U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes rejected the Japanese acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration as it contained the proviso that the Imperial Household would not be disturbed.
The war, therefore, was still on.
Having said that, the US was now engaging in semantics, with there now being room for the preservation of the Imperial throne, if the Japanese people wished it. This took a step towards a democratic resolution the question, very much in the spirt of Franklin Roosevelt, even if the administration knew right form the onset that the Japanese people, who contrary to the widespread mythin did not regard the Emperor as a god, would wish to keep a monarchical sovereign.
The latter was also now clearly influencing the US view.
And the Soviets were advancing.
The Red Army commenced the invasion of South Sakhalin, a direct assault on territory long contested between Japan, China, and Russia. The southern half of the large island had been held by Japan since the Russo Japanese War. This is still a matter of contention between Japan and Russia, showing how much certain old claims survive, in this case, through two successive Russian regimes and on into a third, and through two Japanese regimes.
Of note, the wikipedia entry on this regards the conflict between the Soviet Union and Japan as a "minor" part of the World War Two. The Japanese didn't regard it that way. The entry of the USSR into the war was ripping into their imperial holdings at lightning speed. The Soviet entry into the war mattered a lot more than the US has traditionally been willing to admit. With the Soviets entering the war, Japan had lost Manchuria and any hope it had of hanging on to anything on the Asian mainland were gone. Moreover, not only was a looming American invasion of the Japanese home islands now inevitable, the specter of a Russian invasion of part o fit was as well. There can be, frankly, little doubt that Japan had to be worried that the USSR would take Honshu.1
This, then, creates an interesting topic of "revisionism". The Soviet declaration of war on Japan mattered a lot more than Americans are willing to credit it with, while the Red Army's effort in Europe was helped much more, indeed on a level of magnitude hardly appreciated, by the West, than they're willing to admit to. The Red Army was, at the end of the day, an armed mob, which would have never achieved what it did, and may have well lost the war, with out the US and UK's support. And the Western Allied effort in Europe was much more significant winning the war than the USSR could have ever conceded, even if it knew it.
Indeed, at the end of day, it was the UK and British Dominions that won the war.
Mopping up operations on Mindanao were completed.
On the Philippines, General MacArthur stated that the atomic bomb was unnecessary since the Japanese would have surrendered anyway.
He was correct, and also thereby added his voice to the growing number of military figures, now forgotten in their views, that criticized the U.S. war crime.
The Kraków pogrom, the first anti Jewish pogrom in post war Poland, took place. 56-year-old Auschwitz survivor Róża Berger, shot while standing behind closed doors. The event was based on the absurd rumors of blood libel but was heavily influenced by the return of Jewish survivors of World War Two to the city. The participation in locals in the Holocaust, even when they were under heavy repression themselves, is something Eastern Europeans have never been willing to really admit or deal with.2
"3 elephants are being used by the 30th Div., 1st Army, on their march south thru the village of Pa-Tu on the road to Nanning. 11 August, 1945. The elephants are used for emergency work such as pulling out bogged down trucks and other heavy labor which can not be done by mechanical power or other livestock. Photographer: T/3 Raczkowski."
"One of the elephants that are being used by the 30th Div, 1st Army on their march south thru the village of Pa-Tu on the road to Nanning. The elephants are used for emergency work such as pulling out bogged down trucks and other heavy labor which can not be done by mechanical power or other livestock. 11 August, 1945. Photographer: T/3 Raczkowski."
Footnotes:
1. While not exactly on point, but related, I was accused of revisionism elsewhere the other day for suggesting that the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary. Well, revisionist or not, it was.
I'm open to the same charge here, I'm sure. The Soviet declaration of war is typically treated as opportunistic, even though the US very much encouraged it. Missed in this, the Japanese decision to take the "southern route" and to attack the US, and UK, in 1941 was a calculated decision to use the Japanese Navy rather than Army, which the considered "northern route", an attack on the Soviet Union, would have required. The Japanese Army had already tasted battle with the Red Army in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and were well aware that they were not up to fighting the Red Army. Believing they had no alternative between the two, they took on the US and UK, which they thought a better bet.
Figuring into this, the Japanese government was very anti Communist and there was likely some belief that no matter how horrific, from their prospective, an American occupation would be, it wouldn't be as bad as a Soviet one. On that, they were correct, and post war history demonstrates that the Japanese in fact very rapidly accommodated themselves to occupation, even to the extent of cooperating with the US during the Korean War.
All of which is really uncomfortable with the majority American view of "we had to nuke them".
2. All of this raises an entire host of uncomfortable issues concerning Eastern Europe. I'm not going to try to go into them all. You'd be better off reading Blood Lands.
What I will note, however, is that violent antisemitism had been a feature of Eastern European culture for a very long time. Eastern Europe's Jewish population had been the target of violence nearly everywhere for eons. This really only changed, in terms of violence, after World War Two, although anti semitic prejudice runs through the entire region and into Western Europe to the present.
The Polish example is an interesting one in that no nation suffered more in World War Two than the Poles. The Germans were murderous towards the Poles since day one, and a huge percentage of the Polish population died during the war. The Catholic Church in Poland was massively attacked, with simply being a Polish priest meaning that such a person had a high likelihood of being murdered. None the less, Poles participated in the German barbarities directed at the Jews, as did Ukrainians, the later of which also directed murderous prejudice at the Poles.
Last edition:
