アメリカかぶれではありませんが。。。

原爆投下の是非については、トルーマン大統領の決断ばかりが責められていますが、個人的には日本の指導者がなぜここまでされないと決断できなかったのかという点も追求すべきだと思ってしまいます。1945年3月の東京大空襲、1945年4月の天号作戦で戦艦大和の撃沈などなど、すでに甚大な被害が起きていたんですから。

ですから、上記の動画や下記の書評のMax Hastingsという人の立場にYutaは近いです。

As Max Hastings wrote in his most recent book, All Hell Let Loose, “if Japan’s leaders had bowed to logic, as well as to the welfare of their own people, by quitting the war, the atomic bombs would not have been dropped”.

前回の記事で紹介したPaul Hamさんは原爆投下自体に批判的な立場に立っているようです。詳細は以下のtelegraphの書評を参照ください。原爆投下を批判しているためか、Amazon USAの星１つの評価の人はその点を酷評しています。

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the reckoning
Two studies, by Paul Ham and Craig Collie, based on interviews with survivors, reject the received wisdom that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to end the war, says Dan Jones.
By Dan Jones
7:30AM BST 13 Aug 2012

But did the means – 180,000 total dead and wounded on the days that the bombs were dropped and tens of thousands more later as a result of radiation poisoning – justify the end of bringing the Second World War to a close? Was it necessary, indeed, to drop the bombs at all?
These are the questions at the heart of Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Nagasaki by Craig Collie.

The conventional (which is to say the American) view of the atomic bombings in 1945 has been to regard them as a regrettable but successful expedient taken to finally subdue a suicidally stubborn and belligerent Japan, whose rulers would not accept that the baleful condition of their country made defeat inevitable – or, if they did, preferred national seppuku to the shame of surrender.

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Given Japanese pig-headedness, it is easy to make a retrospective justification for Little Boy and Fat Man. As Max Hastings wrote in his most recent book, All Hell Let Loose, “if Japan’s leaders had bowed to logic, as well as to the welfare of their own people, by quitting the war, the atomic bombs would not have been dropped”. That is undoubtedly so. Nevertheless, Ham argues, it was not quite that simple.

Paul HamさんがオーストラリアのABCテレビで話している動画リンクが以下です。

Ham challenges role of atomic bomb in WWII



冒頭の動画でKetsugoという言葉が出てきますが、本土決戦の作戦を「決号」と呼んでいたようです。

(Wikipedia)
Operation Ketsugō
Meanwhile, the Japanese had their own plans. Initially, they were concerned about an invasion during the summer of 1945. However, the Battle of Okinawa went on for so long that they concluded the Allies would not be able to launch another operation before the typhoon season, during which the weather would be too risky for amphibious operations. Japanese intelligence predicted fairly closely where the invasion would take place: southern Kyūshū at Miyazaki, Ariake Bay, and/or the Satsuma Peninsula.[20]

While Japan no longer had a realistic prospect of winning the war, Japan's leaders believed they could make the cost of conquering Japan too high for the Allies to accept, which would lead to some sort of armistice rather than total defeat. The Japanese plan for defeating the invasion was called Operation Ketsugō (決号作戦 ketsugō sakusen?) ("Operation Codename Decisive"). The Japanese were secretly constructing an underground headquarters in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, which could be used in the event of Allied invasion to shelter the Emperor and the Imperial General Staff.