Text 36715, 59 rader
Skriven 2006-08-13 05:01:42 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
  Kommentar till text 36616 av LEE LOFASO (1:123/140)
Ärende: CELEBRATION!
====================
Replying to a message of LEE LOFASO to BOB KLAHN:

 LL> Hello Bob,

 >>> HN>Sure it might have saved many allied troops when they had
 >>> HN>to invade Japan, but that cannot be an argument for
 >>> HN>celebrating the nukes in WWII.

 BK>> While there is no reason to celebrate the deaths of so many, it
 BK>> probably saved a lot of Japanese troops and civilians also.

 LL> Face it, Bob.  Harry S Truman was a mass murderer.  The Japanese high
 LL> command had offered to surrender a full month *before* the atomic
 LL> bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Actually, the Japanese government had asked Stalin to intercede with the allies
to open negotiations to end the war.  Stalin did *not* pass the information
along
to the US and Britain.  Since our codebreakers did not get around to decrypting
and translating the relevant diplomatic message traffic until about nine months
*after* Japan had surrendered, Truman didn't know about the offer when he
ordered
the bombs used.

 LL>  Now please explain your logic (if
 LL> there is any) as to how those atomic bombings "probably saved a lot
 LL> of Japanese troops and civilians also." After all, hundreds of
 LL> thousands of innocent men, women and children died as a result.  And
 LL> many more died later, in great pain, from radiation poisoning.

LeMay's firebombing campaign against Japanese cities killed more Japanese than
both of the nukes combined - burned, baked or boiled them (his terms).

Insofar as the saving of Japanese lives is concerned, it was believed at the
time
that the Japanese people would resist invasion to the death (on Saipan hundreds
of
Japanese civilians jumped off cliffs to their deaths rather than surrender to
the
American troops; on Attu, when the Japanese troops ran out of ammunition they
made a banzai charge against the American forces armed only with rocks and 
bayonets, the same thing happened on Guadalcanal).  The Japanese use of suicide
charges was not limited to the Army, the naval SHO-1 plan for the Philippines
and
the sending of the battleship Yamato and a few escorts on a one way trip to
Okinawa
(she didn't even get close) being two examples and the concept of using
minimally trained pilots to fly aircraft into enemy ships (kamikazes) being
another.  In point of fact
civilians in Japan were at least minimally trained in the use of pikes and
lances against invaders.  Given the observed behavior our forces assumed -
correctly IMO - that a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands would have
resulted in a bloodbath unprecedented in 
scale, and consisting mostly, of course, of Japanese, although the planners
assumed
there would also be hundreds of thousands of American casualties.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)