To think Obama SHOULD apologise to the people of Japan?

[HappenstanceMarmite]

For his country decimating Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Yes, he wasn't personally responsible. But I believe a heartfelt apology - and the taking of ownership for his country's atrocity - would mean a lot to the victims' families ...and all of Japan actually.

[Bolograph]

Oppenheimer spoke of the calculations of whether Fat Man would implode; it was considered more of a risk than Little Boy.

Which was why the trinity test was of the implosion assembly weapon. A lot of casual accounts of it neglect that, and assume the untested weapon was the Nagasaki weapon. No, the untested weapon was the Hiroshima weapon, because its physics were obvious and its design very certain. Fat Man included a load of new and untried technologies, hence the testing the previous month.

[mathanxiety]

*'The Army' = Groves and those who ran the Manhattan Project.

[mathanxiety]

Originally the Nagasaki bomb was intended for Kokura. Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki were alternates for Hiroshima in case of adverse conditions at Hiroshima. Hiroshima only joined the list when Kyoto was scratched.

You are correct that the bombs were different - uranium and plutonium. Oppenheimer spoke of the calculations of whether Fat Man would implode; it was considered more of a risk than Little Boy.

Despite the presence of a Mitsubishi plant and a torpedo plant at Nagasaki, the AF was ordered not to bomb Nagasaki once the final decision had been made to drop the bombs (the same order went out regarding the other listed cities). One possible reason for this is to be able to assess damage purely from the bombs themselves. The other cities on the list were notable for having escaped routine bombing to that point.

It is highly likely that at least two bombs were always contemplated. Since the two bombs were different, the possibility of a live test has to be suspected. The possibility of demonstrating military capability to the USSR also has to be seen as a factor. The hope for surrender was the foremost reason to justify them to Truman but he was also impressed by the need to demonstrate military power to the USSR.

It is highly unlikely that the second bomb would have been dropped if Japan had surrendered. Truman ordered a hiatus in the bombing on 10 August. But with no surrender forthcoming, the second bomb was dropped. There are suggestions that the Army and Truman were not marching in lockstep on the question of the second bomb and possible subsequent bombs. There was a serious objection among some scientists involved, news of which was kept from Truman.

Initially (7 August) the Japanese Atomic Bomb Countermeasure Committee, which was composed of representatives from the War, Navy, and Home ministries and Technical Board representatives did not believe that the Hiroshima bomb was an atomic bomb. They found it unlikely that such a bomb or its components could have been transported across the Pacific and assembled on an island outpost.

On the question of apologies, more damage was done by routine bombing of Japanese cities, 67 of which lay in ruins at the point at which the bombs were dropped, with starvation stalking the country as a result, and homelessness rampant.

[sashh]

Then it had to be used twice until they surrendered

Nope, two different types of bombs, the cynic in me says they wanted to study the effects afterwards.

If you have any idea of how the Japanese treated its enemies and prisoners of war, I don't think you'd be quite so keen for the Americans to apologise.

Errr... so one side commits atrocities so that makes it OK for the other to do the same?

In Nagasaki about 150 of the people who died were soldiers, the rest of the 40-80 000 included POWs and forced labourers from Korea, although in much smaller numbers than the Japanese civilians.

[mathanxiety]

*That may be a paraphrasing of Lester Brooks.

[mathanxiety]

I think in the final months many were just hoping to get a better deal than unconditional surrender. They would have liked to hang onto a lot of the conquered territory, but that wasn't something they would keep on fighting for. Their main concern was maintaining the Emperor. To that end, they tried very hard to get Stalin onside. Once it was clear that this would not happen - late on 8 August, with troops pouring across the border of Manchukuo on 9 August, about an hour after the declaration of war - the decision came closer, but the comprehensive routing of the Kwangtung Army in the days immediately after the invasion began stunned the Emperor and emboldened those who did not value fighting to the last man.

