Discover the history of the "Third Shot," the third atomic bomb the US planned to drop on the city of Kokura in August 1945. We explore the events leading to Japan's ultimate surrender, including the Potsdam Declaration, the planned Operation Downfall invasion, and the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Learn how Emperor Hirohito's recorded surrender speech was almost destroyed during the Kyujo Incident, a military coup that nearly prolonged World War II.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
0:00 - The Third Atomic Bomb That Never Dropped
1:26 - Allies Demand Japan's Surrender at Potsdam
4:40 - US Plans Operation Downfall to Invade Japan
7:21 - US Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
10:57 - America Prepares Third Atomic Bomb for Kokura
13:14 - Rogue Officers Attempt Coup to Stop Surrender
17:14 - Japan Surrenders and Averts Third Atomic Bomb
Sources:
https://pastes.io/G9QVJyOo
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#thebattlefieldshow
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
0:00 - The Third Atomic Bomb That Never Dropped
1:26 - Allies Demand Japan's Surrender at Potsdam
4:40 - US Plans Operation Downfall to Invade Japan
7:21 - US Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
10:57 - America Prepares Third Atomic Bomb for Kokura
13:14 - Rogue Officers Attempt Coup to Stop Surrender
17:14 - Japan Surrenders and Averts Third Atomic Bomb
Sources:
https://pastes.io/G9QVJyOo
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#thebattlefieldshow
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00August 9th, 1945, we're aboard the Enola Gay, flying 31,000 feet above the Japanese city of Kokura,
00:10situated in the southern part of the country on Kyushu Island.
00:14Mere moments from now, the atomic bomb named the third shot will be released.
00:20The bombardier pushes the button, barely beginning to comprehend the enormity of what's about to unfold,
00:26but believing that this is the only way to end a war that's ravaged the entire world.
00:31The bay doors slowly open.
00:34Far below tens of thousands of people, men, women and children of all ages,
00:39go about their lives blissfully unaware that their existence is mere moments from its untimely end.
00:46The payload is released and plummets towards the ground.
00:49Seconds later, the entire scene erupts in a blinding flash of light.
00:55None of this actually happened.
00:58A third atomic bomb wasn't dropped on Japan, and Kokura wasn't wiped off the map that day.
01:04But it came close.
01:06Far closer than most people realise, in fact.
01:09This is the extraordinary and little-known story of the third atomic bomb.
01:13An attempted coup d'etat, and a catastrophe that was only prevented by a couple of vinyl records
01:20and a slender stroke of fortune.
01:22Unconditional surrender.
01:24May 1945.
01:26After almost six years of fighting, millions of deaths and unimaginable suffering across the globe,
01:33World War II is seemingly approaching its end.
01:36The Soviets have taken Berlin.
01:38Nazi Germany's collapsed.
01:40Adolf Hitler is dead, having taken his own life in his underground bunker.
01:45And his Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, has been executed by the Italian resistance.
01:50In Europe, at least, the conflict appears to be winding down, with German soldiers surrendering en masse.
01:56But in the Pacific, one of the Axis powers, Japan, continues to fight just as ferociously as before.
02:03In the weeks and months that follow, the leaders of the Allied nations, the United States, Great Britain and the
02:09Soviet Union,
02:09meet in the ruins of the German city of Potsdam, to work out a way to make the Japanese submit
02:16and bring about a complete end to the conflict.
02:20The result of their efforts is a document issued on 26 July named the Potsdam Declaration,
02:27and otherwise known as the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender.
02:31The declaration demands the immediate and unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces.
02:37It also sets out strict territorial limits for Japan's future sovereignty,
02:42along with plans for the demilitarisation of the country
02:45and stern punishments for those who are deemed to have committed war crimes.
02:50The terms are strict, but logical, given the circumstances,
02:54and the Potsdam Declaration also promises that Japanese military personnel and civilians
03:00will be permitted to live out their lives in peace,
03:03provided the country's leadership agrees to these terms.
