Matrix Games Forums

BBfanboy wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 11:00 am

ORIGINAL: JanSako

players must instead agree on what victory means. And everyone will have a different take on that.

That is the crux of the matter!

Points are just counters, they are fine & all & the designers needed some mechanic to measure who is winning. But I think we should leave point counts and what they mean entirely off this discussion.

This is my 'measure of victory':

If the Japanese HQ IRL would be in a similar position than what I see on the map, would they have sued for peace?

- If the answer is NO, then I have achieved a measure of victory.
- If the answer is Yes, and the date is past 8/45, then I 'did well', but still lost.
- If the answer is Yes, and the date is before 8/45, then I lost & no 2 ways about it.

Now, given two players of equal skill, is it logical to I expect a 1/3 chance of achieving any of those or is it more like 5%-10%-80%?

Sure, planes can fly on rice & one can have tons of HI points stockpiled to continue producing but if all you have left of the Home Islands is Hokkaido, then you lost & that is that, never mind that you still hold half of China.

If I were playing as Japan, I would agree that Allied landings on the four main home islands delayed until 1946 would be a Japanese victory.

Operation Olympic was supposed to happen in November 1945. The Allied nations were running short on money to continue the war - Britain was already deeply in debt and people in the US were not investing in Victory Bonds as readily as they were earlier. The US had to wrap things up quickly.

On the Japanese side, their people were starting to starve, not just getting skinny but showing signs of malnutrition. They could grow food in the country side but had no fuel to transport it to cities, and not enough horses or oxen to pull cartloads there! Not sure if they had coal for trains or if that was all used up powering industry. Most of their coal (I think) was on Hokkaido anyways and that required ships to get it to Honshu. Having lost control of the sea they could not do that more than a trickle.

And then there were the cut-off troops - able to scrounge some food from the local countryside at the point of a gun, but not able to get munitions and medical supplies. Japanese leaders may have feared for the survival of their race if their men were slaughtered and the "barbarians" took over their country. If they did not stop Operation Olympic cold, or delay it, they would have to capitulate to save their population.

That is correct Hokkaido provide biggest part of coal in homeland (total 50 million tons per year).
Japan also imported over 200 million (no one knows exact number) tons of coal from Manchuria. Coal is always the biggest par of shipping through out the war feeding their industry. They built a specialized wharf near Port Arthur for coal transport which was the most modernized in east Asia at that time.

Historically Japan by no means would survive to next year if they did not surrender after A-bombing. Food and Coal were totally cut off from Manchuria and Korea （import 2 million tons food per year) by Operation Starvation. Japan has about 60K km2 of rice field in homeland at that time. US planned to burn most of them with 200K tons of incendiary bombs or simply petrol when the field is dry at harvest time. There is no doubt the whole country would get into great famine. Their food supply was already reduced to minimum in 1944. US provided Japan with 600K tons food in just 5 months in 1946 after the war to avoid starvation.

jiajia1,

Nice photos and information, BUT....

"...if they did not surrender after A-bombing.."

I believe that Japan surrendered after being invaded by the Russians, NOT the A-bombs, from historical documents released.

Huw Jones wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 12:50 pm jiajia1,

Nice photos and information, BUT....

"...if they did not surrender after A-bombing.."

I believe that Japan surrendered after being invaded by the Russians, NOT the A-bombs, from historical documents released.

I have seen many times of this saying especially from China/Soviet official documents. What I would say is A-bombing is the reason for surrender. The invasion of Russians (actually the invasion of Kuril Islands was already 18 Aug and I do not believe Russians have the ability to land on Japan homeland) is the reason for quickly surrender. But that could not explain why it was Americans not Russians landed on Japan.

jiajia1 wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 3:19 pm

Huw Jones wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 12:50 pm jiajia1,

Nice photos and information, BUT....

"...if they did not surrender after A-bombing.."

I believe that Japan surrendered after being invaded by the Russians, NOT the A-bombs, from historical documents released.

I have seen many times of this saying especially from China/Soviet official documents. What I would say is A-bombing is the reason for surrender. The invasion of Russians (actually the invasion of Kuril Islands was already 18 Aug and I do not believe Russians have the ability to land on Japan homeland) is the reason for quickly surrender. But that could not explain why it was Americans not Russians landed on Japan.

Actually it's from recently declassified JAPANESE documents.

Their intel, said that USA wouldn't have enough plutonium to drop any more bombs, things along those lines.

But were worried about Russia taking more of Japan and would prefer Americans there.

Huw Jones wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 3:28 pm

jiajia1 wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 3:19 pm

Huw Jones wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 12:50 pm jiajia1,

Nice photos and information, BUT....

"...if they did not surrender after A-bombing.."

