My second day in Nagasaki
I’m here in the nagasaki peace park in nagasaki obviously nagasaki is different to the other japanese towns i’ve visited so far and for once there’s almost no foreign tourists i’ve met two at the hostel i’m staying in and apart from that everybody seems to be in japanese and
The peace park is obviously here to commemorate the bombing of hiroshima i thought i’d tell you a bit about how it all came to be that actually nakasaki got bombed as well as hiroshima and when the americans bombed hiroshima on 6th of august in 1945 the devastation was so complete that
It actually took an entire day for the message to to filter through the system and actually reach the japanese headquarters so it was until the 7th of august that the japanese actually knew what had happened the government who by this time knew that the war couldn’t be won thought it was a
Perfect opportunity to actually ask for surrender and and end the war right then the military on the other hand thought that surrender was unthinkable and they had already started to plan for the defense of the homeland and if i remember correctly one of the top generals actually said a million
Sacrifices for for japan that’s what the military wanted but japan was getting getting more and more pre well they were under more pressure from not just the americans through the pacific but the russians was was pressing on towards china as well and on the 8th of august the russian diplomats in japan
Delivered the message that from from midnight on the 8th there would be war between japan and russia same day they get the message from truman leader of the american forces in the pacific but unless you surrender we are gonna drop more bombs instead of taking these threats seriously the
Invite in the government and and the military ended up in them sending their commission to hiroshima to actually find out what had happened and where they could really have been as bad as it was which meant that since they didn’t answer the the demand for surrender
On august 9 the day after at 1102 second atomic bomb which called the fat man was dropped on hiroshima the same day the russians enter manchuria in china and send the japanese forcing forces fleeing in disarray again there’s a lot of indecisiveness in in the military and the government they are fighting each
Other on on what to do the emperor though the symbol of japan is uh he agrees with the government and he thinks that surrender is the only way forward and truman trying to work this to advantage demands that it’s going to be the emperor who’s going to sign the peace treaty when they
Surrender but there’s so much dissent in the japanese leadership that it takes till the 14th so for three four five days there’s discussions committees trying to find out decide what is it they’re gonna do on the 14th the uh the emperor enters the scene he he actually turns up in the
In at the government chambers something that’s almost unheard of and says that japanese must accept the unavoidable it has to they has to accept america’s demand and capitalize capital so from august 15 that’s when the the emperor he publicly announces to japan that they are no longer in war
Loud speakers are put up on the streets cars drive through the streets with with and play the recording of the emperor telling them about the surrender people the the japanese propaganda machine have been so effective that this comes as a shock to many japanese who thought they were winning who
Thought the the war was going great so their stories of people throwing themselves on the streets and and tearing almost their eyes out in shame and fear because of what was to come but that was the end of the year the second world war
For the japanese and the end of a lot of lives in nagasaki