One might think that compelling substantiation would be necessary to support such a monstrous charge, but the revisionists have been unable to provide a single example from Japanese sources. What they have done instead amounts to a variation on the old shell game. They state in their own prose that the Japanese were trying to surrender without citing any evidence and, to show that Truman was aware of their efforts, cite his diary entry of July 18 referring to a “telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” There it is! The smoking gun! But it is nothing of the sort. The message Truman cited did not refer to anything even remotely resembling surrender. It referred instead to the Japanese foreign office’s attempt (under the suspicious eyes of the military) to persuade the Soviet Union to broker a negotiated peace that would have permitted the Japanese to retain their prewar empire and their imperial system (not just the emperor) intact. No American president could have accepted such a settlement, as it would have meant abandoning the United States’ most basic war aims.

An exchange I had with two revisionists, Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, is revealing. In the December 2007 issue of Passport (newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations), I published a short critique of their Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Among other things, I accused them of resorting to “semantic jugglery” in falsely equating Truman’s diary reference to “peace” with “surrender,” and pointed out that they had failed to provide “even a wisp of evidence” that Japan was trying to surrender. In their response, Sherwin and Bird in turn accused me of dismissing a “huge body of distinguished scholarship,” but again failed to include a single example of such evidence.

In particular, Sherwin and Bird berated me for failing to refer to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. “Hasegawa’s research into Soviet and Japanese archives,” they wrote, “is replete with massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence about the causes of Japan’s surrender. It seems telling to us that his work is ignored.” What Sherwin and Bird apparently did not know, or hoped their readers did not know, was that although Hasegawa agreed with revisionists on a number of issues he explicitly rejected the early surrender thesis. Indeed, Hasegawa in no uncertain terms wrote that “Without the twin shocks of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war, the Japanese never would have surrendered in August.” So much for the “massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence.”

Undeterred by this fiasco and still unable to produce even a single document from Japanese sources, Bird has continued to peddle the fiction that “peace” meant the same thing as “surrender.” In a mostly contemptuous review of Sir Max Hastings’ s Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (Washington Post Book World, April 20, 2008), Bird professed to be “appalled by the critical evidence left out.” In passing he cited what he referred to as Hasegawa’s “widely praised” book again, but only to note the latter’s claim that Soviet entry into the war rather than the atomic bombs caused Japan’s surrender. There is no mention of the bogus “massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence” he and Sherwin earlier had claimed to find in Hasegawa’s work. Bird castigated Hastings because he “can’t find the space to note that Truman, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and Adm. William D. Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, all reportedly agreed on Aug. 3, 1945—three days before 140,000 civilians were killed in Hiroshima—that Japan was ‘looking for peace.’ ” Readers of this sentence who were unfamiliar with the sources—meaning practically all of them—could be expected to reach the false conclusion that Japan was trying to surrender.

In the last sentence of his review, Bird wrote that “the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain a hot-button issue, something that can make otherwise responsible historian nose-dive into polemics.” How true!

Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren\\\’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn\\\’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

If that\\\’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that\\\’s why we did it. For me I don\\\’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren\’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn\’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

If that\’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that\’s why we did it. For me I don\’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

If that’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that’s why we did it. For me I don’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

Well I’m only 15 year old so what do I know about the majoraty of battle plans , populations and other that might cause distroction. =.= Japan gots two huge creaters in it now.