Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt 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 References: <360@uwmacc.UUCP> Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 24 ============ 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 {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt