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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction

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From: TimF	8/8/2007 12:26:09 AM
	of 90947

Alternate history and context: re-evaluating the A-bomb (and more) on its 62nd anniversary. neoneocon.com "...Hundreds of thousands of civilians died horrifying deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a historical and not an ethical judgement, we can say with a very high degree of probability that a conventional assault on Japan would have resulted in a far higher death toll. (One of Japan's principal wartime officials, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Marquis Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.) And Imperial Japan, responsible as it was for such atrocities as the Bataan death march and the Rape of Nanking, had to be defeated such that it would pose no threat of resurgent militarism and imperialism a generation or so later. That last sentence seems to me an obvious truth, but my own occasional excursions on "Comment is Free" suggest that in that parallel universe Mr Raimondo may count as a prophet. UPDATE: I've corrected an error in attribution that I originally made in this post. There were varying estimates within the Japanese leadership of the consequences of fighting on rather than surrendering after Nagasaki. Kido Koichi spoke of 20 million casualties, not - as I had said - 20 million deaths. The estimate of 20 million deaths was stated by Admiral Takijiro Onishi to Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the Naval General Staff, and Yoshijiro Umezu, the Army Chief of Staff." The Bomb: recommended and non-recommended reading

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