Unkotare
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- Aug 16, 2011
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Interestingly, even historian George Feifer, who wrote a labored, lengthy defense of the nuking of Hiroshima, conceded that a strong case can be made against the nuking of Nagasaki:
A stronger case can be made against the second bomb [Nagasaki], especially its dropping so cruelly soon after the first. The Supreme War Council’s minutes reveal that Hiroshima’s destruction made no real dent in its thinking. After acknowledging that an awesome new weapon had caused it, the members essentially proceeded directly to their outstanding military concerns. Nevertheless, three days gave them too little time to assess the damage and the nature of the weapon that produced it, let alone to reflect on the larger consequences. (The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb, 2001, Kindle Edition, loc. 8979)
Feifer also conceded that Japan was practically prostrate before Truman nuked her:
The country’s woeful condition before the bombs were dropped was hardly secret either. Virtually her entire merchant marine and Navy lay at the bottom of the Pacific, while America alone, without the Royal Navy, had 23 battleships, 99 carriers, and 72 cruisers on hand in August. The Imperial Navy’s corresponding numbers were one, six, and four—and it had fuel only enough to sustain a force of 20 operational destroyers and perhaps 40 submarines for a few days at sea. Nor was sufficient food available for civilians who showed their ration cards in the shops that stood still. Relentless saturation bombing, easier than ever with the new bases on Okinawa and the feeble opposition from Japanese interceptors, was leveling Japan’s cities.
The average adult existed on under 1,300 calories a day. As many as 13 million were homeless. Malaria and tuberculosis were rampant, especially in shantytowns rising in the urban ashes. Schoolchildren, barefoot in winter as well as summer, rooted out forest pine stumps for the war effort. The trees themselves were long gone. In Tokushima, home of many of the 6,000 troops lost on the Toyoma Maru, metal was so scarce that the bells of shrines were melted down, together with charcoal braziers, the sole source of heat for the remaining wood-and-paper homes. While huge numbers of Red Army troops mobilized to attack Manchuria—just as Tadashi Kojo had feared a year earlier, when his regiment was shipped from there to Okinawa—there was no hope of supplying the defenders even if the merchant fleet hadn’t been destroyed and the country’s industry wasn’t in shambles. Exhausted, slowly starving Japan was in no shape for further fighting. (Ibid., loc. 8862-8878)
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Just love it. Wednesday not Monday but Wednesday morning quarterbacks pontificating on decisions made 75 years ago.
Why come to the History forum if you are opposed to studying and discussing History?