Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyJWest
Do you bother to read other people's posts, Splitter? I've already pointed out twice that Eisenhower, MacArthur and Nimitz (amongst many others) thought the use of the A-Bombs unnecessary. Please stop repeating what you do or don't 'doubt', and deal with the evidence. The question is not whether the Japanese were going to surrender 'willingly', but about whether they had any ability to fight on. All the evidence suggests they didn't.
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Wait....didn't someone just say that to their understanding it was the military that insisted on dropping the bomb on a live target instead of making a demonstration? So....which is it?
I have no doubt (lol) that where was dissension in the military ranks when it came to obliterating thousands of people for whatever reason. But in the end, the military gave it's "ok" to the bombing.
You say they (Japanese) did not have the ability to fight on. I would say they no longer had the ability to "win". They certainly had the manpower (and civilians) to fight a long, drawn out, costly battle. They, the government, were willing to sacrifice millions of lives to bleed the Allies into giving favorable terms for surrender. "Winning" became retaining the Emperor, retaining some of their military gains, and no Allied occupation.
Or we could have starved them into submission. There were already severe food shortages. How many would have died? Wouldn't the weakest have died first?
Or we could have continued to bomb them. They had already lost something like 600,000 people on the mainland to US bombing. In another six months of intensified bombing, how may more would have been lost? Remember, all the while we are starving them too.
Sure, if we (the Allies) had acceded to Japanese demands, the Japanese would have been willing to go ahead and call it a war.
Then we probably would have had to go back and fight them again a few decades later. Our leaders at the time understood that.
Splitter