I believe that Japan surrendered after being invaded by the Russians, NOT the A-bombs, from historical documents released.

I have seen many times of this saying especially from China/Soviet official documents. What I would say is A-bombing is the reason for surrender. The invasion of Russians (actually the invasion of Kuril Islands was already 18 Aug and I do not believe Russians have the ability to land on Japan homeland) is the reason for quickly surrender. But that could not explain why it was Americans not Russians landed on Japan.

Actually it's from recently declassified JAPANESE documents.

Their intel, said that USA wouldn't have enough plutonium to drop any more bombs, things along those lines.

But were worried about Russia taking more of Japan and would prefer Americans there.

Can you please provide the link their intel did that?
Their worry explained why surrender has to be quick. But did not explain why they suddenly changed from "Hondo Kessen" to unconditional surrender.

Did A-bombs or the Russian invasion cause the final surrender of Japan?

It's a subject worthy of anyone's time and there are two remarkable & important books on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imp ... 0141001461

https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Sta ... 674016939/

Both come to a different conclusion and are together and separately excellent books.

Cheers,

Anssi

jiajia1,

It was a written news article a few years ago, either the BBC or the Financial Times, before that article I always presumed it was the A bombs as well.

Just googled it, plenty of OK websites say the same, a quick google search says:

"Nuclear weapons shocked Japan into surrendering at the end of World War II—except they didn't. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union entered the war. Japanese leaders said the bomb forced them to surrender because it was less embarrassing to say they had been defeated by a miracle weapon."

Yes the argument has been for many years and will continue. You can always find something new.

For me, I tried to find a better English translation of Japan's last slogan "一億玉砕" but failed. John Toland put it into "One Hundred Million Die Together" in his book roughly gave the meaning. Direct translation would be "jake breaks" used as a verb. It comes from Chinese ancient history book "a man would rather die like a jake breaks than live like a tile keeps unbroken (without honor)". It was first used for the Banzai Charge during the Battle of Attu.

In Japanese it was 4 Chinese characters (adapted), short and shock. It means all people, homeland(73) + Korea(23) + Formosa(4) = 100 million, should sacrifice themselves to protect Japan. Manchuria (another 30 million) is not included. If the slogan was to against Russians, Manchuria was the first line must be included. So it was to against Americans. It was the final solution or threaten to make Americans calculate the life cost in the invasion of Japan because Americans value lives much more than Japanese or even Russians. Surely japs did not care lives of Koreans or Chinese and treat them like dogs. They were sure Russians did not have the ability to land on homeland which was true. If both US and Russia can not threaten homeland, the war will continue.

A-bomb beat the solution. Americans can destroy the whole country without losing lives. There went their last hope. There is no reliable sources show Japan knew US has no A-bombs left. If they knew, of course war will continue.

Huw Jones wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:18 am jiajia1,

It was a written news article a few years ago, either the BBC or the Financial Times, before that article I always presumed it was the A bombs as well.

Just googled it, plenty of OK websites say the same, a quick google search says:

"Nuclear weapons shocked Japan into surrendering at the end of World War II—except they didn't. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union entered the war. Japanese leaders said the bomb forced them to surrender because it was less embarrassing to say they had been defeated by a miracle weapon."

I googled but could not find the source of this paragraph, there are some copies on several websites I have no interest to open. I am pretty sure I have read even more than this article contain on that side. Most of them not worth a discuss and I never change my thought just because who said what.

jiajia1 wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 1:50 amA-bomb beat the solution. Americans can destroy the whole country without losing lives. There went their last hope. There is no reliable sources show Japan knew US has no A-bombs left. If they knew, of course war will continue.

The source was the declassified documents from the Japan war cabinet, just because you can't find them online, doesn't mean much.

As I said they thought that the USA had no more plutonium left, to possibly 1 bomb, USA couldn't bomb them into oblivion with A-Bombs, no material for a while.

And if you are a Japanese, who would your rather take over the islands an American or a Russian, jaja.

Huw Jones wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 11:05 pm And if you are a Japanese, who would your rather take over the islands an American or a Russian, jaja.

This is irrelevant to our discussion. It was a minor question after the decision of surrender which was really tough for Japan at that time (today we are talking about it like where we are going have dinner). Any surrender speech and you were a dead man. The decision had to be made by the Emperor himself even this the Tokyo Imperial Palace still got raid to stop surrender on the longest day of Japan.

I am doing search to find declassified Japanese wartime cabinet docs though there could not be much chance but worth a try.

Got nothing with search "Japanese Declassified" and Chinese/Japanese equivalant plus atom bomb. There are Japanese Declassified files exist but none related with atom bomb most focus on war crimes. Many important files were burnt before surrender on purpose. It will be waste time continue this job. I suggest we stop this discussion.