What force is justified in war?

@earl-of-trumps said
The Japanese attacked the USSR, the USA, China. Hmmmm.
Me thinks they committed war-i-cide.

Japan didn't attack the USSR in WWII and was most anxious to keep them out of the war.

@sh76 said
And that strategy might have worked had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor.

Had the Japanese laid off US possessions, it is possible that the US never would have declared war. Even if they had, the Japanese could have established a defensive perimeter that would have been hard to penetrate at least for a couple of years. Whether the American people would have supported an ...[text shortened]... a far-off war with no clear purpose and clamor for peace (which is essentially how Vietnam worked).

IF the Japanese wanted to expand into the Southern Asian territories like the Dutch East Indies (which they did) leaving advanced US outposts which interdicted their lines of supply to it was militarily impossible. Destroying the main US fleet was hardly "immaterial" to such an objective.

I do not regard Pearl Harbor (a brilliant victory) or Midway (a near defeat) as strategic blunders. Both made sense in the overall strategic campaign the Japanese had committed to.

@vivify said
If a country is attacked, what force is justified against the aggressor?

U.S. use of atomic weapons on Japan in WWII is often seen as unjustified. What would have been a better alternative? Enter a war through conventional methods that could drag for years and result in more American deaths?

Many people would distinguish between the deaths of combatants and the deaths of civilians, and therefore suggest that US soldiers perishing versus Japanese civilians perishing is preferable.

Even though this is a very important question, you rarely see it stated in such black and white terms, which has always been a little odd to me.

I think the phrasing here almost implies that the deaths of more American soldiers is someting so unpalatable that the deaths of the Japanese civilians is an acceptable collateral damage, but a soldier, if they are heroic, would probably always suggest that their own death is a part of their duty to their country, and that they should die before any women and children.

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No we don’t.

My argument is that if you’re a good person, you don’t kill civilians.
In this case Japan was not “good” in any sense of morality (unit 731, for example).

I personally think Japan and their war criminals got off very lightly. Their behaviour all over Asia was attrocious.

I still don’t believe that killing their civilians was justified. No matter what the hell they were doing abroad.

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Do you know what the word "strategic" means? Apparently not, as you think how one deploys their forces in a battle is a "strategic" decision.

The "strategy" to hit the US fleet at Pearl Harbor and the "strategy" to seize Midway (and lure the remnants of the US Pacific Fleet into battle against a superior force if possible) were good ones. How the Japanese deployed their forces in both is a debate over "tactics", not "strategy".

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What "some Japanese generals" supposedly "yearned for" is irrelevant.

@earl-of-trumps said
Long ago, a TV movie called "Missiles of October" was produced. Ever see it?
Riveting.

I actually watched this in US History class in school. It's 2.5 hours, so we watched it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and discussed it Thursday and Friday. This was in October, 1992, 30 years to the week after it happened.

@no1marauder said
A blockade would not have been necessary; the Soviet entry in the war exposed Japan to the high probability of Red Army invasion of their homelands. Indeed, Stalin had given orders to commence an attack on the northernmost island of Hokkaido on August 23rd only cancelling it after Truman objected because the island was in the agreed upon US sphere and the Japanese had alr ...[text shortened]... er regardless of the atomic bombs. Of course, there has been endless debate over this by historians.

An article strongly supporting the view that Soviet entry into the war was far more important in forcing Japanese surrender than the atomic bombs:

"They had two plans for getting better surrender terms; they had, in other words, two strategic options. The first was diplomatic. Japan had signed a five-year neutrality pact with the Soviets in April of 1941, which would expire in 1946. A group consisting mostly of civilian leaders and led by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori hoped that Stalin might be convinced to mediate a settlement between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and Japan on the other. Even though this plan was a long shot, it reflected sound strategic thinking. After all, it would be in the Soviet Union’s interest to make sure that the terms of the settlement were not too favorable to the United States: any increase in U.S. influence and power in Asia would mean a decrease in Russian power and influence.

The second plan was military, and most of its proponents, led by the Army Minister Anami Korechika, were military men. They hoped to use Imperial Army ground troops to inflict high casualties on U.S. forces when they invaded. If they succeeded, they felt, they might be able to get the United States to offer better terms. This strategy was also a long shot. The United States seemed deeply committed to unconditional surrender. But since there was, in fact, concern in U.S. military circles that the casualties in an invasion would be prohibitive, the Japanese high command’s strategy was not entirely off the mark.

One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, both options were still alive. It would still have been possible to ask Stalin to mediate (and Takagi’s diary entries from Aug. 8 show that at least some of Japan’s leaders were still thinking about the effort to get Stalin involved). It would also still have been possible to try to fight one last decisive battle and inflict heavy casualties. The destruction of Hiroshima had done nothing to reduce the preparedness of the troops dug in on the beaches of Japan’s home islands. There was now one fewer city behind them, but they were still dug in, they still had ammunition, and their military strength had not been diminished in any important way. Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.

The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.

It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.

The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.

And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier. In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same meeting, The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/