[mzvkxlcvd]

Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power. This was actually in the original surrender draft, but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so he removed the provision at the last minute.

In the end we dropped the bombs and then let the emperor stay in power anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemm...

[js2]

Re: Truman wanted to drop the bombs.

> At the time, the president seemed conflicted over his decision. The day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people believed “that we should continue to strike the Japanese until they are brought groveling to their knees.” Truman responded, “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.”

...

> Looking back, President Truman never shirked personal responsibility for his decision, but neither did he apologize. He asserted that he would not use the bomb in later conflicts, such as Korea. Nevertheless, given the same circumstances and choices that confronted him in Japan in 1945, he said he would do exactly the same thing.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm

[mzvkxlcvd]

Your quotes are from the US government, my claims are paraphrasing things i learned via Japanese media while in Japan. the truth is probably somewhere in between.

[InTheArena]

The Japanese media and text books are notoriously light on truth. You should not take them at face value.

And certainly realize that the decision to use the atomic bombs was not made in Tokyo. Their strategic use was not defined by Stalin.

[mzvkxlcvd]

>The Japanese media and text books are notoriously light on truth. You should not take them at face value.

and american media and text books are not? i think people are just uncomfortable with the possibility that the bombings may not have been justified

[InTheArena]

America academia doesn't ignore things that are shameful in it's history (despite perceptions). For my thesis in college I spent a year studying differential behaviors between Into-European colonialism and Amerindian genocide. My son (a 7th grader) is learning about chattel slavery right now.

Japanese text books generally don't mention World War II beyond "we attacked Hawaii and got unfairly nuked in return". The Japanese historical community is remarkably unengaged from international scholarship on world war 2. This has been commented on at length from the rest of the international community. It causes massive friction today in South East Asia.

You keep casting aspersions with no factual basis or external authorities.

[js2]

> Your quotes are from the US government

You wrote that "Truman wanted to drop the bombs" and I've provided a quote from Truman himself that refutes this assertion. You can't have a better source to Truman's state of mind than Truman.

[CrazyStat]

> Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power.

Conjecture

> but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so

Also conjecture

[mzvkxlcvd]

not really, I saw a documentary about it when I was in Japan.

[CrazyStat]

... that doesn't make it not conjecture.