Sunshine Textbook (3rd Grade) Program 4 - Is this offensive?

[rufustfirefly]

Im not suggesting we shouldnt judge the actions of participants in past wars, just that when we do so we take into account context and motive. You dont seem to do this when you judge U.S actions in dropping the A-bombs. Context: facing a seemingly indefatigible enemy willing to send its youth on kamikaze suicide bombings, itself bent on producing its own A bomb and responsible for the brutal treatment of nations it had conquered. Motive: end the war and its huge cost in lives and resources. You claim that this was expediency. Well i guess you are right, but if I was one of the American soldiers who had just survived the Okinawa campaign and was suiting up to invade Japan proper ,I would welcome this expediency that you, not facing such a future ,scorn.

[rufustfirefly]

Oh bTW, moral equivalency is NOT saying someone is better or worse, its saying their crimes are equally as bad, er hence the term `equivalent` ...

[glibberish]

After all, Japan was the aggressor nation and the Japanese citizens were given ample opportunity to evacuate and/or end the war before the bombs fell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/books ... wanted=all

[rufustfirefly]

You either deliberately ignored or misunderstood my point - the A-bombs dont need to have been effective to be morally justifiable from the standpoint of President Truman and co making the decision to drop them. All is needed is their sincerely believing that they would be effective in ending the war.
As to Roosevelts original stand agaisnt civilian Bombing. Yes he urged ALL nations at the sart of WW2 to refrain from bombing civilians. However the Nazis breaking of this deal by bombing Rotterdam and the urgings of Churchill after the blitz seems to have changed his mind. Perhaps he had to break some of his ideal rules of war when he realised that the other side aknowleded NO rules at all...

[glibberish]

As to Roosevelts original stand agaisnt civilian Bombing. Yes he urged ALL nations at the sart of WW2 to refrain from bombing civilians. However the Nazis breaking of this deal by bombing Rotterdam and the urgings of Churchill after the blitz seems to have changed his mind. Perhaps he had to break some of his ideal rules of war when he realised that the other side aknowleded NO rules at all...

In other words, "they started it"?

[EhimeDave]

... and yet production increases sharply from when the bombings begin, so what precisely does that tell you about the overall effectiveness of bombing raids? These statistics also don't address the size, quality, etc. By the end of the war the Japanese were producing lots of planes, but they were basically reconditioned old planes and metal was in such short supply that they had to drop the landing gear to reuse.

Large scale bombings began in late 1944. The bombings before that were token hit and runs when the military saw chances to strike.

About quality - I think the US casualty numbers for the Battle of Okinawa shows perfectly well that Japanese equipment produced late in the war was still in good use. Those "old planes" you mention killed more than 5,000 US sailors in the Battle of Okinawa alone.

You also have failed to address the fact that U.S. bombing patterns were determined on population density alone. The target wasn't military industry, the target was people, and any industrial damage was incidental. The general in charge of the bombings admitted this publically.

That isn't true. They concentrated on the largest cities because they knew that the majority of Japanese industry was concentrated in them.

From the book Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan
By Herman S. Wolk

The chapter is discussing the divide between Generals Hansell and LeMay. Hansell was a proponent of more precision bombing and LeMay was a proponent of incendiary bombardment. For reference, LeMay replaced Hansell in January of 1945.

The major problem for Hansell was his insistence on running high altitude daylight precision operations. Norstad, dedicated to an incendiary campaign, and Kuter of Arnold’s staff continued to remind Hansell of the need to conduct incendiary attacks against Japanese urban areas as recommended by Arnold’s Committee of Operations Analysts (COA). This committee, formed in December 1942 by Arnold, comprising military and civilian specialists, concentrated its efforts on target selection. Originally, it supported the European bomber offensive. In the spring of 1943, the COA began an intensive study of potential Japanese targets in support of the coming B-29 offensive. A report by the committee of September 4, 1944, convinced Arnold’s headquarters, which had pressured Hansell to conduct incendiary raids, that area incendiary attacks stood the best chance of knocking Japan out. War industry pock-marked Japanese cities. These decentralized industrial targets could not be destroyed by high-altidude precision bombing in any timely fashing. The precision concept was dead. The COA estimated the probable effect on Japanese war production of concentrated area incendiary bombing assumed to destroy seventy percent of housing in Tokyo, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya. These cities possessed a combined population of almost fifteen million, about twenty percent of Japan’s total population. They harbored more than one-third of the workers in Japanese manufacturing and almost one-half of all workers in war priority industries.

