my point is nuclear weapons of any size/yield are too costly to solve a border dispute and claim a region?
It isn't worth to blast a countrys most important city with 20KT or 200 KT or 2 MT to occupy the region the we claim.
We are talking about a full blown war here, not border disputes. If there is a meglomaniac next as the leader of china or pakistan who want to go out with a bang and starts a full blown war, what will you do? Retaliate with strategic weapons, or burn candles and form human chains?
the objective of US was immediate surrender of Japanese to avoid deaths of millions of US & Japanese. US achieved that objective. what US claims that it would led to far more deaths had US attempted invasion of Japan.
That's bullshit story spread by the yankees and their powerful(& patriotic) media, similar to pakistanis claiming they won all the wars. It was the threat of war with the Soviet Union, and communism wiping out the entire royal family & feudal society of Japan which made them to capitulate to the Americans. The americans, unlike the soviets don't want to see their casualties, so they resorted to nuking.. cowards.
Some related books & interesting links.
Glantz, David. August Storm, volume 1: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003
ISBN 0-7146-5279-2
xxviii + 451 pages
"Delay caused by Japanese resistance on the islands is one of the reasons cited by Glantz for Soviet failure to conduct the offensive which had been prepared against Hokkaido. Of this planned invasion, the original volume says nothing. Glantz explains that newly released Soviet documentary materials show the northernmost Home Island among Soviet objectives, although little or nothing of this plan had been revealed until quite recently. The 87th Rifle Corps and 56th Rifle Corps were earmarked for the operation, and both were to be ready by 23 August, "...after they had completed their offensive operations on southern Sakhalin Island." On 22 August, however, shortly before the order to commence operations was expected, Stalin ordered the attack postponed. Glantz speculates that the assault units, held up by Japanese resistance on Sakhalin, could not have been ready on time anyway, but could conceivably have started as early as 24 or 25 August. While not all the relevant documents have been released, Glantz suggests some reasons for the eventual cancellation of the landings: Allied pressure, imminent Japanese surrender, and heavy fighting on Sakhalin. In any event, the Hokkaido story proves fascinating, especially since the landings would have put Soviet combat forces in Japan ahead of the American schedule for Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet, with dramatic consequences for the post-war years and the Cold War."
stonebooks.com/archives/031109.shtml
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Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Hardcover)
by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Author)
Editorial Reviews
Racing the Enemy is a tour de force -a lucid, balanced, multi-archival, myth-shattering analysis of the turbulent end of World War II. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa sheds fascinating new light on fiercely debated issues including the U.S.-Soviet end game in Asia, the American decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's frantic response to the double shock of nuclear devastation and the Soviet Union's abrupt declaration of war.
With this book, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa will establish himself as the expert on the end of the war in the Pacific. This important work will attract a wide readership.
In summer 1945 Truman and his advisers set a foreign policy course that demanded American use of doomsday weapons not only against Japan but, indirectly, against humanity itself. In this groundbreaking book, Hasegawa argues that the atomic bombs were not as decisive in bringing about Japan's unconditional surrender as Soviet entry into the Pacific War. His challenging study reveals the full significance of Truman's decision not to associate Stalin with the Potsdam Declaration and offers fresh evidence of how Japan's leaders viewed Stalin's entrance into the war as the decisive factor. Others have shown that Truman missed opportunities to secure Japan's unconditional surrender without an invasion or the nuclear destruction of Japanese cities. But few have so thoroughly documented the complex evasions and Machiavellism of Japanese, Russian, and, especially, American leaders in the process of war termination.
In this landmark study, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa gives us the first truly international history of the critical final months leading to Japan's surrender. Absorbing and authoritative, provocative and fair-minded, Racing the Enemy is required reading for anyone interested in World War II and in twentieth-century world affairs. A marvelously illuminating work.
Book Description
With startling revelations, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of World War II in the Pacific. By fully integrating the three key actors in the story--the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan--Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective.
From April 1945, when Stalin broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and Harry Truman assumed the presidency, to the final Soviet military actions against Japan, Hasegawa brings to light the real reasons Japan surrendered. From Washington to Moscow to Tokyo and back again, he shows us a high-stakes diplomatic game as Truman and Stalin sought to outmaneuver each other in forcing Japan's surrender; as Stalin dangled mediation offers to Japan while secretly preparing to fight in the Pacific; as Tokyo peace advocates desperately tried to stave off a war party determined to mount a last-ditch defense; and as the Americans struggled to balance their competing interests of ending the war with Japan and preventing the Soviets from expanding into the Pacific.
New York Times Book Review : The long debate among historians about American motives and Japanese efforts at ending World War II is finally resolved in Racing the Enemy, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's brilliant and definitive study of American, Soviet and Japanese records of the last weeks of the war.
--Richard Rhodes
Times Literary Supplement : Without doubt the best-informed book in English on Japanese and Soviet manoeuvres in the summer of 1945...[Hasegawa] provides an international context sorely missing from most previous work. He has mined Japanese and Russian literature and documentation and, despite much that is based on surmise, provides fresh insight into the extraordinary inability of Japanese leaders to surrender, and into Stalin's machinations aimed at maximizing Soviet territorial gains in East Asia.
--Warren I. Cohen
Christian Science Monitor : A landmark book that brilliantly examines a crucial moment in 20th-century history...[An] important, enlightening, and unsettling book.
--Jonathan Rosenberg
Philadelphia Inquirer : The most comprehensive study yet undertaken of Japanese documentary sources. The highly praised study argues that the atomic bomb played only a secondary role in Japan's decision to surrender. By far the most important factor, Hasegawa finds, was the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing.
--Gar Alperovitz
U.S. News and World Report : One of the first to make a detailed study of the political interplay among the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States in 1945.
--Alex Kingsbury
Los Angeles Times : As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, Racing the Enemy--and many other historians have long argued--it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final 'shock' that led to Japan's capitulation.
--Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Winston-Salem Journal : [Racing the Enemy] might be called the definitive analysis of the U.S. decision to use atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has mined both Japanese and Soviet sources to produce the first truly international study of the Hiroshima decision.
--Errol MacGregor Clauss
The Exile : Managing to convey the thought processes, assumptions and biases of the Imperial elite is Hasegawa's greatest achievement...Hasegawa's story is a weird, compelling one, and his case for revising our view of the leadup to VJ Day is overwhelming.
--John Dolan
Pacific Affairs : Hasegawa's study provides the most comprehensive examination yet published on the international factors that shaped the decision-making processes and policies adopted in Washington, Moscow, Potsdam and Tokyo, and which ultimately contributed to Japan's surrender in 1945. Racing the Enemy provides a fresh and multi-faceted perspective on a well studied topic primarily because the author draws on information from Russian, Japanese and American archives and sources. While this study both complements and challenges the well-informed findings of Asada Sadao, Robert Butow, Richard Frank and Leon Sigal, the international framework in which Hasegawa places the surrender of Japan makes this book a compelling read for students and scholars alike.
--J. Charles Schencking
American Historical Review : Will we ever really know why Japan surrendered in World War II? In this judicious and meticulously researched study of the endgame of the conflict, [Hasegawa] internationalizes (by a thorough look at American, Japanese, and Soviet literature and archives) the diplomatic and political maneuvering that led to Japanese capitulation...No study has yet to bundle together the myriad works on the war's end in such a complete manner...This work should become standard reading for scholars of World War II and American diplomacy.
--Thomas Zeiler
Amazon.com: Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (9780674016934): Tsuyoshi Hasegawa: Books
