Decisive Darkness: What if Japan hadn't surrendered in 1945?

[generalurist]

You know, I wonder if the idea of demanding unconditional surrender is going to get discredited in TTL. After Nikko, the USA is not going to look good for deciding to throw more nukes instead of accepting a surrender that din't give them everything they wanted.

America might get likened to a problem child, who smashes the whole room in a tantrum before they even consider taking "no" for an answer.

 

[Holy Mackerel]

You know, I wonder if the idea of demanding unconditional surrender is going to get discredited in TTL. After Nikko, the USA is not going to look good for deciding to throw more nukes instead of accepting a surrender that din't give them everything they wanted.

America might get likened to a problem child, who smashes the whole room in a tantrum before they even consider taking "no" for an answer.

Well it's going to be hard to argue that the nukes were to force a surrender when the nukes themselves preclude any organized surrender from happening. TTL there is going to be a massive argument that the US should have stopped after the first few bombs didn't make Japan surrender. Some people would say that the Submarine attacks made further obliteration necessary, but that makes it more transparent that all this destruction is about 'bloodthirsty' revenge.

 

[generalurist]

Well it's going to be hard to argue that the nukes were to force a surrender when the nukes themselves preclude any organized surrender from happening.

I imagine that a TTL image macro is going to look something like this:

SCUMBAG AMERIKA

DEMANDS SURRENDER OF JAPAN

NUKES THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SURRENDER

or something like that. It's late, I can't make dank memes.

 

[Mrstrategy]

What was last chapter

 

[Athelstane]

You know, I wonder if the idea of demanding unconditional surrender is going to get discredited in TTL. After Nikko, the USA is not going to look good for deciding to throw more nukes instead of accepting a surrender that din't give them everything they wanted.

America might get likened to a problem child, who smashes the whole room in a tantrum before they even consider taking "no" for an answer.

After everything that has happened, it's hard to see any constituency for handing the surviving military regime responsibility over anything beyond a length of rope.

They may end up as reviled as the Nazis in TTL.

 

[Theoretical_TJ]

It's going to take an incredible amount of depraved, Pol Pot levels of oppression for North Japan to be anything other than a paradise to the Japanese.

I dread asking this question, but what has been happening with Japanese-Americans and the internment already going on?

 

[The Red]

What was last chapter

The last page.

 

[Grand Prince Paul II.]

I dread asking this question, but what has been happening with Japanese-Americans and the internment already going on?

Most remained in the camps for their own safety.

 

[The Red]

Most remained in the camps for their own safety.

Yeah, the veiled "security" to mask the bigotry has now become rather inverted, the internment camps are almost as much to do with keeping the Japanese people safe now. Not that many Japanese-Americans are particularly thankful for it.

 

[cpip]

Yeah, the veiled "security" to mask the bigotry has now become rather inverted, the internment camps are almost as much to do with keeping the Japanese people safe now. Not that many Japanese-Americans are particularly thankful for it.

I suppose we should be thankful by now that there haven't been some sort of nightmarish show trials back home, at the rate this is going.

 

[Lost Freeway]

Do you think this will alter how Japanese-American internment is seen in the present day?

 

[The Red]

This next update is going to have an obscene amount of lefty blather and countless big words but it might just be the one you all fall in love with.

Stay tuned for Tuesday!

 

[Kinny Riddle]

It is unclear to discern what exactly the junta’s response was to Ishido’s diplomatic failure given the atomic bomb that fell on Nikko on the 24th of May. There would be no more recorded orders sent out from anything resembling an Imperial Japanese government ever again,

Good bye and good riddance to bad rubbish at last......

Yokoyama had no intention of trying to lead Japan even if a coordinated national polity was still possible, yet he also lacked any appetite for surrender.

Oh, fuck off. What. Is. Your. Fucking. Problem?

Yokoyama obviously still hasn't taken the hint. He'll be like the obstinate OTL holdouts in SE Asia that continue to wage annoying but ineffective small-scale guerrilla resistance from the countryside, gradually dwindling in numbers over the decades (due to starvation and desertion) until they number in less than a dozen. By which time, Japan would be a different place, divided amongst the Allies to rule.

North Japan will declare itself a socialist monarchy, while the patches of areas under effective western Allied control will probably be consolidated under a new Republican government not unlike the Federal Republic of Germany with heavy emphasis on some sort of deradicalization (not unlike the denazification in Germany) that made the junta so fanatically authoritarian and unreasonable. But this new Republic will be miles behind that of Germany as its infrastructure and population will take decades to rebuild. So no Japanese economic miracle in the 1960s, at least not that early.

 

[Grand Prince Paul II.]

Oh, fuck off. What. Is. Your. Fucking. Problem?

What would Yokoyama gain from that?
The Americans would execute him after a surrender and preserve nothing of his state.

 

[ghappy1000]

Now, when is Japan going to surrender? By 30 June 1946?

 

[generalurist]

What would Yokoyama gain from that?
The Americans would execute him after a surrender and preserve nothing of his state.

That's really the big thing here. ALL the high-ranking officers have nothing to gain from unconditional surrender (vs. just fighting to the death), so the officers see no reason to not just be HONORABLE and fight to the last man.

 

[Sir Chaos]

Now, when is Japan going to surrender? By 30 June 1946?

There is no Japan any more that could surrender.

 

[The Red]

Now, when is Japan going to surrender? By 30 June 1946?

That's a rather specific date?

 

[Insider]

Now, when is Japan going to surrender? By 30 June 1946?

Nope. That was my point. After introduction of policy of nuking those trying to surrender, Japan would only surrender when Soviets and Wallies agree who is the rightfull representative, and to whom he supposed to surrender, and then put a pen and paper into the sweaty hands of this reluctant fellow... good luck for that happening before 1990

 

[Beedok]

Nope. That was my point. After introduction of policy of nuking those trying to surrender, Japan would only surrender when Soviets and Wallies agree who is the rightfull representative, and to whom he supposed to surrender, and then put a pen and paper into the sweaty hands of this reluctant fellow... good luck for that happening before 1990

Well, the Soviets haven't nuked anyone trying to surrender. Heck, they've kept alive people who attacked them. If I was in a position of power I'd offer surrender to Stalin, survival odds look a bit better.