Quote:
Originally Posted by Helmut Von Moltke
not neccesary....The US could just have maintained the blockade and starved out Japan. Less deaths.
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Perhaps. The bombings resulted in an estimated 200,000-250,000 deaths between them. I think many more than that might have had to die by starvation before Japan would surrender, if they would consider surrender at all. Remember, this was not a culture that believed in surrender. They were prepared to fight for their islands inch by inch and to arm their populace to do just that. Commonly used estimates
at the time were that in an invasion the US would suffer about 500,000 casualties (estimates ranged from very low numbers to almost 2,000,000 - see
Casualty Projections for the Invasion of Japan; Kyushu, 1945; Truman). Judging by how the tenacity of Japanese soldiers, those were not unreasonable estimates.
I voted that they were necessary, and that while cruel, did actually serve several purposes. They ended the war, they showed the world the real danger of atomic warfare, and they saved
Allied lives. I make no apology for the fact that Imperial Japan had been embarked on a war of expansion and had committed many atrocities in areas that they occupied. One can argue whether US policy provoked Japan into war (it surely did) but it also is historical fact that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war, invaded the Philippines and southeast Asia, raped and killed many innocent Chinese in Nanjing and elsewhere, mistreated prisoners of war, and forced women to work in "comfort stations". Sadly, this was the fate that the Emperor and the militarists had wrought upon their own populace. If it meant saving an equivalent number of Allied lives then there is no question in my mind of what was "necessary".