…..All twenty-five major German urban targets of the RAF in 1943 did not amount to as high a percentage of industry as these six Japanese cities. …

Except that again you neglect qualitative data. The Japanese army was massed in the south of Japan near Okinawa, as was all their equipment, stores, etc. Russia was, until that point, neutral, and their betrayal was unexpected. Strategically Russia's change in position was devestating since Japan was badly positioned to repel any serious attack from the north.

The Japanese Army in "Japan" was concentrated in the south in preparation for an American invasion. You are forgetting the Japanese army in China, the Japanese army in Korea, and the Japanese army in Manchuria.

And betrayal was not unexpected at all. I don't really feel like dragging out another book to prove you wrong here but you can check out Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert Bix for the info. Specifically chapter 13 where Bix documents in some detail the fact that Japan knew that Soviet neutrality cannot be trusted, that war was coming, and they were actively watching Soviet military buildups on the Manchurian border. The chapter is also good at laying out just how damn suicidal and insane Japanese leadership was at the end of the war and the factors that led to surrender. I highly recommend it.

I'm not making any assumptions about what you think, in fact I'm pretty certain that you think it was morally justifiable. However it was wrong. Rooseveldt himself said it was wrong before the U.S. became involved in the war. I have yet to see anyone actually address that point. Your government led this policy that bombing civilians was morally wrong. I'm not accusing you, your own President is accusing you. He set the parameters for moral behaviour in this context.

IMO, the US negated moral responsibility for the bombings by warning the Japanese of exactly what was going to happen - thereby transferring responsibility to those who chose instead to continue their war of domination.

By not doing this, the war would have been prolonged and ultimately more people (civilians and military) would have died. You are conveniently ignoring the fact that at the time of Japanese surrender, hundreds of millions of people were living under Japanese domination. The Japanese killed more than 17,000,000 Chinese civilians in a true campaign of terror. Chinese civilians were killed at a rate of more than 170,000 people per month. Therefore, I believe that not bombing Japanese cities would have been the true immoral choice.

[rufustfirefly]

`the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.`

from Hirohito`s capitulation address.
Yeah right, the atomic bombs had nothing to do with ending the war.
And also I was not saying that Axis first use of civilian bombing made it acceptable BY ANY MILITARY FORCE EVER AFTER ( Which you seem to conclude) but given the moral neccessity of winning WW2 (do you accept that neccessity?) it was aceptable within that context.

[EhimeDave]

Hirohito was such a delusional as*hole. Taking credit for saving world civilization in his surrender announcement and only admitting regret for letting down Japan's collaborationist "allies".

It's amazing how he managed to escape war crimes persecution.

[EhimeDave]

How then do you explain the dramatic drop in the statistics you quoted? Only 36% of Japan's industrial capacity was destroyed according to your assessment, but the drop between 1944 and 1945 is more than 36% in almost all cases. Japan was simply out of metal.

Are you taking into the account the fact that the 1945 figures only account for 7 months of production? For example - if you do the math, Japan was on schedule to produce about 590,000 rifles in 1945 - which happens to be exactly 33% fewer than produced in 1944.

Other factors you may not be considering is that it is easier to pinpoint target certain industries compared to others. For example, naval and aircraft production must be concentrated in certain areas like ports or near airfields which are easier to spot and destroy.

Let me also provide more specific figures for Japanese GDP (billions of US$ - 1990 prices)
1940 - 192
1941 - 196
1942 - 197
1943 - 194
1944 - 189
1945 - 144

Reading this the words housing and workers come up a lot... and not one mention of military installations. In short this confirms, in the general's own words, that he was targeting civilians. And the statistics are deliberately stated to mislead. 1/3rd of the country's workers in manufacturing, but no mention of what percentage of the total population this was, and of those only half were involved in wartime manufacturing. ... but that doesn't change that factory workers are NON-COMBATANTS and not soldiers. In other words, 100% civilian targets.

Thanks for proving my point, again.

