-Caveat Lector-
--- Bob Stokes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
We did not attack Japan; Japan attacked the US.
The Japanese are much like people in the US, they
don't like to give up in a fight. The only way to
force Japan to surrender was to use the bomb or to
invade the main island.
They would have fought off the invasion to the best
of their ability and it would have cost millions of
lives on both sides.
The bomb was probably the only way to make the
Emperor surrender. I hope you can see my point.
Regards,
Bob Stokes
_______________________________________________________
Hello Bob,
I appreciate your response and I do see your point.
You make a good one.
The American People wanted the war to end and
the "boys to come home". It had already ended
in Europe and the national attitude was to get
it over with in the Pacific. This atmosphere
made it more politically palatable to end it
with a quick decisive strike.
In his autobiography, "Mission With LeMay",
Air Force General Curtis LeMay paints a grim
picture of the situation in Japan during the last
days of the war. U.S. heavy bombers flew virtually
unchallenged in the skies over Japan. We conducted
incendiary bomb strikes on Tokyo which produced a
firestorm which lasted several days. More people
were killed in that destruction of Tokyo than
were killed by either atomic blast in Hiroshima
or Nagasaki. LeMay clearly makes the point that
The U.S. Army Air Force (as it was then called),
had destroyed the Japanese air defense fighter
forces and we had complete control of the airspace
over Japan. We also had the strategic long-range
bomber force capable of pulverizing Japanese cities
into rubble. In fact, most of them were rubble.
It was difficult to find relatively undamaged
target cities on which to target the atomic bombs.
Japan's industry required raw materials to sustain
their war effort. Many of those vital raw materials
had to be imported by sea.
But the U.S. Navy had absolute mastery of the sea.
The Japanese Navy and much of their merchant marine
fleet had been destroyed.
>From a purely strategic military viewpoint,
we did not have to invade the Japanese homeland.
With absolute control of the airspace and the
sealanes, we could have simply backed off, denied
them any imports or commerce, and their industries
would have ground to a halt. (They were already
very seriously crippled).
I agree that such a solution would not have satisfied
the American public's need for "retribution".
Regards
Nakano
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