America's Unconditional Surrender Policy example essay topic

Evaluate the wisdom of American insistence on the "Unconditional Surrender" of Japan. Introduction The United States of America is a warrior nation. To pretend otherwise ignores a national history colored in red blood and gun smoke. Despite this, the American national conscience seeks forever the moral high ground. This national need extends to America's ability to wage and sustain war. World War II was no exception.

The Call to Arms came only after Japan's killing of unprepared men in Pearl Harbor. The nation did not see the attack as an attack on a legitimate target but as an immoral attack. Giving in to its warrior spirit, the nation looked for retribution. Unable to shake a conscience developed and tempered by its early religious heritage, though, the nation needed more justification than mere revenge for the coming actions it would take. America's policy of "Unconditional Surrender" provided this justification.

Implied in Unconditional Surrender was the concept of Unconditional Warfare - total war. Further implied in the concept of total war was the justification for a fully violent and vengeful response. America needed the moral justification implied in the policy of Unconditional Surrender. Elegant Violence: Japanese vs. American views on Warfare To the Japanese, the concept of Unconditional Surrender was a nightmare. The Japanese government had instilled in its people the idea that Unconditional Surrender to American forces would involve horrendous tortures and degradations.

Whether or not the Japanese government actually believed their own war propaganda, there was concern among the Japanese leadership that Unconditional Surrender would mean the end of Japan as a nation-state due to the expected American dismantling of the Japanese Imperial system (Freedman 201). The American public's perception of Unconditional Surrender was not necessarily the perception of the nation's leaders, though. In fact, most post-war planners in Washington saw America's Unconditional Surrender policy as flexible (James 725). However, the President did not choose to share his actual views on Unconditional Surrender with the public. To do so, would have been to negate the violent imperative behind America's total war against Japan.

Japanese and American perceptions of total war were much more in accord. Both the Japanese and American military cultures had strange and sometimes conflicting ideas about legitimate actions and targets. Both cultures could justify outrageous carnage and destruction in the pursuit of victory. That being said, the Japanese military's almost fanatic devotion to Mahanian warfare mixed with their own Samurai code meant that, many times during the war, Japanese commanders passed up incredible targets of opportunities deeming them not worthy enough. One of the Japanese military's most glaring errors was their failure to attack the American submarine fleet in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 deeming the submarines unworthy targets. This mistake allowed the United States to begin pursuing total war immediately through unrestricted submarine warfare.

Meaningless Legalities: American Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Without a doubt, unrestricted submarine warfare was illegal. German use of unrestricted submarine warfare had brought America into the first World War. Its use was so abhorrent to American policy makers that they banned unrestricted submarine warfare in the Treaty of Versailles, at the Washington Conference of 1921 and again in the London Naval Treaty of 1930 (Baer 207). As with so many policies during the war, the public image presented was not necessarily the reality.

Certainly, a majority of officers in the American navy saw the policy and treaty limitations placed on submarines as effectively making these weapons systems useless. Despite the numerous treaties, on the afternoon of December 7, 1941, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark, gave the following order to the Pacific fleet, "Execute unrestricted air and submarine warfare against Japan". In effect, America discarded countless treaties, laws and policies in a few brief moments. Immediate justification was not necessary to an outraged populace. However, in the long run and at least for historical purposes, some justification would have to be given. Certainly, Germany had violated international law first.

In effect, such a violation, in a time of war, negated that law. Since Japan had allied itself with Germany, the negation of that law extended to merchants flying Japanese flags as well as German flags. In the international arena, such an argument would hold little validity unless (of course) the Allies won the war. There was an easier path to self-justification, though, and this was through the policy of Unconditional Surrender and the total war it implied. Interestingly, the Japanese military never seemed to grasp the lessons of submarine attacks on merchant shipping from either the Germans or the Americans. There were a variety of reasons for this.

First, Japan never intended to fight a prolonged war. Attacks on merchant shipping implied a long-term strategy. At the outbreak of the war, Japan had the third largest merchant fleet with 2,146 ships (Baer 207). Japan's devotion to the Mahanian battleship also led them to believe that they could protect their merchant fleet by using their surface war fleet to destroy our surface war fleet. Secondly, Japan believed that the incredible vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the time it took to transit the ocean would prove an insurmountable obstacle to the American submarine fleet. The Japanese military mindset just did not include American submarines among the major threats to its existence.

Beaches Colored Red: Casualties of Total War Americans wanted revenge for Japan's actions at Pearl Harbor. Anger made justification for war easy. However, the loss of men at Pearl Harbor was nothing compared to the loss of men that was to come. In its coldest light, the loss of personnel in war represents a reduction in resources. It is not the mere fact of loosing weapons bearers but also loosing whatever training and experience those weapons bearers may have possessed.

Of course, war is never fought in a cold light. Generals and Admirals can argue dispassionately about what exactly constitutes acceptable losses. However, in a culture that values the individual, justification for the loss of an individual is required and retribution for the unnecessary and violent loss of individuals is expected. America declared war with vengeance on its mind and justified its actions as matters of national survival. Besides national emotions though, political ideologies and personalities dominated every aspect of the war effort. This fact was especially true at the end of the war with Japan.

