FDR lives through all of 1945, test-explodes atomic bomb off Japanese coast.

But who would certainly be willing to see two or more nuclear weapons dropped on cities if the Japanese refused to surrender unconditionally,...

Most of the US public. We certainly wouldn't take any flak for it from East Asia, many of them were upset we stopped with two bombs.
 
4) Treaty on food security (food aid in case of famine) written as early as possible. IOTL, hundreds thousands of Japanese emigrated in first post-war decade, encouraged by Japanese government fearing the large-scale famine due shrinking farmland and influx of refugees.
Yes, highly important issue.
 
4) Treaty on food security (food aid in case of famine) written as early as possible.
To put very simply, the choice was between armed Japanese guerrilla
Vastly outnumbered by those who wanted to avoid a guerrilla war that could last a decade or more.
How does the above work?
Is the reason for the treaty not that Japan was obviously about to starve to death on a huge scale without US food....so how does it maintain a guerrilla war.....?
 
...so how does it maintain a guerrilla war.....?
the available food goes to the guerilla soliders, much like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia would do (who was also selling food to China under the fiction of a leap in production)

And if we the U.S. are blamed for the famine, which is not necessarily a given, then somewhere along the (?) 4th month, we start losing the moral high road.
 
I doubt demonstrating the A bomb off shore would convince anyone in 1945 to surrender. The observers will just see a bomb going off. A huge bomb true, but still just a bomb. They will not see the effect on people of the blast (those that survive it) nor would they see the survivors poisoned by radiation dying horribly in the weeks after the explosion. To them they have just seen a big bomb, nothing more and cities are being bombed back to the stone age every day.
 
I doubt demonstrating the A bomb off shore would convince anyone in 1945 to surrender. The observers will just see a bomb going off. A huge bomb true, but still just a bomb. They will not see the effect on people of the blast (those that survive it) nor would they see the survivors poisoned by radiation dying horribly in the weeks after the explosion. To them they have just seen a big bomb, nothing more and cities are being bombed back to the stone age every day.

And until it was actually used, that’s all anyone thought of it. Just another arrow in the quiver. The moral separation that some insist on placing between the conventional bombings and the atomic bombings did not develop until well after the fact. In August 1945 nobody was saying, “This new bomb looks mega bad so let’s not go there, but by all means let’s keep fire bombing them.”
 
the available food goes to the guerilla soliders, much like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia would do (who was also selling food to China under the fiction of a leap in production)

And if we the U.S. are blamed for the famine, which is not necessarily a given, then somewhere along the (?) 4th month, we start losing the moral high road.
We are talking about 1945-6 moral high road is easy even Soviet Russian had it as part of the allies against the Axis....(and who actually really cares about Japan in 1946?)

The food is mostly being imported from US anyway so its under US guard from the docks...(and domestic production can be guarded or simply destroyed)

All the US has to do is ask large parts of the IJA rank and file who now have starving families and have already suffered the shock of defeat if they are willing to serve hunting down the guerillas, if necessarily reminding them that if they don't I'm sure Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Burmese, Malayan, etc troops will be required....and probably happy to pacify Japan. (its a pity and an unfortunate accident on the US part if any Chinese units run out of control in retaliation for the last decade in China.....)
 
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I doubt demonstrating the A bomb off shore would convince anyone in 1945 to surrender. . .

Trinity%20Test%20Shot%20.025%20Sec%20July%2016%201945.jpg

The “Trinity” Test.
south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 16, 1945

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945

I don’t know. Seems pretty impressive to me! And combined with matter-of-fact, middle-of-the-road negotiations.

Certainly we can find an American businessman of Japanese background who’s willing to take the risk of being an “informal” negotiator.

And we’re not even really making a threat privately (or at least one doesn’t have to look at it that way). We’re more just giving a heads up and laying out the likely consequences of either nuclear weapons or a land invasion.
 
Trinity%20Test%20Shot%20.025%20Sec%20July%2016%201945.jpg

The “Trinity” Test.
south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 16, 1945

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945

I don’t know. Seems pretty impressive to me! And combined with matter-of-fact, middle-of-the-road negotiations.
Certainly we can find an American businessman of Japanese background who’s willing to take the risk of being an “informal” negotiator.

And we’re not even really making a threat privately (or at least one doesn’t have to look at it that way). We’re more just giving a heads up and laying out the likely consequences of either nuclear weapons or a land invasion.

They see a big bomb, that's all. Until it was actually used in anger no one understood the horror of the thing. Remember the Tokyo firebombing was actually more destructive than either A bomb attack and to the poor sods on the receiving end does it matter if your city is destroyed in a night by one bomb or thousands. No one in mid 1945 really understands that the A bomb is also in effect a chemical weapon as well as an explosive one. Not even the scientists who designed them.
 
All the US has to do is ask large parts of the IJA rank and file who now have starving families and have already suffered the shock of defeat if they are willing to serve hunting down the guerillas, if necessarily reminding them that if they don't I'm sure Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Burmese, Malayan, etc troops will be required....
I think you have a good understanding of the gangster-style method of an implied threat!

And other times we can wax optimistically. Actually, I think it’s good to have both sets of skills.
 