A brief summing up of the first week of the Manchukuo campaign:
"'During the seven days of fighting the Soviets advanced 210 kilometers and prevented the Japanese from reinforcing the Kwangtung Army defenses in the south. The support of the Amur River Flotilla was a key element to this success. The Amur River Flotilla transported 91,000 soldiers, 150 tanks, 413 artillery pieces, 3,000 horses and 28,000 tons of supplies to the troops in combat.[46]

Throughout the campaign, especially in the Trans-Baikal Front and 1st Far East Front zones of attack, the Soviets continued to use tank-heavy forward detachments to quickly penetrate through and bypass Japanese defensive positions. Encircled and cut off from any possible reinforcements, follow-on forces methodically overwhelmed the defenders with massive air and artillery support in close coordination with the Soviet infantry. As a result of the Soviets' meticulous planning and bold offensive action, they took 594,000 Japanese prisoners including 143 generals, with 20,000 wounded. The Kwangtung Army suffered over 80,000 men and officers killed in combat which lasted less than two weeks. In contrast, the well- prepared Soviet Army had 8,219 killed and 22,264 wounded.[47]"

The author of that article quotes Lester Brooks, Behind Japan’s Surrender on the role of the Soviet campaign in Manchukuo as a factor in the decision making:
'Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki asked General Sumihisa Ikeda of the Cabinet Planning Bureau, and who had recently arrived from the Kwangtung Army, if that Army was capable of repulsing the Soviet attack? Ikeda replied “the Kwangtung Army was hopeless, within two weeks, Changchu, the major city in central Manchuria, will be occupied by the Soviets.” Suzuki, then asked if the Kwangtung Army was really that weak; when Ikeda replied it was, Suzuki realized the game was up.'

To illustrate the speed of the advance and the advantage of surprise, the Soviets were forced to halt on 12-13 August on the Trans-Baikal front only because their rapid advance (over mountainous terrain the Japanese considered impregnable) had led to supply line problems, and once they quickly sorted themselves out they resumed their virtually unopposed advance on the 13th. Tactics arising from the concept of bushido (fighting to the death, if necessary by suicide attacks) were no match for a vastly superior force in terms of men and weapons and meticulous planning.

The US needed the Emperor just as much as the Japanese wanted him. The US went to great lengths to ensure no accusation of war crimes would ever taint him. The Japanese War Crimes trials were to a large extent a farce, with Tojo taking one for the team, as it were.

[simonettavespucci]

Fascinating post mathanxiety.

Can I clarify: what you are saying is that the inner command in Japan was largely inclined to peace anyway, just hesitating to say it because of the risks of a coup and the chance to negotiate a better position before surrendering - i.e. that the whole 'they would have fought to the last man' idea is wrong - and that it was the Soviet entry to the war, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that made surrender inevitable?

And if that's the case (genuine question, as you clearly know way more about this than I do), how do you account for the fact that surrender comes immediately after H & N - co-incidence?

[Bolograph]

Fascinating reference, thank you very much.

the Henry Ford system the Russians had adopted from Ford himself

One of the ironies of the post-war Japanese economy is that a lot of the manufacturing quality techniques brought by Deming et al originate either in the Ford Willow Run factory making B24s, or in Chrysler's "Big Room" making Bofors 40mm cannon. It was the inability to mass produce planes and guns (and tanks, and cargo ships, and even aircraft carriers) which doomed the Axis, but after the war the lesson was not lost.

[mathanxiety]

It was all a case of 'shouldn't have been in in the first place' really.

They were simply not prepared for a long war in a large theatre, and their production and payment system and manufacturing culture were all geared towards high quality instead of the Henry Ford system the Russians had adopted from Ford himself. It was only during (or shortly before) the war that German airplane factories were converted into the sort of assembly line factories long established in the US, with components manufactured in many different locations.

The US used peacetime mass production and logistics expertise for wartime production and was unhampered by aerial bombing (though not by naval attack and much materiel was sunk).

economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Economic-History/streb-040929.pdf An interesting snapshot of plane manufacturers from an economics pov. The drive for technological sophistication may have been a means of cooking the books too.

[Bolograph]

Side-tracking slightly, I think the attitude to technological sophistication by post-war historians, and particularly by amateur historians and wargamers, is very interesting. Most of the stuff that the Germans built that was high-tech and had long-term influence was militarily useless or a response to a situation they shouldn't have been in in the first place.

You refer to the T34 tank, which as you say was a perfect piece of design, providing only the sophistication that could be manufactured in bulk while being just good enough to compete with German adversaries. The German response to this was the Panther, which is lauded to the skies as the progenitor of the modern main battle tank. But it was late, only available in small quantities, lacking in spares support, hugely compromised by shortage of effective engines and gearboxes which in turn were a consequence of amongst other things bombing (notably the Maybach factory) and in the end its design advantages were completely negatived by poor reliability and small numbers.

