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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Bombing Japan (Re: History Corrected - WWII)
Message-ID: <1134@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Oct-84 14:09:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1134
Posted: Sat Oct 13 14:09:12 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Oct-84 18:40:56 EDT
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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============
        I will not dispute that, in retrospect, bombing Nagasaki seems
to have been unnecessary;  but bombing Hiroshima saved American AND
Japanese lives;  you're just as dead in a conventional war as from
an atomic blast.  
============
Encyclodaedia Britannica ends its article on WW II by saying
"Early Japanese surrender was inevitable.  It was probably better
for both the Japenese and the Americans that the end came when it did."
Chambers says that it is a matter of dispute whether the dropping
of the bombs had a strong effect on the Japanese decision to surrender.

The case isn't cut and dried.  Presumably Truman believed that using
the bomb was in the best interests of the USA, and at that time we
tended to think of the Japanese as sub-human, because of the well-publicized
atrocities against Allied prisoners of war.

I wonder whether we would not have had at least one nuclear bomb dropped
in war by now, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't happened.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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