this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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[–] lukini@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] davel@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Two reasons, I think:

  • So Japan would unconditionally surrender to the US instead of (conditionally or unconditionally) surrendering to the USSR.
  • As a warning to the USSR to not spread communism further. The Cold War started even before WWII ended.
[–] TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id 0 points 1 year ago

Close. What they were worried about was a hot war with the Soviets. There was also a great deal of uncertainty about Japanese willingness to continue to fight. It's simply not the case that they had clear unambiguous intelligence on Japanese leadership's intentions, which makes sense since there were several schools of thought among the Japanese.