The Japanese had been insisting on that as a condition of surrender for a year. The US continually said no, the surrender must be unconditional.
It is not transparently obvious that there was anything in the slightest bit necessary about this sequence. One might argue that it was, that some total break of will was necessary for the surrender to be "real". But it is sheer speculation. On its face, the Japanese said "we'll surrender if you leave our king", the US said "surrender without that assurance or we'll kill you all", and then said "and oh by the way you can keep your king" after they surrendered.
Yes a conventional invasion would have been worse. But it is not remotely clear that was the only alternative. The road not taken was to negotiate a peace in slightly better faith, instead of in implacable self righteousness.
My father in law was involved in the surrender negotiations - he was a Signal Corps officer. I can tell you from his first hand knowledge that your theory is completely off base.
Given the information available at the time -- not after the fact interviews of Japanese military or 20/20 hindsight -- there was not an alternative, reasonable or otherwise. The Americans were working from limited data, and the material that was developed from breaking the Japanese codes contradicted much of what the Japanese negotiators were saying at the time. After all, we were trying to negotiate with an actively hostile power.
(you realize I suppose that a Japanese fleet carrying weaponized biological agents - plague, anthrax, etc. - was actually en route to the west coast of the U.S. at the time of the surrender?)
>>> The Japanese had been insisting on that as a condition of surrender for a year. The US continually said no, the surrender must be unconditional. <<<
The Japanese gov’t was also insisting that we allow them to keep their imperial possessions in Korea, China and elsewhere. They also wanted NO Allied military occupation of Japan and, I seem to remember, no war crimes trials of any kind. Fat chance.
Luckily, our leadership in Washington had enough sense at the time to say “No.” No doubt they had memories of what happened with “undefeated” Germany after WWI firmly in mind. Not to mention diplomatic considerations with its Allies.
That Roosevelt and Truman had good REASONS for holding out for “unconditional surrender” seems obvious to me.
Better faith based on what, exactly? And given that we were fighting an entire country which had openly and repeatedly declared they lived by an interpretation of Bushido that meant that they would all fight to the death, and had murdered millions of people to prove it, what is your criterion for determining the difference between implacable common sense, and implacable self-rightiousness?
Quite frankly, your position seems to be based on that same implacable self-rightiousness you are decrying, as if situational pursuit of peace is unarguably superior to fighting by default. In which case, just exactly how would you propose people muster the implacable violence necessary to destroy totalitarian monsters?
Or is that a debunked postmodern dichotomy which has been found to be the cause of inciting self-defense aggression in poor, misunderstood totalitarians, and so serves as it's own negation?