Similarly the late-war Mk XXI U Boat, which Germany simply couldn't manufacture, the V2 (and to a slightly lesser extent the V1), which used a vastly expensive and complex carcass to deliver one tonne of explosives with almost complete inaccuracy, when Bomber Command Main Force could put 500 tonnes of explosives into a small area night after night at 2% casualties, the Me262 for which there was a massive shortage of fuel, spares and ultimately pilots, the MP43/StG44 which required complex engineering and new ammunition to do little existing weapons couldn't do (albeit it a little less elegantly) provided you had sufficient troops, etc, etc.

All were responses to insufficient resources both in factories and on the front line, attempting to leverage more destructive effect out of less resource by technological sophistication. It couldn't, in the end, be manufactured in sufficient quantity and in any event delivered less additional military effect than could possibly justify the additional cost over cruder T34s and Sten guns.

Hitler and others in the Nazi command derided mass production as fit only for razor blades. They were clamorously wrong, and Germany was ultimately defeated by mass production.

[mathanxiety]

navel = naval. [doh]

[mathanxiety]

Germany's war materiel problem was that the USSR and the US were producing many times more of everything, more efficiently, and both had access to raw materials.

Significant differences in the approach to production that were evident from the start meant that the US and the USSR would emerge victorious. An example is tank production - the T-34 turned out to be a remarkable tank both in terms of military capability and in its production. The Soviets kept to probably two basic designs for the T-34, and production, spare parts, repair and factory organisation were non-issues. It also ran on diesel, less flammable than petrol. By contrast, Germany kept on tinkering with its weapons and tanks, unable to resist the temptation of technological sophistication and missing the point of sensible mass production objectives. German domestic consumption sucked needed steel from the military. In the USSR and in the US, resources were directed into military production.

Germany was doomed after winter 1941-1942, when the invasion of the USSR stalled and thus failed. The German war machine and German military production were designed for short campaigns in manageable theatres. Barbarossa was neither short nor manageable. Both the US and USSR were far better equipped to conduct war on the vast scale that Germany embarked on. They both enjoyed economies of scale that Germany didn't. Air bombardment had been so successful by 1942 that hardly any German military equipment was produced from start to finish in the same factory or even in the same city. This wasn't a problem for the US or the USSR.

The USSR was also throwing millions of men with millions of simple, easily produced, and easily repaired tanks and artillery equipment against the superbly crafted German artillery and tanks complete with all sorts of special bells and whistles. There was nothing Germany could do about the westward approach of the decently equipped and numerically massively superior Red Army. Shambolic resistance in places like Breslau just tied up weapons and seasoned combatants and made resistance close to Berlin that much harder. The refusal to evacuate Army Group Kurland meant that an entire army group didn't even get news of the German surrender until 10 May because they were held dormant by encircling Soviet forces.

The Survey report committee was indeed repelled by the use of the A Bomb, but not by the use of conventional weapons to set alight over 60 Japanese cities and essentially starve Japan into submission. Unlike Germany, Japan did not have natural resources and once the sea blockade was established, starvation and the cessation of military production would have followed - lost planes could not have been replaced, nor could navel losses. A few destroyed airfields and that would have been the end. Starvation was already looming thanks to bombing of railways. Despite the stockpiling of fuel, Japan was scuppered once its navy was destroyed in Tokyo Bay. Japan had since 1932 used the resources and slave labour of Manchukuo (which as an industrial slave state). This was all over once Manchukuo fell to the Soviets. Together with the sea blockade, the end was inevitable once Manchukuo was lost and it might have come even sooner through gradual asphyxiation than the November home islands campaign the US had pencilled in. (The US was not unduly worried about opposition on the ground or an unruly population. As long as the position of the Emperor was ring fenced, they hoped the Japanese would accept Allied-American rule).

The recovery would have happened no matter how decimated Japan might have been, and no matter what the cost to the US because as in Germany recovery was in the US' strategic interests. In addition, the Japanese had learned much from their experiment in rapid industrialisation in Manchukuo, with the combination of central planning and capitalist investment. West Germany also had the experience of the wehrstaat of the 30s to draw on, as well as a highly developed capitalist culture on top of the Marshall Plan.

