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From: david@randvax.ARPA (David Shlapak)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: flame on America
Message-ID: <1646@randvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 23-Jan-84 21:10:24 EST
Article-I.D.: randvax.1646
Posted: Mon Jan 23 21:10:24 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 10:33:05 EST
References: <6418@watdaisy.UUCP>, <1710@ihuxf.UUCP>, <6435@watdaisy.UUCP>
Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica
Lines: 43


    Okay, try this defense of Nagasaki on for size...

    By mid 1945, the USAAF (United States Army Air Forces) had bombed
    almost all of urban Japan to ashes and rubble.  Still when, for
    example, US Marines assaulted Iwo Jima and Okinawa they found no
    evidence that the Japanese government or people had lost any of their
    will to fight (check out the casualty statistics on both sides...they'll
    curl your hair even if you're bald).  By August of that year, it had
    become apparent to the Allied high command that an invasion of the Jap-
    anese home islands would be necessary in order to get Tokyo out of the
    war.  This final assault would undoubtedly have cost one million American
    lives and between five and fifteen million Japanese.

    Enter Little Boy and Fat Man.

    After the Hiroshima detonation, there is evidence that a peace feeler
    was sent by some element in the Tokyo government via neutral Sweden.
    Unfortunately, translation delays and other difficulties apparently
    snafu'd its transmission to US authorities until after the Nagasaki
    attack.

    The feeling after Hiroshima was that the Japanese still hadn't gotten the
    message (and many of them hadn't---a substantial portion of the War Cab-
    inet wanted to continue hostilities AFTER the second atomic attack), so
    the Nagasaki bomb was dropped.  Bingo...message received.

    My personal belief is that the use of the atomic bombs against Japan
    were the most unintentionally merciful acts ever perpetrated by a
    combatant in modern warfare...by forstalling the necessity for an
    invasion of the home islands, ten million lives were probably saved...
    NINE MILLION of them Japanese.

    So trip me no guilt about Hiroshima and Nagasaki...the nuclear genie was
    out of the bottle when Fermi pulled the switch in the squash court
    and the U of Chicago and nothing is ever going to put it back in.
    I only agree with Jon Schell on one thing...we can never learn how to
    unmake 'em, so we damn well better learns to live with 'em...or die
    trying.

    No cheers this time 'round....

						--- das