one thing about ww2 has always made me wonder... what if the americans insisted that hirohito be held accountable for his nations actions during a very cruel war??? imagine macarthur telling the japanese, in the wake of two atomic bomb blasts, that the allies cannot allow their living god and his family members to go free??? the things to ponder are:

1. does the us continue to nuke the islands???

2. civilian leadership in japan manages to wrest control from military leaders and stop the carnage???

3. allied invasion, including soviets, to take the islands one at a time???

looking forward to some opinions.... personally i see a lot of ruined cities and hard fighting on the home islands, allies winning with horrendous casualties...

Yes. Susposedlly there was enough uranium & plutonium isotpes under manufactor to assemble five more bombs by early 1946. Otherwise there were enough other conventional bombs to burn everything to the ground twice.

Civilian leadership more or less had returned to power. The departure of Tojo from the premiership months earlier signaled the key change. The subsequent defeats on Okinawa, Iwo Jima, in Burma, and the relentless destruction of the defenders of the Phillipines had further humiliated the prowar faction and allowed Suzuki to return to power. The last ideas the Japanese leaders had been hanging onto were: 1. That the US could not actually invade Japan. 2. That Japan was still strong enough to negotiate a peace that would leave it with its Asian conquests. 3. The nuetral USSR could be played off against the US and Britian to achive #2.

The use of the A bombs showed clearly Japan did not have to be invaded to be destroyed. The declaration of war by the USSR shattered any idea of Stalin as a politcal ally and peace broker. There was also bad news concerning the rice harvest, and projected food imports from the mainland.

It was in theory possible for the war faction to regain power. Some army officers attempted a coup after the Emperor broke the deadlock in the cabinent debate over surrender. Assasination may have been attempted as well. Suzuki still suffered from a bullet wound from a 1928 assasination attempt, and many other politicias who had not supported the movement towards war in the 1930s had been killed. But, as it was the increasing defeats had left the war faction demoralized, politically bankrupt, and divided. The politicians who were willing to "endure the unendurable" had a opportunity in mid 1945.

If the fanatics retain power. Many in the war party were not necessarily fanatics and were gradually accepting the reality of defeat. If the emperor had been a fanatic himself then it would have been much less likely the war faction would have lost power in the last year. Perhaps Japan would have gone down in a horrible massacre.

The question of the retention of the Emperor deserves further research. Was Hirohito willing to sacrafice his position and self to preserve his nation? Would he have agreed to step aside to prevent further destruction? At the critical cabinet meeting where the surrender decision was made he broke with tradition and Japanese parlimentary procedure to express his true opinion. This unprecendted act suggests he was willing to do other extrordinary things as well.

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you would think after the first atomic bomb they would surrender? shows just how crazy it would have been to launch an invasion on the Japanese mainland, the U.S. would have lost so many soldiers.