Determined to fight
I read with interest your generally fine article on Okinawa (MHM October/November 2020). I do want to take issue with one statement, a very important one.
Alexander Izza wrote: ‘However, Japan was not planning to fight into oblivion.’ This is false. It is false notwithstanding the views of Professor Sheldon Garon of Princeton. This point of view attempts to blame the United States or President Truman for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact, the Japanese leadership was determined to fight to the end. Indeed, all evidence indicates they even wanted to fight on after the two atomic bombs were dropped, only to be overruled by the emperor, an unheard-of intervention by an otherwise constitutional monarch akin to Britain’s.
