Japan was saved by ... the A-Bomb

Today is the 62nd anniversary of "Bock's Car", a B-29 piloted by Charles W. Sweeney, dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan to set in motion the end of the War in the Pacific, primarily between the US and Japan. You can see this plane in the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. I've seen it and the museum includes a dummy mock-up of the "fat man" plutonium atomic bomb.

Post war documents and interviews of Japanese war leaders prove that dropping this second bombs shook Japan out of its mass delusion and caused the civilian leaders finally to be able to neutralize the military leaders. This deadlock provided a means to request the Emperor to decide - he decided for peace. The alternative was national suicide under the mass delusion that was guiding Japanese war policy since the 1942 battle of Midway and Guadalcanal after which loss of the war was obvious.

Even then, Japanese fanatics attempted a coup to prevent surrender, but it was stopped. The actual surrender message was broadcast by the Emperor on August 15, which is celebrated as V-J day.

The US was planning a November 1945 invasion of Kyushu and a spring 1946 invasion on Honshu, the main island of Japan. With Japanese suicide tactics and overwhelming US firepower, it's likely that half of the Japanese people would have been killed in these last battles and the "mop up" that would have followed. Every factory and bridge and building in Japan could have been leveled. Many more major cities would have been totally destroyed with additional atomic bombs that the US was producing. Could Japanese civilisation have ever recovered from such devastation? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe after a hundred years? The loss of human capital would have been enormous.

Could Japan have ever surrendered in conventional war since the government and people seemed to live a mass delusion and favored death over surrender? I think the answer is NO, except for the shock of the atomic bomb. The second bomb proved the first was not just a special device. That moved enough Japanese leaders to snap out of their fantasy.

The atomic bomb led to quick surrender and saved enough of Japan and her people to form a base for the future. Modern Japan owes its existence to the atomic bomb.