Vanquished Japan

As World War II dragged on, hopelessly overmatched Japanese forces continued to put up tenacious resistance, culminating in the horrors of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, leading many to believe that the Japanese would fight literally to the last man, woman, and child. After hearing news of "fanatical" Japanese kamikaze attacks and, still more horrible, of scenes of Japanese civilians -- some women with babies clutched to their breasts -- leaping to their deaths rather than be taken into Allied hands, U.S. officials were open to any plan that might end the war quickly. On the homefront, a war-weary public was frustrated with the loss of life in the Pacific after Nazi Germany's surrender in Europe. Once the scientists working on the Manhattan Project had successfully tested an atomic bomb, the decision to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese home islands was, for all intents and purposes, a foregone conclusion. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing over 130,000 people. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki, killing over 60,000 Japanese civilians. Five days later, in the first and only directive he issued during the war, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito overruled his military council and called for immediate surrender. The next day, called V-J Day in the West, Hirohito delivered a radio address to the Japanese people, announcing the surrender. For virtually every Japanese who listened to the broadcast, it was the first time they had ever heard their Emperor's voice.