How can you read that paragraph and come up with the idea that the priority target for US bombs were Japanese civilians rather than the Japanese war industry itself? Did you miss the part of the paragraph emphasizing the amount of industrial production going on in those cities? That factories were decentralized across the major cities and couldn't be knocked out by precision means? That Japanese industrial production was more concentrated in the largest 6 cities than the largest 25 German cities?

You said that LeMay simply picked out cities based on population in order to kill the most people possible. I just posted the facts that this wasn't the case, the the military did careful studies about what to bomb and how to bomb it and they decided to concentrate on the main cities, not because that's where most Japanese civilians could be killed, but because that's where the most Japanese war industry could be knocked out.

... so you agree that the Japanese army was totally unable to resist the soviet invasion. Well my point is proven then, thanks.

Of course they couldn't successfully resist the invasion. The Japanese military couldn't resist the Americans at the Battle of Manila but decided to fight on anyway to the last man while successfully managing to murder 100,000 Filipinos at the same time. But that isn't the point. The point is that the invasion alone wouldn't have changed the Japanese leadership's propensity to surrender, at least not until after all of Manchuria, China, and Korea was "liberated" by the Soviet Union - at the cost of millions of lives. This is of course all hypothetical and assuming that the US chose not to bomb Japanese cities.

... so Al-queda isn't responsible for 9/11 because there was a warning? Oh, come on. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

I don't know if I want to respond to this or not. You are pulling the ridiculous moral equivalency card again.

But just want to remind you that every single Japanese civilian received a warning from the US military that their city was going to be targeted in order to destroy war production...either directly from a leaflet they picked up or through word of mouth from someone who had picked one up.

... and this is just a straw man. Bombing Tokyo didn't save civilians in China.

The U.S. knowingly targetted civilians, in contravention of their own policy, for no good reason. It didn't end the war.

The US targeted cities because they judged the policy as the best way to destroy Japanese industrial production in order to reduce Japan's ability to wage war. The policy worked and it did save civilian lives in China.

[Staticnz]

I think in most cases saying 'it's too complicated' is a cop out, but not in a case like this, which I think has so much moral ambiguity that every person is going to filter it through their own biases, and their own historical point of view...

Should they have dropped the bomb? On the one hand a chance to end the war (if it was that), but by killing civilians (which is supposed to be what is wrong). And I think that warning is a rather paltry thing.

Like if I warned you, hey in ten seconds I'm going to punch you in the face, so you should move. Well maybe you won't move because you wouldn't like to be punched in the face, and therefore feel defiant, or don't believe me. It's likely many civilians would read such a warning from America as either some kind of unfair thing, so they stayed, or merely propaganda, so they stayed home. I still don't believe that means they should have died.

However, as others had said, for the sake of the war they were bombing cities every day. And you don't want to get into eye for an eye because you could use that against the Japanese to no end, and there's no doubt they had their own perceived grievances, no matter how they were perceived by the allies.

So this is a rare argument where hindsight is not 20/20 for me, but a big messy blob of should haves, could haves...was right to do...shouldn't have...etc etc.

[AichiPA_Kevin]

Should they have dropped the bomb? On the one hand a chance to end the war (if it was that), but by killing civilians (which is supposed to be what is wrong). And I think that warning is a rather paltry thing.

...

So this is a rare argument where hindsight is not 20/20 for me, but a big messy blob of should haves, could haves...was right to do...shouldn't have...etc etc.

I think that's well said. Forgive me if this sounds pat, but maybe the take-away is simply that we need to find solutions to our problems before they turn into war.*

*I know this is an ideal, easier said than done, etc., etc. That doesn't make it less true.

When we go to war, terrible things are done. People, often including civilians, are killed. Say for the sake of argument that the dropping of the atomic bombs had a direct effect on ending World War II. Would that make so many deaths, in and of themselves, a Good Thing? You can say the war needed to end (it did), and you can say the bombs helped do it (maybe they did), but I feel there will still be some taint, because the US, for all the good it may (or may not) have achieved, still killed tens of thousands of people.

Recognizing this, that history is messy and that killing is just Not Good, may be the first step in approaching history humbly and, ultimately, in seeking better solutions than war.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

There are one or two major problems with the "Hiroshima and Nagasaki stopped the war and so they were justified" claims being put forth here. I'll leave addressing the the 'Well, they were warned so it was OK' rubbish being spouted here, since as has already been noted such an approach is akin to blaming someone who gets knifed while being mugged for not just handing over their wallet like they were told, except that in this case it's like someone getting knifed in a mugging by workers from a rival company because their boss wouldn't hand over their wallet.

You still assume we think that the bombing of Japanese cities was wrong or that the US government is morally responsible for it. After all, Japan was the aggressor nation and the Japanese citizens were given ample opportunity to evacuate and/or end the war before the bombs fell.

Firstly, such an approach is basically endorsing collective punishment of the people of Japan - at the time - for the actions of their military leadership. Culpability-wise it gets grey enough just according responsibility for the indirect consequences of peoples' own individual actions, let alone holding civilian populations accountable for the choices of their army's commanding officers. All of this 'Japan was the aggressor nation so it was OK' crap only works if you make Japan out to be one homogenous whole, and it's not. Some six-year-old schoolkid in Hiroshima is a bit different from some soldier in the field of war, let alone the military leadership who actually issues the orders. If you're going to hold the whole of Japan responsible for the choices of their war leadership then by that same reasoning you yourself have to accept responsibility for everything bad that your country has ever done. Since the USA - like my own native country Australia - was inhabited prior to colonisation/being 'settled' and said colonisation/settled-ness came at the expense of wiping out the native populations, I'm not sure any of us want to go down that road. Anyone who does, well: you're a genocidal maniac and that kind of shoots down your moral standing. StaticNZ gets a pass on that one, but only because the pakeha couldn't actually beat the Maori and so opted for a Treaty instead.
Coincidentally, collective punishment of civilian populations is a war crime.
So, you know: Still Not OK.

Secondly, and more importantly, it's probably not true. As the article I linked to mentioned, neither mass civilian casualties nor mass destruction of Japanese cities had stopped the war effort previously, and neither did Hiroshima. The simple fact is that horrific "collateral damage" historically hasn't been much of a deterrent to stopping any given country's armed conflicts, hence why, say, Syria is still in the mess it's in. It's the accepted historical version, sure, but in all likelihood that's really got more to do with historical/political expediency - it allows Japan (sorry for the collectivisation again, it's kind of unavoidable from a concise language standpoint) to gloss over things like Nanking/Comfort Women/being 'the aggressor'/etc and portray themselves as the Poor Nuked Victim, and the US to portray nuking population centers as a Necessary Evil, and thus arguably Excusable.
Sure, It Was Horrible, But We Won And They Would Have Kept On Fighting To The Last Man, Woman, And Child, So In A Way We Actually Saved Countless Lives. We're Still the Good Guys, Guys.
When you think about it, such an outlook is actually pretty freaking ridiculous - quite besides the need to endorse collective punishment, for such a theory to work the Japanese WW2 military leadership would basically have to have had the mindset and tactical proficiency of a particularly sociopathic and stupid cartoon supervillain. I mean, seriously, which seems more likely: that a group of professional, highly ranking military officers who had been fighting a war for years were all like...

Ah so, Ai'ru getto yuu Honorable Amerika-man San, iban ifu itto desutoroi asu oru!!!
*Hiroshima gets nuked*
Oh no, Hiroshima! Amerika-Man habu Supaabomu?!
Hm, we no care! Mebi onri habu one supaabomu, so so!
*Nagasaki gets nuked*
"Oh no, ze habu two supaabomu! OK, we gibu appu now Honorable Amerika-Man San. Yuu win, beri sori."

...or that they...

...were in fact quite savvy, well aware of their difficult position, and holding out for strategic reasons. Their concern was not so much whether to end the conflict, but how to end it while holding onto territory, avoiding war crimes trials, and preserving the imperial system. The Japanese could still inflict heavy casualties on any invader, and they hoped to convince the Soviet Union, still neutral in the Asian theater, to mediate a settlement with the Americans.

