Stimson noted that Japan “has no allies,” its “navy is nearly destroyed,” she is vulnerable to an economic blockade depriving her “of sufficient food and supplies for her population,” she is “terribly vulnerable to our concentrated air attack upon her crowded cities, industrial, and food resources,” she “has against her not only the Anglo-American forces but the rising forces of China and the ominous threat of Russia,” and the United States has “inexhaustible and untouched industrial resources to bring to bear against her diminishing potential.” That the Japanese were on the verge of defeat was made clear to the president in a top-secret memorandum from Secretary of War Henry Stimson on July 2, 1945. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.” According to Air Force historian Daniel Haulman, even Curtis LeMay believed “the new weapons were unnecessary, because his bombers were already destroying the Japanese cities.”Īdmiral Leahy, Truman’s chief military advisor, wrote in his memoirs: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. military commanders believed that it was unnecessary to use atomic bombs against Japan from a military-strategic vantage point, including Admirals Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, William Halsey, and William Leahy, and Generals Henry Arnold and Douglas MacArthur. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’” Eisenhower reiterated the point years later in a Newsweek interview in 1963, saying that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” General Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, recalled a visit from Secretary of War Henry Stimson in late July 1945: “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to induce Japanese leaders to surrender. Most Americans then and now believe that it was necessary for the U.S. On September 2, 1945, V-J Day, Japanese officials aboard the USS Missouri formally surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, September, 1945 He made clothing out of plant fibers, and learned to live off the land.Gen. He told authorities he knew since 1952 that the war ended and knew the year at the time of his capture. American patrols shot some of them while his last two comrades died, likely of starvation, in 1970. Yokoi hid out with 10 others in the jungle. Most simply refused to believe the war was over and they had lost. By the time Japan surrendered in September 1945, about 130 remained, with 114 of them surrendering over the ensuing decades. troops killing nearly 5,000 Japanese holdouts. Even so, the fighting continued into September, with U.S. Americans recaptured Guam the summer of 1944 (July 21-August 10). A day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese stormed Guam and took it within three days.Ī tailor before the war, Yokoi served in the Japanese 29 th Infantry Division in Manchuria before joining the 38 th Regiment in Guam in February 1943. possession when the Spanish-American War ended in 1898. The background: Guam, a strategic island in the Pacific, became a U.S. Instead, they gave him food before handing him over to authorities. As they took him back to the nearest village, he asked them to kill him. Fearing his life was still in danger, Yokoi tried to grab one their rifles, but they overpowered him. On Janu– 49 years ago today – two hunters on Guam came across him and realized he was a Japanese holdout.
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