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SsgtC

Banned
The “Trinity” Test.
south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 16, 1945

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945

I don’t know. Seems pretty impressive to me! And combined with matter-of-fact, middle-of-the-road negotiations.
It seems pretty impressive to you because you know exactly what is being detonated there. That that entire blast was the result of just a few pounds of plutonium. To people who don't know what that is, all they see is an explosion. Big deal, they see explosions everyday. For all they know, an ammunition ship just exploded. To truly appreciate what was happening, you either need to know what you're seeing, or be on the receiving end of the bomb
 
They see a big bomb, that's all. Until it was actually used in anger no one understood the horror of the thing. Remember the Tokyo firebombing was actually more destructive than either A bomb attack and to the poor sods on the receiving end does it matter if your city is destroyed in a night by one bomb or thousands. No one in mid 1945 really understands that the A bomb is also in effect a chemical weapon as well as an explosive one. Not even the scientists who designed them.

I also think there's a tendency to back-project the awesome power of later bombs. The thermonuclear weapons of the 1960s and were over a hundred times as powerful as Fat Man and Little Boy, and I think that we tend to apply that power to them, even when the bombs themselves were, as stated multiple times in this thread, well within the realm of what was achievable with conventional means.

Now, there's still the special horror that comes with dying from radiation sickness, but that only becomes apparent after the bombs are dropped (in fact, I suspect that without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would take more time before people investigated radiation sickness in depth).
 

SsgtC

Banned
Now, there's still the special horror that comes with dying from radiation sickness, but that only becomes apparent after the bombs are dropped (in fact, I suspect that without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would take more time before people investigated radiation sickness in depth).
Even with those bombings it took a very long time for people to truly understand radiation. After Operation Crossroads, the Commanding Officer of USS New York wanted to reboard his crew and sail her home. Despite the ship being horribly radioactive after the Baker shot
 
Now, there's still the special horror that comes with dying from radiation sickness, but that only becomes apparent after the bombs are dropped (in fact, I suspect that without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would take more time before people investigated radiation sickness in depth).


I would make the argument that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs didn't end WWII, what they did was horrify the world enough to prevent WWIII. No weapon has ever been invented that wasn't used, if they hadn't been used on Japan they'd have been used in Europe during the 50's.
 
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Even with those bombings it took a very long time for people to truly understand radiation. After Operation Crossroads, the Commanding Officer of USS New York wanted to reboard his crew and sail her home. Despite the ship being horribly radioactive after the Baker shot
This is when you still had fluroscopes for checking if your shoes pinched your toes too much.
They still had those in shoe stores when I was a kid, and the Dentist's X-Ray machine(a '40s model, I think) probably gave me the equivalent of a couple modern chest X-Rays, right into my little child sized noggin.
Your clock still had radium on the dial, so you could see it at night.

Everybody smoking like chimneys didn't help either.

People really didn't think that stuff as that harmful, even after the bombs went off, and was know you could get radiation burns
 

nbcman

Donor
[snip]
If Emperor`s surrender decision was triggered mostly by nuclear bombing, the surrender date would be before 12 August 1945 - not IOTL 15 August when it was already (correctly) suspected the US do not have the nuclear bombs in mass production yet. [snip]
IOTL The US recognized that the early a-bombs (Mark 3 Fat Man) were inefficient and that production was slowed to develop the next generation devices (Mark 4) which were easier to produce. If the US needed more Mark 3 bombs, they could have had a faster production rate in 1945.
 
This is when you still had fluroscopes for checking if your shoes pinched your toes too much.
They still had those in shoe stores when I was a kid, and the Dentist's X-Ray machine(a '40s model, I think) probably gave me the equivalent of a couple modern chest X-Rays, right into my little child sized noggin.

They weren't all that dangerous. Radiation has no measurable effect when it is under 10 REM.
 
Well, how it possible to acknowledge Unit 731 after US government have hired the top scientists of it after war?
Regarding comfort women, the story is close to current politics, not the WWII history. Japanese government have publicly apologized for the practice (by the way, not criminal during WWII), and compensated survivors. The treaty clearly stating the end of settlement was signed decades ago. The recent controversy is rather result of Japanese perceiving South Korean government statements on the closed issue as state-sponsored racket.
Actually "comfort women" is very much a matter of history, and was illegal under the 1925 Geneva Convention. The survivors were only compensated in 1999, after the vast majority were dead of old age. It was certainly not a "South Korea racket" as you claim. If your grandparents received similar treatment, would you be so blithe in your statements?
 

trurle

Banned
Actually "comfort women" is very much a matter of history, and was illegal under the 1925 Geneva Convention. The survivors were only compensated in 1999, after the vast majority were dead of old age. It was certainly not a "South Korea racket" as you claim. If your grandparents received similar treatment, would you be so blithe in your statements?
I referred to Japanese-Korean settlement in period of 1991-1999. Any demands after settlement are classical feature of racket. I may have not experience with wartime (coerced) prostitution, but racket behavior is clearly recognizable in more recent South Korean actions, acording to my first-hands experience with gangsters.
 
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I referred to Japanese-Korean settlement in period of 1991-1999. Any demands after settlement are classical feature of racket. I may have not experience with wartime (coerced) prostitution, but racket behavior is clearly recognizable in more recent South Korean actions, acording to my first-hands experience with gangsters.
Forgive me, if that doesn't sound like the biggest pile of horse manure, especially for those in China, Vietnam and the Philippines seem to being lumped into the idea of "comfort women" being a "South Korean racket".

Second, that doesn't excuse the fact that what the Japanese was sexual slavery. No one was "persuaded" or "convinced" of the need to serve in Japanese state-run brothels or believed that playing human "target practice/ bayonet dummy" was in their best interests...
 
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