From: jake

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:39:19 +0900, Ernest Schaal
wrote:

The Japanese military infrastructure and capacity to wage effective war may
have already been destroyed, and sensible people would have quit under those
circumstances, but according to at least one Japan Times story the military
was quite willing to sacrifice the lives of all Japanese civilians rather
than stand the shame of living with those civilians after losing the war.

sure...
I dont doubt it for a moment..throughout human history meglomaniacs
have always been prepared to do so..

but they were the ravings of defeated meglomaniacs who had LOST their
power.

Most sources I know of talk about the resistance of the military to
surrender, and the uncommon action of the Emperor of resisting the military
on this matter.

Indeed ..
but the Japanese military had already been defeated..

The nuclear bombs were dropped for other reasons than military..

Nagasaki was chosen as a target almost randomly by the pilot
because of weather conditions..on the strength of it having a
Mitsubushi factory there..



You don't read much hsitory do you? Nagasaki was on a list of targets given to
the aircrew. Nothing "almost random" there. There were several cities, 5 or 6
IIRC, that were selected for primary or alternate nuke targets.

As for the Japanese military being defeated by August 1945 tell that to the
bunch of fully functional combat units in China, Viet Nam, Korea etc. It wasn't
until the Soviets entered the Pacific war that the Japanese forces were facing
defeat in China. If Japan hadn't surrendered who knows how long the war in
China would have lasted. The Japanese had a lot of things to cover up and had
no intention of leaving easily.

As for the Home Islands every civilian was to be armed with everything from
sharpened bamboo sticks to real weapons. Let's assume 50% of the civilians
actually acted in the invasions the number of American and Japanese casualties
would have been unbelievable. How many children would have been slaughtered?
How many suicides? Thank God we will never know.

This made the atomic bombings a military necessity. Add the casualties in
China, Korea etc to those involved in the invasions and you get numbers too big
for most people to comprehend.

I will admit there were also political reasons for dropping the bombs, but they
HAD to be used primarilay for military reasons.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired