Originally Posted by samurai007
They could not "suffocate the Japanese into surrender". For a siege to work, the opponent must not be able to replenish its supplies, primarily food. It's true that we'd had a navel blockade around Japan for quite a while, which meant oil, steel, and other imports were stopped from reaching Japan. But they had food, and could keep growing more, meaning we'd never starve them out. At best it would be a stand-off while our men (tired after years of war in Europe and now the Pacific campaign) sat on ships off the coast while the Japanese held the islands. And due to skirmishes, accidents, diseases, etc, an average of 250 American soldiers died each day, even if there was no major battle. Which meant the Japanese could just wait for us to leave or die off.
The Japanese wanted to keep some or all of their empire that remained, and keep the military-led government that had prosecuted the war. Those were 2 things the allies refused to allow. They also wanted assurances that the Emperor would not be executed, which the Americans didn't have a problem with. But the terms of Japanese surrender had been agreed upon by the 3 Allies (US, England, and Russia) at the Potsdam Conference, and what all 3 had agreed was "unconditional surrender, then we'll sort things out after". The US unilaterally accepting a negotiated surrender would have broken the agreement that had been made and make the US look weak, and Russia certainly didn't want to accept conditions. It wanted to extend the war, in fact, because it was attacking the Japanese imperial holdings on the Asian mainland, with the goal of keeping everything it took after the war, just as it had done in Europe. So, letting the war continue a few more months would have meant Russia would gain Manchuria, Korea, and swept right down the coast and taken south-east Asia as well.
Third, if you read about the massive efforts being put into the Japanese homeland defense, and read statements like the following from the Japanese Imperial Headquarters: "We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight.", and knew about the Japanese soldiers refusals to surrender in the entire Island hopping campaign in the Pacific, fighting until practically the last man for worthless little islands that were not even their homelands (Germans and others usually surrendered when it became obvious they were going to lose, resulting in many PoWs, but except for a few cases, the only Japanese PoWs tended to be those who were too injured to keep fighting, but had not died.) The Japanese did not look at surrendering when in a tough or losing position the same way the Nazis and others did, and that was proven time after time in the Pacific, and would have only been more true on their home islands.
Here are the number of Japanese soldiers, the number of PoWs, and the % that fought to the death in each place:
Attu -----2350 ----29 ----98.8%
Tarawa --2571 -----8 ----99.7%
Roi-Namur 3472 ---51 ----98.5%
Kwajalein 5017 ----79 -----98.4%
Saipan 30,000 ----921 ----97%
Iwo Jima 21,000 --1,083 ---95%
Okinawa 92,000 ---7,401 ---92%
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