'Cos for the whole 'Japan was going to keep fighting to the bitter end, until we bravely dropped two nukes on their cities' theory to work, that's the kind of stupid 'I'll get you Captain America!' mindset you'd have to ascribe to them (i.e. the career soldiers in charge of the war effort), and when you stop and think about it that's just stupid. I'll be the first to admit that this country has more than it's fair share of crazies and that there's something of a cultural trend towards obsession (to put it nicely), but running headlong towards total national/cultural/racial annihilation for what amounts to bloodyminded spite is a couple of hundred steps too far...especially when there's the much more plausible alternative explanation of 'maybe if we hold out a little and surrender to these guys who we haven't been at war with for the past few years we'll get a more lenient punishment'.

@William - while I reckon you're pretty much spot-on for most of this topic, I do have to disagree with you on this one point:

...The U.S. gained absolutely nothing strategically from the bombings...

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki served a few strategic/PR purposes for the US (again with the collectivisation, and again sorry for the linguistic necessity). Where you're reading it wrong is in placing Japan as the target audience for what was at the time the world's biggest bang . Firstly, they resulted in the extremely-expensive-to-develop new nuclear weapons actually being used, whereas had they not been dropped all those resources and time (roughly 4 years and $26 billion adjusted for time) would have been arguably wasted. Using them against the last major World War 2 holdout 'enemy nation' gave them a target that wouldn't be strenuously objected to at the time, as opposed to having to find a new post-WW2 target or relying on the much less intimidating field tests to show the world - especially any other emerging would-be superpowers, for example the Soviet Union - how powerful their new superweapon was. As far as 'stopping the War' goes, yeah - it was unnecessary mass-murdering overkill; but as far as telling whoever else looked like coming out of the war as a future big player 'don't mess with the US' it was pretty damn effective, not to mention the influence on the arms race of the Cold War. It also gave the military-industrial complex a nice lucrative gig for the next few decades, and those guys are powerful and have deep pockets. And then of course there's the aforementioned "We Totally Stopped The War, Not Those Commie B*****ds" PR boost.
Just like the heads of the Japanese military weren't stupid cartoon caricatures, neither were the US powers-that-be. After VE day (probably much earlier) they had to have turned at least half an eye towards how the post-WW2 world would look, and to have started making plans to make sure they were on top accordingly. They'd be fools if they didn't.
Forgive the assumption if I'm wrong about your thoughts on this btw, it's the way the above comment comes across.

[rufustfirefly]

William MacDonald wrote: `The a-bomb's use was not justifiable in any way. `

Dude, you don`t win arguments by assertions without evidence, So here you are:

`The atomic bomb allowed Japan to surrender. It convinced the Emperor to intervene and break the deadlock in favor of accepting the Potsdam Declaration. Why did the Emperor finally intervene? When he originally urged his officials to accept the terms and surrender for Japan's better good he gave three reasons: "a collapse of domestic morale” and two military concerns: “inadequate preparation to resist the invasion and the vast destructiveness of the atomic bomb and the air attacks” (Frank, 345).
taken from:
Truman's Motivations: Using the Atomic Bomb in the Second World War
by John W. Cooper http://www.johnwcooper.com/papers/atomicbombtruman.htm

And mr two cents...you summarised the opposing argument thusly:
`Sure, It Was Horrible, But We Won And They Would Have Kept On Fighting To The Last Man, Woman, And Child, So In A Way We Actually Saved Countless Lives. We're Still the Good Guys, Guys.
When you think about it, such an outlook is actually pretty freaking ridiculous `

Well this sumarisation is freaking ridiculous.The argument is this:the U.S decision to drop the A-bombs on Japan is not shameful as it was thought at the time it was necessary to stop the war and save lives ( given Japans dogged resistance at Okinawa and their commitment to fighting on using any means neccessary -kamikaze pilots etc) and there is evidence to suggest that this was so.
Look ,I totally agree that the bombing of japan was cruel and most of the people killed were innocents, all im saying is that it was a cruel necessity and pales before the totally unneccesasary japanese slaughter of innocents in Nanking and Manilla.Peaceniks never get this simple fact: sometimes war IS the answer , violence CAN solve problems. Just ask the Jews in concentration camps liberated by the Allies at the end of WW2 or bosnians saved by U.S bombing of Serbian forces in the Balkans.

[Anigi]

I personally don't get involved if I can't fully back up my opinions and in a discussion such as this my arguments would be mostly emotional which usually doesn't translate well in a debate.

I did have some comments for the OP but someone else already said what I was going to say I do not want to clog the forums with repeat answers.