03:07If they refuse, however, the prompt and utter destruction of Japan will ensue.
03:13Now, on the surface, it seemed as though Japan had little choice but to agree.
03:17But there was one point that the country's leaders just couldn't get past.
03:22The declaration was notably vague about what would happen to the men at the very top of the food chain,
03:28Emperor Hirohito himself.
03:30And the reason for this vagueness was that the Allies actually disagreed on what should be done with Hirohito.
03:36The Americans wanted the Japanese imperial system abolished entirely,
03:41and believed that Hirohito should be imprisoned and tried as a war criminal.
03:45The Brits, meanwhile, felt that this would be a step too far,
03:49and they argued it made more sense to retain the monarchy and allow Hirohito to maintain his throne
03:55in order to get the Japanese people on side,
03:58with the idea of having Allied forces occupy their lands.
04:02And this was another term that had been set out in the details of that declaration.
04:06And since the US and the UK just couldn't come to a clear agreement,
04:10they weren't able to specifically state Hirohito's fate,
04:14and that made Tokyo highly suspicious.
04:17And thus, the Japanese government rejected the Potsdam Declaration,
04:21opting instead to begin back-channel diplomatic negotiations via the Soviet Union.
04:27Now, the US, of course, didn't take too kindly to this.
04:30It felt that Japan was simply stalling, buying itself time and prolonging the war unnecessarily.
04:36And so Washington began looking at other options.
04:39One of those options was Operation Downfall,
04:42a proposed plan by the US and Britain to invade Japan.
04:46Set to begin in November 1945, the operation was divided into two phases,
04:51Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet.
04:54And the objective of Operation Olympic was to target the southern third of the island of Kyushu,
05:00making the most of the recently captured island of Okinawa as a staging ground.
05:05So by spring 1945, Operation Coronet would follow on,
05:10involving a large-scale invasion of the Kanto Plain just outside Tokyo.
05:14That's on the main island of Honshu.
05:16And this would have been the largest amphibious operation in history,
05:21far surpassing D-Day, involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers
05:25facing off against not just the Japanese Imperial Army,
05:29but millions of mobilised civilians too.
05:32Because Japan was perfectly aware of the American plan,
05:35it knew that an invasion was likely to occur,
05:39and it had already begun preparing for it.
05:42Its counterplan, named Ketsugou, or Operation Decisive,
05:46was built around turning Kyushu into a veritable fortress,
05:51amassing vast fleets of suicide boats, planes and even divers.
05:55And the government also enacted a full civilian mobilisation campaign,
05:59using the slogan,
06:01The Glorious Death of 100 Million,
06:04to inspire its people to lay their lives on the line to defend their homeland.
06:08And while many were naturally terrified by the prospect and had no military experience,
06:14they also felt a certain sense of duty to step up and sacrifice themselves,
06:20even if it meant certain death.
06:23The US understood this.
06:25It had seen firsthand how determined the Japanese populace could be
06:30when literally thousands of civilians chose to take their own lives,
06:34instead of suffering the dishonour of surrendering.
06:37That was during the bloody battles in locations like Saipan and Okinawa.
06:41So the Allies just couldn't simply then count on Japanese people
06:46waving the white flag and giving up peacefully.
06:48And if Operation Downfall went ahead,
06:51it could quickly spiral into one of the ugliest military campaigns of all time,
06:56dragging on far beyond its 1946 deadline.
06:59And to make matters worse,
07:01Japan still held hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners of war at the time,
07:06and guards were under strict orders to slaughter them all,
07:11if and when an invasion began.
07:13Now, of course, that couldn't be allowed to happen.
07:16So there had to be another way.
07:20Enter the atomic bomb.
07:22Having weighed up their options,
07:24evaluated numerous scenarios,
07:26and calculated the consequences of their intended actions,
07:29Allied commanders came to the only conclusion that they could.
