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From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Message-ID: <1279@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 16:02:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1279
Posted: Mon Jul 22 16:02:02 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Jul-85 16:30:55 EDT
References: <1197@utcsri.UUCP> <5772@utzoo.UUCP> <1240@utcsri.UUCP>
Reply-To: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 26
Summary: 

In article <1278@utcsri.UUCP> hogg@utcsri.UUCP (John Hogg) writes:
>In article <307@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>Nuking cities is something that was done once, strictly for dramatic effect,
>>to end the second world war.  I don't think it's on people's minds today
>>as a direct end.
>
>   					     ...  The numbers killed, using
>any reasonable estimate, were far less than the casualties that would have
>resulted from fighting the war to its bitter end in a conventional manner.
>"Mopping up" the inventors of the kamikaze airplane, including the final
>defence of their homeland, would have involved more Japanese CIVILIAN casualties
>than two small (by current standards) nuclear bombs.  So it can be argued,
>quite reasonably, that the first use of atomic bombs SAVED lives.)

It's been suggested, in my opinion reasonably, that dropping those bombs on
a less heavily inhabited area, such as a smaller island, would have been
enough to convince the Japanese to surrender.  In fact, this is just where
the generals and the scientists began to disagree, if I remember my history.

On the other hand, would we have avoided WW III for forty years if we hadn't
seen what a small nuclear bomb does to a city?  Maybe we owe a *very* big
debt to those Japanese dead.  Let's hope we go on owing it.
-- 
Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
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