There was no way out for Japan, and now the US was poised to launch a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland.  The only thing standing in the way between this US invasion and what would surely be the total destruction of this culture was the agreement by the Japanese War Council to throw in the towel.  The civilian representatives wanted to raise the white flag, but the military was resolute in its desire to maintain its Samurai honor and they refused to quit.  The War Council was at a stalemate when the US bombed Hiroshima.

It is so easy to look at this devastating event and say oh yeah if I was in that position I would hold up my hands and shout as loudly as possible, “I am out.”  A destructive force never known before was just unleashed on your country and you have no way of fighting back against it.  Oh heck yeah, I am throwing in the towel.  But that is not what happened on August 7^th, 8^th or 9^th. The United States anxiously waited for the message of the Japanese surrender to filter its way through diplomatic channels, but the message never came.

So the question is what on earth was going through the heads of the Japanese War Council that prevented them from surrendering? Did they think they could fight their way back? Did they think this was just the motivational tool that they could leverage to call the Japanese civilians to retaliate against the Americans? Did they think the US was a one-shot wonder and did not have the resources to fire off another nuclear bomb? Were they banking on the Soviets entering the fight and helping to broker a better deal?

Historians have argued both sides of this case and both make compelling arguments. One camp notes the dropping of the bombs saved lives. Revisionist historians argue that the use of the atomic bombs came as an early Cold War show of force for the Soviets and an attempt to end the war early in order keep Stalin out of the fight.  Japanese American Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues that the Japanese leaders knew the war was over and they were losing.  But in Japanese culture these two issues—defeat and surrender do not necessarily co-exist as they do in the west.  Surrendering is a political act and the Japanese did not have a history of surrendering. 

The military wanted to maintain their honor and the honor of the Emperor and the civilians wanted to make a deal.  The War Council needed a unanimous decision in order to act—and in early August they were at a stalemate.  They needed something huge to happen in order to save their honor.  The dropping of the two nuclear bombs and the Stalin’s declaration of war on August 8^th provided just the right political cover.  Recently declassified documents in Japan support this notion. Mitsumasa Yonai, a War Council Member and Japanese Naval Minister described the bombs as a “gift from heaven.”  Without the bombs the Japanese military was preparing for the US invasion of mainland Japan in the fall of 1945.

Fortunately that invasion did not have to happen. The Japanese did surrender following the August 9^th bombing of Nagasaki, Stalin was kept out of the fight, and the US companies were allowed to profit from the rebuilding of the Japanese economy

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My reluctance to address this issue is not so complicated.  It would be a good idea  right now confesses that I not so secretly agree with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statements when the US press challenged him on Iran’s nuclear program.  He basically said that he felt it was important to protect his nation from the only nation of the world that has used the bomb, and as he noted the only nation of the world that has demonstrated such a reckless disregard for life, that nation being the United States of America.

So why did the US drop the bomb?

So in running down the list that Historian and WWII Veteran Paul Fussell noted in his book:  Thank God for the Atomic Bomb and Other Essays:

1.        High US Casualty estimates:  The Pentagon estimated that if the Army and Marines had conducted a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland that nearly one million Americans would perish in the assault.  This number does not even consider the blood bath the Japanese civilians would have faced. Based on similar invasions in Okinawa and throughout the Pacific the Japanese military fought to the last man standing and civilians also committed suicide rather than surrender.   The 220,000 deaths due to the Atomic Bombs would have been less than 1% of the total death count if the US had mounted a ground invasion.

2.       American home front was ready for the war to be over:  Most Americans viewed WWII as being fought in Europe and the real enemy was Germany.  With the German surrender, the war was basically over for most Americans. A ground invasion of the Japanese mainland would have extended the war for a much longer period and perhaps even years. The American public was ready for the war to be over and Truman was facing a re-election opportunity. If he could wrap up the war quickly and bring US boys home he would face a  much easier time in the election.

3.        The Soviets were itching to get in the fight:  Stalin was eager lend a hand to help end the war. Of course if the Soviets had helped in the Pacific fight then Stalin would have had a seat at the negotiating table and Truman did not want to extend that invitation.  Germany had been divided into reconstruction zones and the US was not happy to concede a quarter of that nation to the Soviets.  Rebuilding Japan following the war was going to be an economic boom for the US.  Also, keeping the Soviets out of the peace process would prevent the Iron curtain from following near this American economic opportunity.

4.       Use it or lose it:  Demonstrating the power of the nuclear bomb would certainly cement the Americans in their position as supper power.

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Oh what a circus!

Oh what a show!

Argentina has gone to town

Over the death of an actress called Eva Peron

We’ve all gone crazy

Mourning all day and mourning all night

Falling over ourselves to get all

Of the misery right 

Today marks the anniversary of the death of former Argentine First Lady Eva Peron in 1952.  Obviously if your life becomes an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical you must be pretty interesting person.   

Long before marrying Juan Peron, Evita as she was known to her adoring followers she was an actress.  Hopefully she was a more gifted thespian than Madonna, who played her on the big screen.  Eva was first lady from 1946 until her death in 1952.  Putting aside the Madonna references, Peron was an amazing political force in Argentinean politics.  As first lady, she leveraged her popularity to take up the issue of workers’ rights, help edthe poor, pushed for women’s suffrage and she even started an all woman political party, the Feminist Peronist Party. 

In 1951 she accepted the Feminist Peronist Party’s nomination to become Vice President. While she was very popular with the average citizens, the Argentine aristocracy and military elite were not keen on her populits leanings and pressured her to eventually dropped out of the race.  Her declining health also cut short her promising career.  She died of cervical cancer at the age of 33.

Prior her death the Argentine Legislature named her the Argentine National Spiritual Leader.  If had not been for her poor health this would have been heady stuff for a poor girl born out of wedlock.  On the news of her death, the nation observed two days of mourning.  The nation was devastated by the news of her death.  Plans were made to construct a shrine that would have been larger than the Statute of Liberty with Eva’s body to be on display at the base of the statute. 

It took nearly two years for the shrine to be built and in the mean time Juan Peron’s government was disposed in a successful military coup and he had to jet out of town in the middle of the night. Before getting out of Dodge, he did not have time to secure her body. 

The military regime removed Eva’s body from display and criminalized all mention of the name on.  The whereabouts of her body were unknown for 16 years until finally the dictatorship revealed that she had been buried in Milan Italy.

In 1973, Juan Peron came out of exile, returned to Argentina and was elected president again. He died in office in 1974, and his third wife Isabella, who had been elected Vice President, succeeded him. She was the first female head of state in the Western Hemisphere.

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