Hiroshima justified? (was Enola Gay: Burnt flesh and other

From: Richard Periut
Date: 12/27/2003 7:53 PM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

Charles Gray wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 06:11:26 GMT, Richard Periut
wrote:


Pardon the intrusion; but the biggest sin of this country was the
shameless act of killing innocent lives, just to set an example.

The device should of been dropped on the emperor and high command of the
Japanese military machine.

Richard


And then who do you get to surrender? Cut off the head and you
have dozens of organizations, some which will surrender, others who
won't and nojne who can surrender for the nation as a whole.
It was the emperors and governments command that permitted the quick
and easy occupation and demobilization of Japan-- compare that to some
of the difficulties in Iraq, where no such cooperation took place.


So let me get this straight; in order to clear a country of a despotism,
you have to try to annihilate at least two cities full of thousands of
civilians?

I'm really intrigued.

Richard

Are you deliberatly forgetting all the other cities and military targets that
had already been destroyed? You do realize the dead in Nagasaki and Hiroshima
are a small percentage of the Japanes who had already died, don't you?

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

So let me get this straight; in order to clear a country of a despotism,
you have to try to annihilate at least two cities full of thousands of
civilians?

That's a pretty good statement of the situation as it faced Truman and
his advisors. All things considered, they decided that it was the best
and least bloody option, and they accepted it. Happily it worked.

Note that Hiroshima in addition to its civilians contained the
headquarters of the Second Group Army, which in contemporary American
terms would be called a Command. It was responsible for southern
Honshu and Kyushu. So if the Americans and British Commonwealth troops
had to make their landing on November 1, it would have been against an
army that had lost its entire headquarters staff.


all the best -- Dan Ford
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