07:33They must use the ultimate weapon.
07:36An atomic bomb would cause unimaginable devastation and horrific loss of life,
07:41but it appeared to be the only option left
07:45that was powerful enough to effectively force Japan's leadership to submit.
07:49And so, in the early hours of August 6th, 1945,
07:53the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay took off from Northfield
07:57in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the CNMI,
08:01beginning an approximately six-hour flight to Japan.
08:05And by the time it arrived above the city of Hiroshima,
08:07the sun had risen and the skies were clear.
08:11At 8.15 a.m. local time,
08:13the bomb, codenamed Little Boy, was dropped.
08:17It contained 141 pounds, or 64 kilograms, of uranium-235,
08:23and took a little less than a minute to fall from the aircraft
08:27to its detonation height, some 1,900 feet above the city.
08:30The subsequent explosion was unlike anything that the world had ever seen before,
08:37killing approximately 70,000 people instantly
08:40and leaving tens of thousands more with fatal radiation poisoning.
08:45Incredibly, even in the wake of such abject horror,
08:50Japan's leadership refused to give in.
08:52Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the chief of the Naval General Staff,
08:56believed that the Americans most likely only had
08:58one or two more bombs of such magnitude,
09:00and he argued that Japan could endure another strike or two
09:04while still continuing to fight.
09:07And so, even as the U.S. issued numerous warnings
09:11that another Japanese city would soon experience
09:13the exact same fate as Hiroshima,
09:16Tokyo moved no closer to agreeing to the Potsdam Declaration.
09:21And so, on August 9th, 1945,
09:24tens of thousands more innocent people
09:27paid the price for that refusal.
09:30Another B-29, the boxcar,
09:32was readied and set off from the CNMI towards its destination,
09:36the industrial city of Kokura.
09:39Upon arrival, however,
09:41the bomber found that the city was obscured by smoke and cloud cover.
09:44So, it decided to divert to its secondary target, Nagasaki.
09:49And just after 11am, local time,
09:52the boxcar dropped the Fat Man bomb onto the city,
09:56killing an estimated 40,000 people in the blink of an eye.
10:00And around 30,000 more would succumb to injuries
10:03and radiation sickness by the end of the year.
10:05And that very same day,
10:07Japan was struck by another piece of devastating news.
10:10The Soviets were invading.
10:12The Red Army had begun its march
10:14into Japanese-controlled Manchuria and Sakhalin Island
10:17and seemed to be building up for a full-scale assault
10:20on the island of Hokkaido,
10:22the northernmost island of Japan.
10:24So, Japan was on the brink and everyone could see it.
10:27Even members of the country's Supreme War Council,
10:31like the Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki
10:32and Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo,
10:35they felt that Tokyo now had no other option but to surrender.
10:39But others, however,
10:40like the Minister of War, General Korichika Anami,
10:44stubbornly disagreed.
10:45Two atomic bombs and an invasion
10:48seemingly hadn't been enough to break the deadlock.
10:51So, America started work on strike number three.
10:56And despite popular belief,
10:58the US hadn't used up its entire nuclear arsenal
11:01following the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
11:04One more bomb was already in the final stages of production
11:08and was set to be ready to drop by August 19th, 1945.
11:12And since Japan was refusing to deal with the Allies,
11:15it seemed as though a third strike would be necessary,
11:18with some US military officials even suggesting
11:21that four or even five bombs might be required in the end
11:25to finally force Tokyo to accept their terms.
11:28So the components were promptly dispatched to the CNMI
11:31and tactical planners huddled over maps
11:34trying to decide on the best place to drop it.
11:36Kokura was their number one target.
11:39It had already been identified as one of the prime places
11:42to drop a bomb,
11:43since it was the site of major military production plants
11:46and equipment stockpiles.
11:47And the surrounding area was also relatively flat,
11:50which would help maximise the blast damage of the bomb.
