There was no Japanese surrender the simple reason that Japan saw its war as independent from that of Germany. Although the final collapse of Germany prompted a number of Japanese leaders to rethink their strategic position in the war and look for a way out, Japan at least appeared deceptively stronger in April 1945 than it was in reality. Japanese troops still held onto wide swaths of SE Asia, Indonesia, and there were large field armies in China. Although Japan had lost the battles of the Philippines and Iwo Jima, they had managed to inflict significant casualties on the Allied forces. Likewise, the Battle of Okinawa was also shaping up to be quite costly for the invasion force. Despite the fact that the Japanese vastly over-estimated their successes with Kamikaze operations, the massed Kikusui attacks had managed to inflict sizable losses on the American fleet around Okinawa.

Much of Japanese strength was hollow; for example, while the Kwantung Army in Manchuria was at its numerically largest, its best troops and equipment had already been siphoned off for the Pacific. While very few Japanese officers realistically thought in terms of victory or turning back the tide, there was a sense within the IJN and IJA that time was still on their side and they could inflict punishing losses on the Allies as they advanced to the Home Islands.