R
Roman Soldier
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How would you have ended the war with Japan had you been in Truman's position? And if the war dragged on into late 1945 or early 1946 what would you do?
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SolomonVII
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Velo Princesse
The Glue That Holds It All Together
Okay, I just read in another thread about Martin Sheen staging a protest of Hiroshima and now I see this thread, which leads me to this question... Why does it matter if you oppose the bombing of Hiroshima and what good is a protest? Is it just me or does protesting something that happened so long ago seem like a huge waste of time?
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Velo Princesse
The Glue That Holds It All Together
Scribbler said:
No... no one does anything wrong but the US so there is no need to protest what other countries do. Don't you watch the news???
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R
Roman Soldier
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DuchessDinesOut said:
It bothers me to hear so many people complain about how it was wrong for US to bomb Japan. Most of these people don't know what they're talking about. Japan still didn't want to surrender before the bombs were dropped no matter what urban legends you hear.
These people don't care about the Japanese who were killed. They simply have something against America in general and wish that thousands of GIs had been killed on Japanese beaches. Normally I'm liberal but on this issue I agree with the right-wing hawks.
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R
Redneck
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Roman Soldier said:
If nukes were not an option, I'd simply have blockaded the coast of Japan and bombed any evidence of food above ground food production and any remaining infrastructure that they may have had and anything that could be used in food production. It would have cost a lot few American lives than an invasion, and there probably wouldn't be many of the Japanese left after a siege of a few years to withstand a U.S. invasion.
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Roman Soldier said:
Why did the US bomb in August then? They planned the first invasion for early November. Why bomb it in August? Unless you were scared that the war would end before then, either because of capitulation to the Russians, or you lose your chance to use your wonder weapon you spend $2 billion on and show that you mean business to the allies you (however rightly) don't trust.
I think it is kind of arrogant to say that most people don't know what they were talking about if they think the bombings were wrong. Just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean they are idiots or uninformed.
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T
the_cheat
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Roman Soldier said:
All I'm going to say on this is, it must be nice to have the overweening self-confidence that allows you to assume that you know the motives, thoughts and feelings of every member of a huge and diverse group of people.
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SolomonVII
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TScott
Curmudgeon
Injured Soldier said:
I'm sure these POWs wouldn't have minded waiting any longer. I mean the Japanese were obviously feeding them well, so I'm sure they were in no hurry for the war to end.
This Austrailian bloke wasn't allowed to wait till November. How many more of his fellow POWs would have met a similar fate if we had waited?
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SolomonVII
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Like the Germans, it was a Japanese truism that they were members of a superior race. Particular cruely and attempts to attempt the white colonists of South East Asia were used to convince the peoples of these land that they, the Japanese, were the superior ones destined to rule, and not the Europeans.
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Redneck said:
The American public is wary of the war, and wants it over with. It's been almost four years now since it started for the USA, and there's been intense fighting in the Pacific and Europe. The public doesn't want to wait another 3-5 years for the war against Japan to be over, which might hurt you in the 1948 election. Plus don't forget about the Soviet Union which is now eager to creep into Asia.
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the_cheat said:All I'm going to say on this is, it must be nice to have the overweening self-confidence that allows you to assume that you know the motives, thoughts and feelings of every member of a huge and diverse group of people.
What about all of the Americans who would have been killed in the invasion? Everytime someone says the bombings were wrong it's "the US was showing the USSR it had the bomb" and "the US is racist because it used the bomb on Japan and not Germany" and "there wasn't a need for the bomb because they were about to surrender" when they clearly were not going to.
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R
Roman Soldier
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Redneck is the only person to have given any kind of a plan to end the war against Japan without the atomic bombs.
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Redneck
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Roman Soldier said:
In 1948, the Allied forces are still mopping up the Japanese homeland and attempting to assess the number of survivors after the siege that lasted nearly three years. So far, they have found few. Resettlement of the Japanese Home Islands with citizens of the Allied nations is projected to begin in 1949. Because of the fact that there are still a large number of U.S. and British naval forces mobilized in the area, their respective high commands decide to intervene in the Chinese Civil War. Surplus euipment from demobilized allied forces is delivered to the Chinese under Chiang Kai-Shek and Marine units are landed in China. As this is happening, most of the U.S. Army divisions are being demobilized and their troops sent home. Japan is divided between the U.S. and U.K. which leaves Stalin angry but unable to do much about it given the fact that the USSR lacks significant naval forces and most of the divisions are over looting the occupied territories in Eastern Europe.
It could be plausible.
Roman Soldier said:
And it's to starve them into submission. I don't imagine there would be many Japanese people around to complain if that happened though.
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R
Roman Soldier
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That still doesn't explain how you would deal with a public that wanted the war over ASAP.
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Redneck
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Roman Soldier said:
In the 1948 election, Truman loses the election to Thomas Dewey and in 1949, Dewey signs the legislation that ends the draft despite the fact that there are still U.S. forces engaged in hostilities in China. Dewey runs on the promise to bring the troops home and wins a landslide over Truman because of the way that Truman handled the Japanese Islands and feared the repercussions should he have employed nuclear weapons against them.
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Roman Soldier brings up the point that the American people wanted the war to finish and they wanted it to finish yesterday. If for some reason the atomic bomb was not available, my recommendation (as, say, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) would be to use American troops as a beach assault (Marines and a few Army divisions) and a mobile force (the bulk of Seventh Army plus American and Commonwealth units from Europe). The majority of the soldiers, however, would be Chiang Kai Shek's. A number of Chinese divisions (about the size of an American regiment) would be re-equipped and retrained with modern weapons. This force probably wouldn't be ready for the November invasion of Kyushu, but it should be available for the final battle outside Tokyo in the spring of 1946. The Soviets would probably manage to seize the northern Home Island (whose name escapes me at the moment).
I would probably scale down the Kyushu operation; I just want to seize airfields, not conquer the whole island. Chinese troops can conquer the rest of the island if necessary. I would strongly consider the use of poison gas against the beach heads, since the American assault groups would be well equipped with anti-gas equipment while their Japanese counterparts would be seriously dificient in that category.
It's not a very nice scenario.
I would probably scale down the Kyushu operation; I just want to seize airfields, not conquer the whole island. Chinese troops can conquer the rest of the island if necessary. I would strongly consider the use of poison gas against the beach heads, since the American assault groups would be well equipped with anti-gas equipment while their Japanese counterparts would be seriously dificient in that category.
It's not a very nice scenario.
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