Hasegawa's Argument Analysis

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Hasegawa's argument aligns with Alperovitz's as well. He maintains that a "race" began at Potsdam between the United States and the Soviet Union when the Soviets set August 15 as their projected state of entry into the war. The Truman administration desired to end the war via the atomic bombs in order to avoid Soviet entry and maintain hegemony in the Pacific in the post-war world. Therefore, the Truman-Byrnes commitment to unconditional surrender and the Potsdam declaration was simply a prelude to the use of the atomic bombs. Byrnes position was essentially: "if we insisted on unconditional surrender, we could justify dropping of the atomic bomb."[17] Concerned about the post-war political consequences of Soviet participation in the war, U.S.

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