Delta Force
Banned
The IJA may very well have rejected a peace overture, but of course that option was never offered to the Japanese. The historical record is not very favorable to the United States on this point. Ultimately we did end up letting the emperor stay, the major sticking point for Japan, and we did it in an unofficial manner by promising them that we would let it be so. That happened after the atomic bombing. If Japan did not surrender, we would have the fallback options of Downfall and the atomic bombs, and thus making the mere offer of peace changes the strategic situation in no way.
Many of the contemporary military leadership thought that casualties would have been somewhere in the range of 30,000-40,000 on the American side, although of course there are the massive worst case estimates, and the figures do not include Japanese soldiers and civilians. The atomic bomb thus is an attractive option, given estimates of casualties from the attacks given by scientists (20,000) to what actually happened.
The thing is though, we never really entertained a peace agreement with the only condition being that Japan be allowed to maintain the emperor. That was the one option guaranteed to result in no fatalities on any side. Even if the odds were quite low, which they may well have been, it is still the best alternative given the other two options (invasion and atomic attack) which result in a longer and more deadly war. We did not even allow for any low level unofficial diplomatic discussions with the Japanese on the issue.
Many of the contemporary military leadership thought that casualties would have been somewhere in the range of 30,000-40,000 on the American side, although of course there are the massive worst case estimates, and the figures do not include Japanese soldiers and civilians. The atomic bomb thus is an attractive option, given estimates of casualties from the attacks given by scientists (20,000) to what actually happened.
The thing is though, we never really entertained a peace agreement with the only condition being that Japan be allowed to maintain the emperor. That was the one option guaranteed to result in no fatalities on any side. Even if the odds were quite low, which they may well have been, it is still the best alternative given the other two options (invasion and atomic attack) which result in a longer and more deadly war. We did not even allow for any low level unofficial diplomatic discussions with the Japanese on the issue.