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From: jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.rumor
Subject: Re: Re: The Presidents   how I feel they rate in history
Message-ID: <266@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-May-86 00:56:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.266
Posted: Wed May 21 00:56:23 1986
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Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
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> 
> In article <709@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> michael@ucbiris.UUCP (Tom Slone [(415)486-5954]) writes:
> 
>>>>Harry S Truman
>>1 - Low intelligence, war criminal, mass murderer.  He ordered the unnecessary
>>atomic bombing of 2 Japanese cities, just as the Japanese were about to
>>surrender.
> 
> Yeah, right.  They were about to surrender, all right.  That's why it took two
> bombs.  They thought we had used up the world supply of weapons-grade Uranium
> with the first bomb, so they decided not to surrender.  They didn't count on
> Plutonium.
> 
> Truman saved millions of lives, both American and Japanese, by dropping those
> bombs.
> 
> -- 
> 		--Craig

A friend of mine has two histories of World War II, both of which say that
near the end of the war, the Japanese sent messages to Stalin asking that he
tell Truman that they were willing to surrender on the condition that they
be allowed to keep their emperor.  Stalin delayed in sending this message to
Truman, because he wanted to get involved in the Asian war.  However, the U.S.
had been reading the Japanese codes, and knew what the Japanese had asked
Stalin to do.  Stalin eventually relented and told Truman, who had to pretend
that he didn't already know.  The U.S. demanded unconditional surrender,
which the Japanese would not accept.  The final inducement was the dropping
of the atomic bombs.  After the surrender, the U.S. allowed Japanese to keep
their emperor anyway.  If all this is true, the atomic bombs did nothing to
save lives or shorten the war.

If anyone is interested, I will post the bibliographic info and the relevant
paragraphs from the two books.  If I could find my photocopies I would post
it in this article, but alas!
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."

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