At 07:42 AM 7/22/01, Adam C. Lipscomb wrote:
>Kat wrote:
>
>
>The understanding Truman and military leaders had before Hiroshima was
>indeed, "This is a big bomb. Where with conventional explosives, we'd have
>been forced to use many bombing runs and thousands of bombs, we can use this
>one big bomb and accomplish our goal - an end to this war."
>
> > First, we bombed civilians.
FWIW, more civilians had already died in the firebombing of Tokyo than were
killed in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese leaders
had shown no sign of surrendering.
> > Second, and perhaps more importantly, "salting the land" has been
> > considered something of a no-no since Roman times- and dropping an H-bomb
> > is major salt. We didn't just destroy those cities in a spectacular and
> > especially deadly fashion, we killed off the fertility/livability of the
> > land for a long time, not to mention affecting the survivors.
>
>Did you know that both cities are still populated?
In fact, yesterday I had lunch with some old friends of our family, and
they showed me photos of one of their sons who I went to high school
with: he and his Japanese wife and their kids living in Hiroshima. (I
won't insult anyone's intelligence by pointing out that none of them were
wearing radiation suits, and they were surrounded by green trees and new
buildings, etc.)
>I'd hardly say the earth
>was salted. Yes, hundreds of thousands died. Yes, their descendants were
>affected. What about the millions that there was every reason to believe
>would die in an invasion? You're engaging in after-the-fact judgement, and
>you're making silly talk. The options for ending the war at that point had
>been reduced to two choices:
>(1) Invade Japan, a la D-Day. The death toll on D-Day was high enough to
>make strategists blanch at the thought of landing carriers on the coast of
>Japan, and the willingness of the Japanese military to fight to the death
>did not give much hope for easy fighting after that. Also, troops would be
>fighting in hostile territory, and could therefore not count on support or
>immunity from the local population in areas they occupied. The projected
>losses, Allied and Japanese, ran into the millions.
At least a million combatants on each side.
>That's more than
>hundreds of thousands.
>(2) Drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps different choices could
>have been made, and if there had been more time, perhaps they would have
>been made. We can't say for sure. The simple math indicated fewer people
>would die if we used these "atomic bombs", which scientists told us would be
>more powerful than any bomb ever used before.
>
>
> > I've just gone and found the Radiation Effects Research Organization
> > website (http://www.rerf.or.jp/). According to this site, at least
> > 150,000 people died in the bombings, and 280,000 more were believed to
> > have been exposed. Many of these- exact numbers seem to be vague- have
> > since died of cancer or leukemia. Children who were exposed in the womb
> > show signs of lowered IQ and higher incidences of mental retardation.
> >
> > This ain't just another bomb, and it ain't a civilized weapon.
And war in general is civilized?
Generally, the most "civilized" thing you can do when you find yourself
involved in a war is to end it as soon as possible.
>I know it
> > was during a war, but all the same, it was a nasty thing to do.
>
>It's easy to sit in your comfortable home and judge the men who had to make
>decisions that would cost thousands of lives no matter what the eventual
>decision was. I think the fact that we haven't used atomic weapons since we
>*saw* what they can do is a damn good sign that we learned something from
>using them.
--Ronn! :)
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I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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