Could World War II Have Ended Without the Atomic Bomb?

The hundred and ten minutes at Pearl Harbor changed everything. And that's no exaggeration. That's one of the most consequential hundred and ten minutes in American history is that attack on Pearl Harbor. Ninety six cents of every federal dollar spent was going to war. Ninety six cents. I mean it's either the war or the debt service. It's an astonishing. mobilization of American money industry to fight a war. One of the big fears for the Americans was that, you know, the Japanese don't really understand surrender. They've never done like we knew the Germans understood surrender. They'd already surrendered in World War One. Like we knew they as a society they knew how to lay down their arms. Japanese didn't we didn't have a track driver with them. And throughout the Pacific War you don't really see any Organized mass surrender anywhere. They just bite to the death. You know, you look at islands like Terwa, it's ninety nine point seven percent kill rates. And so we were really worried that Japan still had five million men under arms, like All right. What if they don't surrender? Life in Japan at that point was really awful for the public. Japan had lost all of its ability to import food for the most part. It was facing a disastrous rice harvest in nineteen forty five, nineteen forty six. The average person was surviving off about sixteen hundred calories a day. It had a rampant black market. People I mean New mothers were so malnourished that they couldn't produce breast milk. So they were having an experiment with like using radish juice for newborns, turnip juices, and things like that. So they typically a person was spending about five hours a day just figuring out where their next meal was coming from. I mean it's just daily life is insufferable. How are you in a revolt when you're just trying to figure out how to get fed?

Until december seventh, nineteen forty one, Japan was pretty successful at militarizing and colonizing and so forth, what made them decide we need to attack America. They were looking to make their big expansionist push at that point. And the Japanese effectively wanted us out of the way so that they could capture the territories they wanted. And then they banked that the American public they really felt that our democracy would work against us in a war. And that the American public would never get on board with a very costly war in terms of blood. and lives as well as money on the opposite side of the Pacific. And so that eventually the Americans would get sick of this, they would allow the Japanese to settle, and Japanese would get to keep the territories that they wanted Hey everyone, it's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. We have today James M. Scott. He's a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of a number of World War Two in the Pacific books including

Black Snow Curtis Lemay, the fire bombing of Tokyo, and the road to the atomic bomb. Rampage, MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila? Target Tokyo, Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid that Avenge Pearl Harbor. I just started that this morning because you're such a good writer, James. But let me give you let me finish let me finish my proper introduction here. The war below the story of three submarines that battled Japan. The Attack on the Liberty, the untold story of Israel's deadly nineteen sixty seven assault on a U.S. spy ship. And co author with Jack Carr.

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