"I don't know who Rich Green is
As he doesn't offer an opinion, I don't think it is important. There is a link there for the curious.
I have not discovered any reason to discredit his source, but if you have one I would certainly revise my estimate.
"Why do you suppose Rich fails to account for nearly 3/4 of his claimed total of 2,000,000?
As in his similar treatment of other countries, he appears to be highlighting the salient events, rather than itemizing them ad infinitum. For instance, as regards Germany he gives the total from "Gilbert" as 800,000, but he only specifies 81,773. Where are the missing 718,227??
"Perhaps you could check this source, which I have no doubt is a respectable one"
I will agree with you that the source is a respectable one, and that the figures are therefore reliable.
"I think you would be just as interested as I am to know where and when all these other innocent civilians lost their lives at the hand of the Allies.
Well, for one thing he only itemizes the casualties from 6 cities out of the 66 which were basically burned to the ground. This leaves 60 cities, several islands, radiation deaths that continue to this day, and so forth. Leaving everything but the cities aside for point of simplification, this leaves less than 12,000 deaths per city as being sufficient to account for the difference.
I think your continuing this line is pointless and shallow. The moral question of issues such as Dresden, Tokyo, etc. are not "numbers games". I have seen encyclopedias with more than a 300% disparity in these estimates, so why would you make an unholy issue about numbers which are simply too obscure to reach consensus on? And why, when he only itemizes 6 cities out of 66 burned to the ground, would you act so bewildered and confused about the "missing" people?? He didn't mention Saipan either. He didn't mention a lot of places. Nor did he mention the starved or the diseased.
This site claims that up to a million civilians were killed before any atomic bombs were dropped:
home.istar.ca
Is he correct? Who knows? It is not a "numbers game". If you wish to believe it was less than 2,000,000, I could care less. Thousands of the injured and wounded were later to die, and people are still being born and dying due to the radioactive contamination in environment and genes. Don't play numbers games with me, Dithers...please...
I made an off the cuff estimate (in a situation where the numbers, per se, were not germane to the ethical questions), that it was at least a couple of million civilian deaths. Indeed, I thought it was more than that considering that Japan had been burned to the ground except for a list of cities they were holding in reserve for possible atom bomb strikes. The exact number does not matter for the sake of what we are discussing; and it does not matter whether my impression was too low, or too high. What matters is that 66 cities got burned to the ground.
Now, I don't know how many people got burned to death. And nobody else in the world does either. None of us need to defend our lack of omniscience!
The point is: are all the thousands of articles written by respectable people expressing misgivings automatically ill conceived or ill considered? I think not.
If you have something constructive and helpful to say you can get on with it... |