11:53But this wasn't the only potential target.
11:55The US was also looking at Tokyo
11:58and even the Imperial Palace itself as the ideal place
12:01to strike in order to effectively cut the head off the snake
12:05and kill Emperor Hirohito.
12:07But this plan, however, came with a massive risk.
12:10Hirohito was the only person
12:12with the authority to order a Japanese surrender.
12:16And the power vacuum that would emerge
12:18in the event of his death
12:19could lead to a sustained period of confusion and chaos,
12:23rather than bringing about the desired outcome,
12:26which was an immediate end to hostilities.
12:28So other suggested targets included industrial hubs
12:32and port cities such as Sapporo, Yokohama and Niigata.
12:35But US President Harry S. Truman
12:37was reluctant to authorise another strike.
12:40He just did not want to see tens of thousands more people,
12:44including many women and children,
12:46perish when there was still a chance
12:48that Japan might surrender beforehand.
12:50And so while the third bomb was being readied,
12:53the US military continued conventional firebombing runs
12:57against Japan,
12:58aimed at maintaining pressure on its enemies
13:00and convincing them that now was the time
13:02for them to stand down.
13:04And within the Japanese leadership group,
13:06serious trouble now, however, was brewing.
13:09August the 14th, 1945,
13:12having seen so many of his people wiped out
13:15and feeling as though he'd finally run out of room to manoeuvre,
13:18Emperor Hirohito makes perhaps
13:20the most important decision of his life.
13:23His Supreme War Council is stuck in deadlock
13:25with disagreements about whether to keep the war going
13:28or to end it.
13:29So it's up to him to break that stalemate.
13:32And that is exactly what he intends to do.
13:35So late at night,
13:36he convenes an emergency meeting
13:38and announces to his advisers and officials
13:40that he will accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.
13:44Soon after,
13:45Hirohito records his surrender speech
13:47onto two vinyl phonograph records.
13:49The first attempt was deemed to be too quiet,
13:51and so he was advised to make a second copy,
13:54which was then regarded as the official speech
13:57and set to be broadcast the following day
13:59for the whole world to hear.
14:00And it would be the first time ever
14:02that the Japanese public would hear the voice
14:05of their divine emperor,
14:06who would then order them to lay down their arms at last.
14:11But not everyone agrees with him,
14:13and some are ready to do anything
14:15to stop that recording from being released.
14:18And chief among them is Major Kenji Hatanaka,
14:21who, along with several other officers and fanatics
14:24inside the Imperial Army,
14:26believes that the emperor has been tricked
14:28or misled by traitorous advisers.
14:31So Hatanaka quickly devises a plan,
14:34which will then come to be known as the Kyojo Incident,
14:37with the intention of storming the Imperial Palace,
14:40placing the emperor under house arrest
14:42and destroying the surrender speech recordings.
14:46So late at night,
14:47under the cover of darkness,
14:49Hatanaka and his men surround the palace,
14:51and they encounter Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori,
14:54commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division,
14:56whom they invite to participate in their attempted coup.
15:01Mori refuses,
15:02and is then subsequently shot and killed by Hatanaka.
15:05The Lieutenant General's brother-in-law,
15:07Michinori Shiraishi,
15:08is also slaughtered on the spot.
15:11The conspirators then use Mori's official stamp
15:14to forge military orders
15:16that allow them to enter and occupy the palace,
15:19which, of course,
15:19they then swiftly begin to scour
15:21in search of the emperor
15:22and those vinyl records bearing his voice.
15:25And at the very same time,
15:26assassination squads have been dispatched
15:28to other parts of Tokyo
15:30with the intention of killing
15:31the country's Prime Minister Suzuki
15:33and Foreign Minister Togo.
15:35But both men managed to make it out
15:37with their lives intact.
15:38And back at the palace,
15:40Hirohito is hiding out
15:41in his secret bunker beneath the palace compound,
15:44while armed insurgents
15:46search the many rooms and corridors up above him.