The influence of the Imperial family turned the tide when it came to the decision to surrender, and the Emperor was under the influence of a small coterie that had decided it was not in Japan's interests to fight on. From all accounts of the last days before the surrender, it appears that virtually every one of the key players was playing a game of chicken. (It may well be of course that everyone involved prefers to be remembered for posterity as convinced of the need for peace but for some reason reticent at most meetings). The exception was the hardliner army group that orchestrated the coup attempt. The Soviet declaration of war remains the catalyst that ended the inertia. Assuming they really were mostly all good readers of writing on the wall, they all knew the end was inevitable, but they still all waited in vain for the Soviet response to their feelers about negotiating better terms than the unconditional surrender required under the Potsdam statement.

Soviet neutrality was the linch-pin of Japanese strategy in the final months. It had been planned for and planned around, with the ultimate end of securing better terms than Potsdam by means of Soviet intercession. When all the plans came to nought overnight, the situation acquired a completely different complexion. The political consequences of Soviet entry were much more important than the military effects.

Paradoxically, the A bomb was so surprising that it could not register initially. As well as appearing literally out of the blue, it had the effect of yet another night of bombing by the USAF, and it had not affected Tokyo.

[Bolograph]

Just to provide some background to the USSBS, here's some analysis of its claim that Japan would have surrendered anyway:

Newman, R. (1995). Ending the War with Japan: Paul Nitze's "Early Surrender" Counterfactual. Pacific Historical Review, 64(2), 167-194. doi:1. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/3640894 doi:1

Gian Peri Gentile. (1997). Advocacy or Assessment? The United States Strategic Bombing Survey of Germany and Japan. Pacific Historical Review, 66(1), 53-79. doi:1. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/4492295 doi:1

You need to be careful, because it's a contested area and these certainly aren't unbiassed reviews. And you'll need a university login or to be a pupil at a posh private school to get access. But if you can read them, they're worth reading.

[Bolograph]

I'm sceptical about the strategic bombing survey's conclusions.

The same survey argued that the strategic bombing of Germany had little or no effect on the outcome of the war, which is now held by serious historians (Overy, notably, but he's hardly the only one) to be almost entirely incorrect. The only reason why output doesn't completely collapse relative to 1943 is that (cf. Tooze) the German war economy was in a completely unprepared state and therefore some of the one-time efficiency gains Speer was able to obtain, such as mobilising women and stopping some of the ludicrous interference in production by the Army, cancel out some of the bombing, but the trajectory was sharply downwards. Every barrel firing shells upwards over Berlin was a barrel not firing the same shells eastward at Russian tanks, every plane being shot down by P51s over the Ruhr is a plane not strafing invasion beaches, etc: the bombing of Germany both destroyed and tied up vast amounts of materiel and capability, and to claim that Germany's war effort was not affected by it is just absurd. So I think we should treat the conclusions of the bombing survey - decent people who were horrified by the consequences of bombing, and therefore unwilling to accept it as either necessary or effective - with caution.

Additionally, although the Japanese civilians were starving and had no fuel, the Army and Air Force had reserves of food and fuel that would have sustained a long campaign. Claims that mass civilian suffering would have catalysed a surrender are a case of naive Americans projecting their own political and ethical framework onto something entirely foreign, and assuming that the Japanese military command would have seen mass starvation as making military "success" irrelevant. I don't think there's much evidence for that, really.

And in any event, suppose Japan had continued until, say, December and then surrendered because of mass starvation. Assuming that strategic bombing had continued at roughly the same tempo, with something akin to the Transportation Plan using fighter bombers off carriers and increasingly less remote islands to interdict bridges and marshalling yards, plus the Russian invasion, how many people would have died in comparison to the deaths and Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And not only in Japan, but in occupied territories?

Counter-factual history is hard, and the variables are not easy. But Japan post a contested surrender (there was a small coup attempt in August, cf. Japan's Longest Day, but a surrender absent the atomic bombs would have been more likely to provoke a serious coup attempt) and post an further four months' starvation would have been less governable and less capable of recovery than was in fact the case.