You want my opinion? I don't agree with attacking civilians in war. I admit there are a lot of grey areas and while I may understand the reasoning, I do not agree with attacking civilians.

and I guess while I am here I would like to point out that when using a resource, be it a book, article, document, ect, consider the source. Every written thing has it own history and is almost always written with an agenda. There was one item in particular that was being thrown around that just made me shake my head, thankfully someone (a few I think) called it out.

[AVN]

There are one or two major problems with the "Hiroshima and Nagasaki stopped the war and so they were justified" claims being put forth here. I'll leave addressing the the 'Well, they were warned so it was OK' rubbish being spouted here, since as has already been noted such an approach is akin to blaming someone who gets knifed while being mugged for not just handing over their wallet like they were told, except that in this case it's like someone getting knifed in a mugging by workers from a rival company because their boss wouldn't hand over their wallet.

This is a very good way of explaining it.

Firstly, such an approach is basically endorsing collective punishment of the people of Japan - at the time - for the actions of their military leadership. Culpability-wise it gets grey enough just according responsibility for the indirect consequences of peoples' own individual actions, let alone holding civilian populations accountable for the choices of their army's commanding officers. All of this 'Japan was the aggressor nation so it was OK' crap only works if you make Japan out to be one homogenous whole, and it's not. Some six-year-old schoolkid in Hiroshima is a bit different from some soldier in the field of war, let alone the military leadership who actually issues the orders. If you're going to hold the whole of Japan responsible for the choices of their war leadership then by that same reasoning you yourself have to accept responsibility for everything bad that your country has ever done. Since the USA - like my own native country Australia - was inhabited prior to colonisation/being 'settled' and said colonisation/settled-ness came at the expense of wiping out the native populations, I'm not sure any of us want to go down that road. Anyone who does, well: you're a genocidal maniac and that kind of shoots down your moral standing. StaticNZ gets a pass on that one, but only because the pakeha couldn't actually beat the Maori and so opted for a Treaty instead.
Coincidentally, collective punishment of civilian populations is a war crime.
So, you know: Still Not OK.

Yes, this reminds me of how I felt after reading 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (a sad but important book). The characters in that book are just the ground soldiers and not the leaders or even the heroes. There is one scene that stands out in my memory. Christmas Eve, the soldiers call a momentary truce in honour of Christmas and end up sitting with the 'enemy' around the fire. That's when the main character realises that the men he's fighting, the 'bad guys' are men just like him who don't want to be there and just want to go home. After Christmas they have to go back to killing each other but first they decide it would be much better to put the leaders of a country in a ring and let them fight seeing as often it's the leader's idea and the soldiers aren't even sure why they're fighting.
I think it's important to remember that when we use the term 'The Japanese' and 'The Americans' when talking about war we mean the leaders of the country and not every single living being. I'm sure people wouldn't like it if we talked about how 'Americans decided to attack Vietnam...' when there were many who were against it. There were those against every war. Some were just more vocal (or allowed to be more vocal) than others.

"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.
The Japanese were almost defeated and ready to surrender...in being the
first to use it, we...adopted an ethical standard common to the
barbarians of the Dark Ages."
---Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy,
Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II

Sorry I was silent William but I have spent so much time discussing this with other people and I realised I wasn't going to change my mind and they weren't going to change theirs...

This is what has always stuck out in my mind the most and I will leave it with this.

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive ... 00120.html

8 May 1945 - Japan tried to surrender through the Soviet Union.

June 1945 - Both the US Army and Navy recommended to Truman that he
clarify the US demands in regard to the Emperor. It was recognized that
he was absolutely essential so he could order his men to lay down their
arms. Without him, there would have been anarchy in Japan.

11 July 1945 - Japan offered to surrender unconditionally, with one
exception - they wished to retain their monarchy. They didn't insist on
retaining Emperor Hirohito. They were willing to replace him with his
small son, for example. The US wouldn't even talk to them - the bomb
was dropped on them without the US ever responding to any of their
peace feelers. Since we let them keep their monarchy (they never
unconditionally surrendered - the US offered assurrances to the Emperor

If the US really didn't want to use the bombs why didn't they accept this offer? They just wanted to keep the emperor, which they were allowed to do anyway.