[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

You may be right that neither of us will be able to change the other's mind.
I appreciate your calm and patient responses, and therefore will respond
this one last time to this thread. I do recommend a careful reading of the
site that Stan Ziobri provided, since I think it is an accurate portrayal of
the actual evidence, and as a comparison between what is stated there and
what I posted here will show, it reaches very similar conclusions with very
similar arguments to those I advanced. It includes materials from the
Japanese archives which the Japanese claim record the actual debates among
the leadership in the days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, none of which, I
am afraid, would support the interpretation you are giving to those events.

As an aside, I have reviewed those materials in more detail previously, and
have discussed what they say with Japanese for their sense of the veracity
of those materials. My impression is that it records the personalities and
debating points accurately, but probably becomes fictional when describing
the noble way in which Hirohito was finally aroused to settle the deadlock.


> In accordance with normal practice in wartime communication was via
> the embassies of a neutral power i.e. the Soviet Union (and
> subsequently Switzerland).

Since I seem to be consistently misunderstanding your point about this, let
me try one more time. Are you saying that the Japanese conveyed to the
Allies, via the Soviets, terms of surrender, rather than attempting to
engage the Soviets themselves in negotiations? If so, that would indeed be
new and important information. I have never seen even the slightest
suggestion of that. So, again, if you have such evidence, please share it.

> Can you provide evidence of such a list after Potsdam ?

It was similar to the list they drew up in the days between Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (again, see the site posted by Stan):

(from that site)

http://plungepontificates.blogspot.com/2005/05/atomic-bomb-section-4-why-did-this.html
----

These conditions were:

  a.. That there be no military occupation of the homeland by the Allies.
  b.. That the armed forces be allowed to disarm and demobilize themselves
voluntarily.
  c.. That war criminals be prosecuted by the Japanese government.
These were non-negotiable, absolute conditions. Without them being met, the
military members of the cabinet were adamantly against surrender. They were
determined to fight on, even if it meant the destruction of Japan and
millions being slaughtered.

---

To repeat, this was in the days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as recorded
in the Japanese archives. The reasons that the Allies would accept nothing
less than unconditional surrender -- something long agreed to by FDR and
Churchill years before, and reconfirmed by Truman when he took office -- can
also be found on that site (and the sources it uses). The terms they had
tried to discuss earlier with the Russians included additional conditions.

> I find this hard to believe. They cannot have been unaware that
> Stalin was part of the group who murdered the whole of the Russian
> Imperial family.

The Japanese thinking on this is admittedly so convoluted and distorted from
what we might consider as reasonable, that it does seem unbelievable from
our perspective, but nonetheless, that is what it was. If you study the
Japanese domestic propaganda from the 30s and 40s you will find some very
startling views of the world, including their views on the West, Jews,
Russians, etc. As I warned, this could be a long detour, starting with the
Japanese sending forces into the Soviet Union to support and return the Czar
to power after the Russian Revolution had already been settled (how
realistic was that?). The very short version would be, the members of the
elite Japanese leadership who considered themselves Russian experts had been
diplomats to Czarist Russia and still carried Romanticized notions of the
Russians and the Russian spirit. That their negotiations with the Russians
neither produced more favorable surrender terms nor prevented the Russians
from entering the campaign against them is simply further evidence of how
grieviously the Japanese misconceived the Soviet situation.

> He was a deity in a way similar to the Roman Emperors, not a Deity
> comparable to the Judeo-Christian Deity.

But the Japanese drew a certainty that God, i.e., the Emperor (in a very
similar sense to the way people in the West use that term), was on their
side, and that their war of liberation of Asia was a divine mission. That
rhetoric had its roots early in the 19th c, was the explicit raison d'etre
for the Meiji Restoration, and was at full frenzy throughout the war. Brian
Victoria and others have heavily documented that. (and even the Romans had
their Caligulas)

> Nobody changed their views after the dropping of the bombs.

Please see the site for a documented alternate view.

With this, I propose we close this thread. Should you care to discuss this
further at some later date, I would humbly suggest that you read Ian
Buruma's _The Wages of Guilt_ for some insight into the Japanese war and
post-war mentality (contrasted with Germany), and Brian Victoria's two
books, Zen at War and Zen War Stories. None of these specifically deal with
the question of the bomb per se, but I don't think we can pursue this
profitably until the very unusual -- from a Western perspective -- Japanese
zeitgeist during WW II is taken into account. As Victoria shows,
unfortunately, Buddhism was anything but a passive bystander in that.

cheers,
Dan