Another angle on it, any rational government in Japan would have surrendered and bagged it after the fall of the Mariannas, and in fact Tojo did resign at that point. You just shouldn't have needed to be Albert Einstein to figure out what was going to happen at that point.
Several accounts I've read indicate that the Japanese govt. after the war needed to conduct war crime trials against its own former leaders for crimes against Japan and the Japanese people, i.e. for getting seventy main cities torched for no reason other than being dickheads.
Still another view says that Germany had real chances to win WW-II but that Japan simply should not have been there. Japan is totally dependent upon the seas and had no conception of anti-submarine warfare. If all we'd done had been conduct submarine operations against them, they'd have been forced to surrender within ten to twelve years.
It was better to go out with a bang ( or 2 ).
gungasnake wrote:Intrepid wrote:You are SURE that is the reason for the bombing?
A desire to save the several hundred thousand westerners held prisoner by the Japanese might have had something to do with it. Another couple of months, they'd have all been killed, for food if for nothing else...
Your answer above was not one of the answers stated and, therefore, was not what I was referring to. I was referring to Orally's claim that the reason was to stop Japan from committing war crimes.
If your reply is correct, you have proved him wrong.
The history of this is too recent
and too clear to admit of any doubt:
we knew that the Japs wud fight to the death
in defense of their homeland,
and this wud cost us American casualties.
Even if only one American soldier wud suffer a wound
during the invasion, Truman was bound by loyalty to that soldier
to nuke the Japs if that wud save injury to that soldier.
To have planned differently,
for the benefit of the Japs, wud have been " aid and comfort to the enemy " = treason.
The desire to rescue the POWs from starvation was ancillary.
David
TREASON - This word imports a betraying, treachery, or breach of allegiance.
The Constitution of the United States, Art. III, defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort. This offence is punished with death. By the same article of the Constitution, no person shall be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
You consider conventional warfare to be treason?
Intrepid wrote:TREASON - This word imports a betraying, treachery, or breach of allegiance.
The Constitution of the United States, Art. III, defines treason against the United States to consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort. This offence is punished with death. By the same article of the Constitution, no person shall be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
You consider conventional warfare to be treason?
In that circumstance ( as distinct from nuclear warfare )
yes,
the point being that if the American war plan were to accept additional American casualties
for the benefit of protecting the enemy from the ills of nuclear warfare,
that wud be aid and comfort to the enemy = treason.
David
A further stretch I cannot imagine.
Given your logic.....why not nuke Iraq?
In 1718, James Puckle, Esq., an English lawyer, invented the Puckle Gun,
an early semiautomatic machinegun.
It fired one inch caliber round bullets to kill Christians
and square bullets to kill Moslems.
I wonder if we cud refine the Neutron Bomb
to just kill the Moslems ?
With that adaptation, maybe we cud call it the Puckle Bom.
I assume you meant to same Muslims. And why, pray tell should you kill all muslims?
Truth be told, I 'm not really anti-Moslem,
( tho the only reason for the 9/11 attacks was that the murderers were fanatical Moslems ).
I have withdrawn my support of the war in Iraq,
effective as of when we arrested Saddam.
Intrepid wrote:gungasnake wrote:Intrepid wrote:You are SURE that is the reason for the bombing?
A desire to save the several hundred thousand westerners held prisoner by the Japanese might have had something to do with it. Another couple of months, they'd have all been killed, for food if for nothing else...
Your answer above was not one of the answers stated and, therefore, was not what I was referring to. I was referring to Orally's claim that the reason was to stop Japan from committing war crimes.
If your reply is correct, you have proved him wrong.
The direct reason was simply to try to make Japan surrender.
Two of the many benefits that came from Japan's surrender were an end to their war crimes, and saving the lives of our POWs.
I did not mean to imply that halting their war crimes was the "only" benefit of the end of the war -- but it was an important one.
OmSigDAVID wrote:In 1718, James Puckle, Esq., an English lawyer, invented the Puckle Gun,
an early semiautomatic machinegun.
It fired one inch caliber round bullets to kill Christians
and square bullets to kill Moslems.
I wonder if we cud refine the Neutron Bomb
to just kill the Moslems ?
With that adaptation, maybe we cud call it the Puckle Bom.
What you really want is what I'd call the S Bomb (Slammnation Bomb), the major components of which would be compressed air and flash-dried pork, ground 100 times finer than the flash powder used for flintlock rifles...
Yeah, the Moslems don 't like pork.
Brig. Gen. Paul Warfield Tibbets has my admiration
and my gratitude, as an American.
Note that his name was Warfield.
David