While it is true that Japan had a limited time to win the war due to their limited and shrinking resources, America also was on a timeline. It was the same timeline America had been on during the Civil War. A cohesive and long-term war strategy depended on the ability of the nation's leaders to impose their policies and wills over an extended period. Unfortunately, even for a wartime president, political influence had a four year time limit. The navy was well aware of this fact when it began insisting that the Japanese war's successful conclusion must come within eighteen months of Victory in Europe day or partisan politics would destroy American unified strategy and spirit (Love 285). Unconditional Surrender could provide justification for a total war but it also assured that the loss of American fighting men would be greater.

As America prepared for the last push against Japan, two strategies to end the war dominated. One was an invasion of Japan. Politically, this option was unappetizing. Japanese resistance was legendary.

Japanese fanaticism was nearly unbelievable as demonstrated by their Kamikaze raids on American ships at the end of the war. An invasion of mainland Japan would produce staggering casualties. The second alternative was a strategic bombing campaign. Setting the World on Fire: America's bombs The scientific quest to split the atom for energy was no secret even at the start of the war. The military quest to make a weapon from the fission of atoms was a great big secret. Thus, when American policy makers were originally trying to choose between an amphibious assault and a strategic bombing campaign, the use of an atomic bomb was only a factor in the arguments of an extremely small minority.

Instead, the question revolved around the two issues previously discussed: loss of American lives and the political time clock. What strategic bombing had going for it was that, in terms of American lives, it would not be costly. America had decimated Japan's anti-air war capabilities. While some American bomber crews would undoubtedly be lost, the number of American deaths would come nowhere near politically unacceptable. Strategic bombing's toll on Japanese civilian lives, perversely enough, was only a positive that might drive Japan to a quicker surrender. The amount of devastation caused by strategic bombing in Japan, in the opinion of the Strategic Bombing Survey, would have brought the end to war with Japan within a couple of months (Greenfield 120).

Obviously, though, strategic bombing would take time. The war in Europe was over. American casualties in the island campaigns continued to grow the closer to the Japanese mainland its fighting forces got. The Navy's prediction of the necessity for a quick victory in Japan upon completion of the European part of the war was a silent political motivator. The decision, then, was to invade Japan.

Loss of life and a quick victory was politically and nationally more sound than a long drawn out bombing campaign whose success, if similar European campaigns were any indicator, was dubious. America's policy of Unconditional Surrender had brought a third option, though, with the successful test of a controlled nuclear explosion. The atomic bomb was seen as a way to win the war with minimal loss of American lives and with rapidity. America would take strategic bombing to a new level. The nation was participating in total war and the end justified the means. Thus, on August 6, 1945, an American bomber dropped the first atomic bomb over Japan.

Unconditional Surrender, the demon policy whose consequences so frightened the Japanese people, suddenly did not seem too much to ask. Surrendering on One Condition: Strategic Perspective and Conclusion Despite America's policy of Unconditional Surrender, fifty-four years later, the Emperor of Japan still resides on his throne. If anything, American insistence on Unconditional Surrender might have prolonged the war and cost even more lives. The Japanese fear of national dissolution brought about by a likely American dissolution of the Imperial system reinforced a fanaticism and spirit that would have more readily crumbled had Japanese leadership been aware of actual American political flexibility. Instead of increased resistance and desperate suicide attacks the closer American forces got to the mainland, America might have faced less resistance as Japanese spirit continued to crumble. Ignoring issues of fundamental societal differences, the Japanese would have continued to fight, though, for the simple reason that Japanese leadership effectively controlled the Japanese media throughout the war.

The Japanese leadership constantly emphasized their successes and concealed or minimized their losses to both the public and themselves (Rahn 62). Their warrior spirit and sense of ethnic superiority would not allow them to accept reality until the end. For Americans, Unconditional Surrender was about more than removing the Japanese Emperor and hanging him. Unconditional Surrender provided the moral justification the country needed to carry out and accept the atrocities of war. Japanese thinking was foreign enough that, as stated previously, it is doubtful that anything but a total shock to their system would stop them from pursuing the war. The policy of Unconditional Surrender allowed America to overcome its moral objections to pursuing total warfare.

As a fight for national existence, America found justification for: unrestricted submarine warfare, a casualty intensive island hopping campaign and a destructive strategic bombing campaign that culminated with the dropping of two atomic bombs. Japan, too, viewed American policy of Unconditional Surrender as turning a war of expansion into a war of national survival. As such, the policy did provide motivation for them to continue the war. However, without such a policy, it is probable that the American national and political consensus would have prevented the grand-scope national war effort that carried Americans through the war. In the end, a policy was needed to unify the nation long enough to win the war. That policy was Unconditional Surrender.

Thus, despite the policy causing an increase of resistance from Japan, America could not have fought a successful long-term global war without it.

Bibliography

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