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From: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Bombing Japan (Re: History Corrected - WWII)
Message-ID: <360@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 23:40:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.360
Posted: Mon Oct  1 23:40:43 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 04:50:33 EDT
References: <479@tty3b.UUCP> <1731@sdcc6.UUCP> <5971@mcvax.UUCP> <1380@qubix.UUCP> <246@digi-g.UUCP> <1171@drutx.UUCP> <455@uwvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: rick@maccunix.UUCP (Rick Keir)
Followup-To: net.politics
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 44
Summary: Should we have dropped the Hiroshima bomb? 

[]
In article <455@uwvax.UUCP> myers@uwvax.UUCP (Jeff Myers) writes:
(with regards to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

>A point that is often overlooked is that we most likely could have achieved
>the same result by sending a "warning shot" to some uninhabited island
>rather than bombing two cities into oblivion without warning.
>Of course, the manner in which we stopped the war accomplished two tasks
>that the above method would not have: (1) We got 'em back for Pearl Harbor,
>(2) We got to see what an atom bomb does to cities, both air burst and
>impact at ground zero.
>The lab simply can't replace real life experiments...
To reply (things that Jeff did not mention):
	(1)  Japan DID NOT surrender when Hiroshima was bombed,
	(2)  Even after the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb, the Japanese
		 military high command did not want to surrender;
	(3)  Emperor Hirohito had to record his surrender address to
		 the Japanese people;  the military clique attempted to prevent
		 it from going on the air (and would have, if they had realized
		 that it wasn't going to be a live address)
	(4)  There were not "spare" bombs around in 1945 to use for
		 "demonstrations."
Perhaps he should consider the population loss in Russia in WWII
to see what a military class is willing to suffer, in terms of
civilian casualties, without surrendering.  Bombing a barren 
island would not have caused Japan to surrender and would have
lowered the shock value of the eventual bombing of humans that
would have occured anyway. This was a military that had allied
itself with Hitler's Germany;  belief in rational and humanitarian
decision-making on their part seems misplaced.
	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.  
	Respond to net.flame or net.politics as seems appropriate for
your mood;  it defeats the purpose of having a "flame" group if
replies get put on both (net.politics seems particularly prone
to this form of posting).
------
-- 

Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, MACC
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
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