The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

"an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war"
DO not forget, that the US issued an ultimatum to Japan on 26 November 1941 which demanded the complete withdrawal of all Japanese forces from French Indochina and China. So once again, there was an ultimatum made, it was just not by Japan. And the attack was basically their response.
The Hull note did not state that war was declared if it was rejected.
 
The Hull note did not state that war was declared if it was rejected.

They were waffeling, as they were still preparing their attack which was already in the opening phases of being carried out.

Remember, they had diplomats in the US who claimed to be actively seeking to resolve the issue peacefully. However, not unlike their own Ambassador later to the USSR, they never had any intention of following through with anything short of getting what they wanted. And it worked, the US was lulled into believing that war could be avoided, and even the Ambassador was shocked once they translated the "14 Part Message", and learned that even he had been duped by his own superiors.

Japan had ended all plans on reconciliation by early 1941, and nothing was going to stop them going to war. They had already captured most of the Chinese territory they wanted, and by the end of 1940 they were looking at the land held by the UK and the Dutch East Indies. They really did think the US was a "sideshow", that they could pluck the Philippines, and negotiate some kind of peace after that. Something they never understood was never possible. The Allied Powers learned after WWI that you have to end a major war not with an armistice, but an outright surrender.
 
"Walter Trohan, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune with impeccable credentials for integrity and accuracy, reported that two days before President Roosevelt left for the Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in early February 1945, he was shown a forty-page memorandum drafted by General MacArthur outlining a Japanese offer for surrender almost identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, President Truman. The single difference was the Japanese insistence on retention of the emperor, which was not acceptable to the American strategists at the time, though it was ultimately allowed in the final peace terms. Trohan relates that he was given a copy of this communication by Admiral Leahy who swore him to secrecy with the pledge not to release the story until the war was over. Trohan honored his pledge and reported his story in the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald on August 19, 1945. According to historian Anthony Kubek, Roosevelt, in the presence of witnesses, read the memorandum and dismissed it with a curt "MacArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician."

^^^^
 
Starving women, children and old people? Have some common sense.
I’m the one (of the two of us) with common sense in this matter.

The upper range of deaths caused by the two atomic bombings is about 226,000 people. Had the United States tried to invade the Japanese Empire main island, and the other islands, the death toll was projected as being vastly higher for bothebJapanese people AND for American GI’s alone.

To the extent that those projections were believed to be accurate, then as disgusting as the use of atomic weapons was, their use probably saved lives.
 

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