15:48Had they managed to find those recordings,
15:51the conspirators could have effectively
15:53signed the death warrants
15:55of tens of thousands more citizens,
15:57as a third atomic bomb
15:59would then soon have been deployed
16:01on top of Kokura,
16:03compounding the tragedies
16:04of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
16:07Thankfully, they didn't.
16:08The recordings had been tucked away
16:10inside a safe in a nondescript office
16:13and were then subsequently smuggled
16:15out of the palace,
16:16one in a lacquer box
16:18and the other in a simple lunch bag.
16:21Still, Hatanaka did not give up.
16:24He and his men left the palace
16:25and attempted to stop the surrender speech
16:27from being broadcast at the NHK station.
16:31But by this point,
16:32their coup was all but over.
16:34General Anami,
16:36the Minister of War
16:36who'd been partially responsible
16:38for the deadlock in the first place,
16:40took his own life
16:41and left a note of apology to the Emperor.
16:43Another general, Shizuichi Tanaka,
16:46commander of the Eastern District Army,
16:48also arrived on the scene,
16:50exposing Hatanaka's forged orders
16:52and commanding the Imperial Guard troops
16:55to return to their barracks.
16:56Hatanaka committed suicide soon after.
16:59And on August 15th,
17:01the so-called dual-voice broadcast was aired,
17:04with the Japanese public
17:06and millions more listening from around the world
17:09finally hearing the news
17:11that had been such a long time coming.
17:14Even after the Emperor's broadcast went out,
17:17the threat of a third atomic bomb
17:18didn't simply vanish,
17:21nor did the war completely end overnight.
17:23Because Hirohito used quite vague
17:26and archaic language in his speech
17:28and the transmission itself
17:29was of quite poor quality.
17:32Many people had a hard time understanding
17:34what message he was actually trying to convey,
17:36which then led to a lot of confusion
17:39in that immediate aftermath.
17:41Some people got the message
17:42and responded with a mixture of fear,
17:44frustration, acceptance even,
17:46and outrage.
17:48Others were just left bemused,
17:50with some believing that the Emperor
17:52was ordering them to keep on fighting.
17:53Large parts of the Imperial Army
17:56remained cautious and sceptical,
17:58unsure if that speech was even real,
18:01or some sort of ploy on the part of the Americans
18:04to fool them into laying down their weapons.
18:06So as a result,
18:08small-scale skirmishes continued to break out
18:10in the days that followed.
18:12And wary of the risk of renewed hostilities,
18:15the United States military
18:16kept its third atomic bomb,
18:19codenamed Third Shot, on standby.
18:22Ready to deploy
18:23if the situation suddenly deteriorated.
18:26Finally,
18:27on the 2nd of September 1945,
18:30General Douglas MacArthur
18:31observed as Japanese officials
18:34signed that formal declaration of surrender,
18:37ensuring that Third Shot
18:39would never be used.
18:41Its core was temporarily retained
18:43for research purposes,
18:44but then was melted down in 1946.
18:47And so the third bomb
18:48never did fall on Kokoro,
18:50or Tokyo,
18:51or any other Japanese city.
18:54But it's so easy to see how it could have.
18:57Had Hirohito delayed his decision
18:59just a little longer, for example,
19:01or had Hattanaka's coup succeeded,
19:04the history that we look back on today
19:06could be extremely different.
19:09The US may have been left with no other choice
19:11but to drop that third shot,
19:13wiping out another Japanese city
19:15and tens of thousands more people along with it.
19:19And even that may not have been enough
19:20to end the conflict.
19:21Subsequent strikes,
19:23or even a full-scale Operation Downfall invasion
19:25may eventually have been necessary
19:28to make Japan submit.
19:29And there's no telling
19:31how much more blood
19:32would have been spilled
19:33in what was already
19:34the deadliest war
19:36in all of history.