And some people prefer simplistic myths to complicated facts. When it comes to history, the simple answer is often not the correct or complete answer. Take, for example, the simple story that FDR and the War Department had no idea the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor. The Hoover-Ladd memos alone destroy this myth, as do the accounts of Dutch Admiral Ranneft and Colonel Ketchum, the discovery of the transcript of the Briggs interview, the discovery of the OP-20-G file on message 7001 (proving that the Winds execute message was intercepted on December 4, just as Captain Safford reported), etc., etc., etc.
Or, take the simple explanation that nuking Japan caused Japan to surrender. It's a simple, feel-good story, but it's fiction. Japanese records show that the atomic bomb had very little influence on the emperor, his advisers, and the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War (aka Supreme War Council) on their decision to surrender. In fact, the Supreme War Council did not even think that confirmation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was sufficient reason to convene the council. But, when news of the Soviet invasion reached Tokyo, the Supreme War Council met almost immediately.
Historian Gregg Herken, a professor emeritus of U.S. diplomatic history at the University of California:
The notion that the atomic bombs caused the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, has been, for many Americans and virtually all U.S. history textbooks, the default understanding of how and why the war ended. But minutes of the meetings of the Japanese government reveal a more complex story. The latest and best scholarship on the surrender, based on Japanese records, concludes that the Soviet Union’s unexpected entry into the war against Japan on Aug. 8 was probably an even greater shock to Tokyo than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima two days earlier. Until then, the Japanese had been hoping that the Russians — who had previously signed a nonaggression pact with Japan — might be intermediaries in negotiating an end to the war. As historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa writes in his book Racing the Enemy, “Indeed, the Soviet attack, not the Hiroshima bomb, convinced political leaders to end the war.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e5-b673-1df005a0fb28_story.html?noredirect=on)
To follow up on Herken's use of Tsuyoshi Hasegawe's
Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, it is one of the most highly acclaimed books on Japan's surrender ever written, and Hasegawe spends dozens of pages documenting the fact that it was the Soviet invasion, not the nukes, that (1) enabled the moderates to convene a meeting with the emperor and the Supreme War council where the emperor could order a surrender and (2) persuaded the hardliners to accept the emperor's order to surrender.
Indeed, at the Big Six meeting on August 9 when Hirohito broke the deadlock and ordered a surrender, he said nothing about Hiroshima or the atomic bomb in his remarks to the meeting--not one word (Noriko Kawamura,
Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War, Kindle Edition, locs. 3287-3314; see also Robert Butow,
Japan's Decision to Surrender, p. 175).
The moderates needed no convincing. They had already decided many weeks earlier that Japan needed to surrender, which is why Emperor Hirohito himself ordered that the Soviets be approached about negotiating a surrender with the Americans weeks before Hiroshima--and we know that Truman knew all about this approach.
