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From: gary@ISM780.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <37400001@ISM780.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 00:57:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780.37400001
Posted: Wed Aug 21 00:57:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 19:02:41 EDT
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Nf-From: ISM780!gary    Aug 21 00:57:00 1985


-------
>                                                         Note that this
>count includes ONLY American servicemen. Remember that there would also be
>approximately 500,000 British troops involved in the invasion (source:
>"Triumph and Tragedy" by Winston Churchill) as well as a large number of
>troops from the Soviet Union.                          -----------------
 ----------------------------

While I agree with Mr Seshadri's point, I think including "a large 
number of troops from the Soviet Union" is merely a supposition.  The 
fact is that the Soviets did not declare war on Japan until 2 days after 
we vaporized Hiroshima.  Gee, thanks for your help, comrades :-).  

Also, it is of little use debating whether we would have lost "only" 
50,000 or 1,000,000 US troops in a Japanese invasion.  In fact the 
estimates from our miltary did range between those two numbers.  (Little 
known is that the among the casualties in Hiroshima were 12 US Navy
fliers, who were prisoners of war in Hiroshima's city jail.  Also there
was an Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of the center of
Nagasaki, but I can't find any number of estimated lives lost in my
references.)

Unfortunate as the entire affair was, it is true that there probably
would have been *at least* as many Japanese casualties had the war
proceeded with a conventional invasion, complete with the fire bombing
Japanese cities.  Consider, between May 9-10, 1945, incendiary bombs on 
Tokyo had destroy 1/4 of the city with 83,000 killed and 40,000 injured, 
and *that* didn't prompt the Japenese to sue for peace.  That figure
is almost equal to the casualties in Nagasaki (100,000 killed in 
Hiroshima).  Does it really matter whether they occurred over 2 days or
2 milliseconds?  It's pretty obvious that the bomb accelerated an end
to the war and that, even if it didn't save Japanese lives (that it 
saved Allied lives in indisputable), it probably didn't cost any more 
than would have been lost otherwise.  

I do agree, however, that the Nagasaki bomb wasn't necessary.  We 
probably wouldn't have dropped that one had it not been an unfortunate 
translation of the Japanese response to the Hiroshima bomb and threat to 
drop another one.  The message was translated something like "We choose 
to *ignore* your demand to surrender", when it really meant something 
like "We want to think about your demand to surrender a while."

For an execellent account to the entire atomic bomb project during
WWII, I refer the reader to _A World Destroyed, The Atomic Bomb and
the Grand Alliance_, by Martin J. Sherwin, Vintage Books, copyright
1973, 1975.

Gary Swift, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp., Santa Monica, Ca., (213) 453 8649
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