[mathanxiety]

They were already meeting on the night of 9-10 August when news of the Nagasaki bomb arrived, and they were meeting because they had been completely shaken by the Soviet entry into war, which scuppered all their hopes, made the threat of immediate and unanticipated physical invasion on an almost unprotected flank real, and provoked the crisis meeting.

In August 1945 the US was left with only a handful of cities above 100,000 population to bomb. Over sixty cities had already been burned. B-29s dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs on Tokyo and other cities unopposed from spring, 1945. The sea blockade meant Japan was facing starvation. The remaining fleet was sunk in Tokyo Bay. Japan faced starvation.

From the United States Strategic Bombing Survey 1946 report:
'Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 [the date of the planned American invasion], Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated'

The US Strategic Bombing Survey report is clear that Soviet entry into the war against Japan had been a separate development that Japan had had to consider. Japan had been aware of this possibility from April, when the USSR had stated it would not renew the non-aggression pact with Japan. Though entry of the USSR into the conflict was a possibility, Japan hoped Stalin would remain out of the war and might instead seek to persuade the other Allies to drop their unconditional surrender demand. Their persistent feelers were rebuffed, but Japanese intelligence had missed the massing of Soviet troops and still did not anticipate invasion by the USSR, especially by one of the invasion routes (the Greater Khingan mountains, which were thought to be impassable).

On 11 July 1945 Molotov had refused to sign a peace treaty with Japan, but even still, Japanese hopes were still pinned on the Soviets not invading and focused on invasion from the Pacific. Troops were siphoned from China and Korea and from western Japan to better defend the southern home islands and the east of Honshu and Hokkaido.

The declaration of war by the USSR came late on August 8th and an hour later in early August 9th Soviet troops poured into Manchuria and proved unstoppable. Hokkaido was exposed and so was the rest of northern and western Japan.

The crisis that provoked the SWC meeting was not the overnight destruction of yet another city but the ease with which the Soviets had overrun Manchuria and the fact that they were poised to invade Hokkaido from the west (defence forces were dug in in the east) and dictate their own terms on the Japanese. The Japanese chose to capitulate to the US and negotiate for the preservation of the Emperor rather than taking their chances with a Soviet invasion.

[MysteriesOfTheOrganism]

I don't believe that killing a hundred thousand people with one bomb is MORALLY different from killing the same number with a million bullets or a million conventional bombs. The difference is perhaps emotional: one bomb highlights the horror of war more than years of conventional battles.

The only real issue is whether or not it was a completely gratuitous act - the equivalent of lining up 100,000 people and executing them by firing squad.

I think it was clearly NOT gratuitous. It was horrible, but then war is. But it was definitely NOT an atrocity.

[WandaFuca]

CaveMum - I managed to spot that series in my Favourites listing and set it to record to watch later. I guess it'll be repeated, probably in the early hours, or later this week. I have Yesterday and the History channels and PBS America listed in my Favourites. They are often good resources for filling in those gaps of history we never learned at school. (And probably we shouldn't have been told about those things when we were young.)

[AntiqueSinger]

Omg! Like a fool I read last page of this thread and got curious. Googled Nanking. Have never read anything that bad. Ever. I feel sick and don't want to sleep just in case I have a nightmare. Bloody hell. Those poor people. Those poor women.

[CaveMum]

Documentary series on Yesterday this evening called Horror in the East about Japan and WW2 for those that might be interested.

[Bolograph]

Japan's decision to capitulate came after the first bomb but before the second one

Is that right? I'd refer you to "Japan's Longest Day", by the Pacific War Research group, written in the 1960s with access to surviving participants. It is regarded as accurate in its account of the last few days of the war. There's a summary of the timeline of surrender here:

www.warbirdforum.com/end.htm

which is an accurate precis of the book (I have a copy; I don't think the translation has ever been published in the UK, but it's easily available in an American edition from Amazon).

AUGUST 9

The doves woke up early this Thursday. Furious about the meeting that had been blown off, leading to Russian entry, Togo et al. managed to get an SWC meeting going by 10:30 AM. Immediately, the SWC split into its two familiar factions and started going over the familiar arguments. Halfway through the meeting a message arrived saying that Nagasaki had been bombed at 11:00 that morning. This changed no opinions. The SWC meeting broke up at 1:00 PM with no decision having been made.

