A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead GIs, and, still, the Japanese leadership refused to surrender. A growing number of historians believe that Japan would have surrendered if the United States … PHOTOS: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Before and After the Bombs As historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa puts it, “The Soviet entry into the war played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation.” The debate over what precipitated the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II is a source of contention among historians. ... the Japanese leadership refused to surrender. The key reason why the Allied Forces refused Japan’s initial surrender because it was not an unconditional surrender. The Japanese refer to the attempted coup d’état on Aug. 14, 1945, the last night of the Second World War, as the “Kyujo Incident" 'remaining Japanese soldiers') were soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific Theatre of World War II who continued fighting after the surrender of Japan in August 1945. Perhaps the bomb did nothing to accelerate Japan’s surrender. From the Japanese side, the reasoning was something like: If the Americans had more of such weapons, they would have used them all at once to completely destroy us. A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender after World War Two ended and spent 29 years in the jungle dies aged 91 in Tokyo. He and two other members of Japan’s Supreme War Council preferred to continue fighting—not in the hope of winning the war, but rather to damage the enemy enough to achieve a negotiated surrender that would preserve the kokutai, or the institution of the emperor. If the bomb did not motivate Japan to surrender, perhaps it was not necessary to use it. Japan's surrender happened because of a radio broadcast by the emperor — but that broadcast almost didn't make it on-air. Why did Japan surrender? On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender, bringing World War II to a close. Japan surrendered 70 years ago, but it … The public view that the atomic bomb was the decisive event that ended World War II is not supported by the facts. Japanese holdouts (Japanese: 残留日本兵, romanized: Zanryū nipponhei, lit. But in early August 66 years ago, America unveiled a terrifying new weapon, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Japan was given their surrender terms they would have room to move, but the Allies pushed for an unconditional surrender in order for the Emperor could be prosecuted for war crimes. Why a Japanese WWII soldier refused to surrender for 29 years For the Japanese in World War II, surrender was unthinkable. That is certainly what we would have done. This debate has also figured prominently in the discussion of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (for more on that discussion, see Debate over the Bomb).The “traditional narrative” put forward in the war’s immediate aftermath was that using the … Hiroshima had happened days before, but it was only now that the Japanese leaders fell into a panic.