PING Bonobo: For-pay Chicago Tribune article about end of war in the Pacific

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

By Walter Trohan. Title: "BARE PEACE BID U. S. REBUFFED 7 MONTHS AGO"

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/475703002.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Aug+19%2C+1945&author=WALTER+TROHAN&pub=Chicago+Daily+Tribune+%281923-1963%29&edition=&startpage=1&desc=BARE+PEACE+BID+U.+S.+REBUFFED+7+MONTHS+AGO

Costs $3.95. Anyone wanna pony up?

[Bonobo]

1. Thanks. I got that too.

I also posted the actual text of the original article and I don't gice a flying fuck where it was linked to. It is the original article's text and I have proven that the article DID exist and was printed by the Tribune.

It is an original source and anyone CLAIMING to be interested in learning history would not try to bury it.

[Jim Lane]

2. It's clear that Japanese surrender wasn't Washington's primary objective.

The United States policymakers wanted to have the chance to drop the atom bomb because they were already looking ahead to the postwar world and the anticipated competition with the USSR. They believed that using the bomb on a city would help them intimidate the Soviets -- more so than a mere demonstration over uninhabited land.

Regardless of whether there was a January surrender overture, it was known that, after V-E day (May 8, 1945), the Japanese drew some encouragement from the USSR's failure to declare war. They made overtures to the USSR to help negotiate a surrender.

What they didn't know was that there was a secret provision in the Yalta accords, entered into in February -- that the USSR would declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day. The Americans knew that the Soviet declaration, and attendant invasion of Manchuria, would be a severe blow to Japanese hopes and might prompt Japanese surrender.

American schoolchildren are taught that Truman ordered the use of the bomb out of fear that, otherwise, Japan would not surrender. In fact, however, Truman's fear was that Japan would surrender -- that the Soviet invasion would bring about Japanese surrender before the U.S. had the chance to demonstrate the power of its fearsome new weapon. The bomb was rushed into deployment as fast as possible, and Hiroshima was destroyed on August 6. The USSR entered the war, as agreed, on August 8.

A key question for defenders of the use of the bomb is: Why not wait a week? The United States didn't contemplate invading the Japanese home islands any earlier than October. If the sole objective were to end the war, it would make sense to defer the bombing to see if the Russian action would be enough of a blow to Japan to bring about surrender.

This point of timing is the smoking gun. Regardless of whether the Japanese made a surrender overture in January, the evidence is clear that the United States wanted to use atomic weapons for reasons unrelated to ending World War II, and doing so required that Japan still be in the war.

A good book on the subject is Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, by Gar Alperovitz.