you wouldn't do it, because you know how miserable the world would be if we kept multiplying and never died.
It has nothing to do with regretting the better world that results from necessary evils, it simply is a matter of trying to appreciate the incredible value of a life.

surrendered or not it was the most coward, idiot things we' ll ever witness in current history. I know you all gonna say, it saves lives of thousand of ppl by stoping the war (that argument is completly pointless) just dont start a war in the 1st place foo.

And then we see ppl posting on ATS why the world hates the US. HAH, i guess they were listening in their history class. Just keep saying your canadian when you are traveling guys, its safer for you ( / broken).

Originally posted by deltaboyI seen videos and read books at my school about the horrors of the atomic bombs and the aftermath of it.

as vagabond so eloguently put it, seeing pictures is not quite the same as looking these people in the eye.

Again, it was a necessary step taken to end the war. The first bomb probably would have been enough. Had we waited a bit longer and let them know we were prepared to drop another one or two if need be, I am guessing they would have surrendered.