That afternoon the arguments were repeated in a full cabinet meeting lasting from 2:30 to 10:00 PM. The Home Minister explicitly predicted that a coup would likely happen if the government ordered surrender. The meeting had no result.

Suzuki then, after consultation with Hirohito, called a SWC meeting for 11:50 PM, to be held in the presence of the emperor, an unprecedented, although perfectly legal, procedure.

[enterYourPassword]

Gremlinsateit

Not by the ones I know professionally and personally. They absolutely aren't racist. I base that on having never heard any of them say anything remotely racist and the fact most of them and their families are like a poster campaign of diversity - marriages of every mixture and several adopted children from different continents.

[mathanxiety]

I agree with you about the hate filled national culture in the US, and also the culture of fear. Fear of an outside enemy has been a constant since WWI and perhaps earlier (the Know Nothings).

From the Japanese pov, the first bomb was just another in a series of destructive firestorms that had up to then levelled over 60 Japanese cities. From the US pov that first bomb had two objectives - to possibly scare the Japanese into submission and to scare the USSR.

At the time the first bomb was dropped, Japan's objective was to end up with a deal from the Allies that would fall short of unconditional surrender - allow the Emperor and the political system built around him to remain, and permit the holding of many territories captured by Japan. To achieve this, two approaches were available. One was to hold over a million troops ready for intense resistance on the home islands. The other was to try to get the (neutral) USSR to broker a deal with the Allies. Japan suspected the toll would be too high for the US to continue to fight through to the bitter end, which would be necessary in order to gain an unconditional surrender by military means. The USSR was officially neutral towards Japan though allied to the US and Britain for purposes of war in the European theatre.

Japan's decision to capitulate came after the first bomb but before the second one, and the reason was what happened in between, i.e. the declaration of war by the USSR. The option to get the USSR to broker a deal was eliminated by the Soviet declaration of war and its invasion of Manchuria the day after. The prospect of immediate invasion by the USSR spurred Japan to think more favourably of capitulation to the US since Soviet forces, which had mowed down Japanese resistance in Manchuria and were poised to invade Hokkaido, were right on the doorstep and moving fast. Loss of Manchuria meant Japan lost industrial capability that was necessary in order to defend the home islands.

The second bomb was a message to Stalin not to try to invade any more of Japanese territory than it had already taken (= Sakhalin - though the USSR later in the year took the disputed Kurils). It was also a message to Japan that complete physical annihilation was a possibility, and that unconditional surrender was all the Allies would accept. Japan chose what was seen by the Supreme Council as the lesser of two evils in surrendering to the Allies. They surrendered before they were annihilated by the Soviets and the west combined. Or just the USSR. (This is the argument of historian Richard Frank, basically).

In a weird way the bomb allowed Japan not to make a full examination of how its leaders had failed her, lied to her, led her down a blind alley to disaster. It allowed a convenient story to be formed - that Japan had been victorious until a secret weapon had emerged from thin air and completely changed the game. The Emperor escaped by the skin of his teeth thanks to the Bomb. The horror of the bomb allowed Japan to recast itself as the ultimate victim of the war in the east. Given the unimaginable cruelty of Japanese rule in conquered territory, this was indeed a stroke of fortune for Japan.

[Gremlinsateit]

Interesting thread. Just one tiny side point - "Paki" is certainly considered offensive in Australia (I'm uncomfortable typing it) and is only used by racists, casual or otherwise. It was widely used in the 70s (re cricket) but not any more.

[Bolograph]

in which it specifically says Japan wants to work with Russia for peace.

Which was entirely futile, for three reasons.

Firstly, Japan was not at war with Russia, so could not surrender to it. Russia was at the time planning to invade Japan anyway, as it wanted the mainland territories.

Secondly, Togo didn't command a majority of the war cabinet, and never did until the emperor intervened after Nagasaki, so even had the Russians somehow agreed to something, the Army and Navy would have refused to surrender.

And thirdly, what Japan was trying to negotiate was expressly against the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded unconditional surrender (everyone had seen what conditional surrenders looked like post-1919) and certainly wasn't going to accept Japan retaining its occupied territories.

So the peace faction in the war cabinet was trying to negotiate an armistice which two of the parties would not have accepted, which the third couldn't have accepted as it wasn't at war, and which the Army and Navy wouldn't have agreed to anyway even on the terms offered.

Other than that, it's convincing.