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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yogizuna who wrote (42403)	1/16/2002 4:33:06 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I would have placed a blockade around them... Don't forget those 6,000 Kamikazes (one estimate places them at 10,000). The Japanese were more than willing to send out 100 suicide pilots if only one got through. One could sink a warship, and that could mean 1,000 lives. Even today, let alone then, we don't have the sure-fire technology to prevent that. The public would never have stood for that kind of attrition of our forces, while we essentially called a halt to our offensive. All of these thoughts and ideas MUST be within the context of the temper of the times, which was to END this war and prevent even a single additional casualty of U.S. and British forces. What you and others may think now is irrelevant to what was demanded of the Allied war leaders then.

To: Yogizuna who wrote (42403)	1/16/2002 6:27:44 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

If there was no invasion, massive bombing, or atomic bombing Japan still would be in a hopeless situation but I think the blockade might have had to continue for awhile before Japan surrendered. Do you have any good sources of information about the food situation in Japan at that time? Doing a search on google I came up with one site that suggest the Japanese would not have faced starvation at least not in great numbers. "Some today assert, in effect, that it would have been more humane to have just continued the conventional B-29 bombing of Japan, which in six months had killed nearly 300,000 people and displaced or rendered homeless over 8 million more. They also assert that the growing US blockade would have soon forced a surrender because the Japanese faced, quote: "imminent starvation." US Planners at the time, however, weren't nearly so bold, and the whole reason why advocates of tightening the noose around the Home Islands came up with so many different estimates of when blockade and bombardment might force Japan to surrender was because the situation wasn't nearly as cut and dried as it appears today, even when that nation's supply lines were severed. Japan would indeed have become, quote: "a nation without cities," as urban populations suffered grievously under the weight of Allied bombing; but over half the population during the war lived and worked on farms. Back then the system of price supports that has encouraged Japanese farmers today to convert practically every square foot of their land to rice cultivation did not exist. Large vegetable gardens were a standard feature of a family's land and wheat was also widely grown. The idea that the Japanese were about to run out of food any time soon was largely derived from repeated misreadings of the Summary Report of the 104-volume US Strategic Bombing Survey of Japan. Using Survey findings, Craven and Cate, in the multi-volume US Army Air Force history of WWII detailed the successful US mine-laying efforts against Japanese shipping whichessentially cut Japanese oil and food imports, and state only that by mid-August, quote: "the calorie count of the average man's fare had shrunk dangerously." Obviously, some historians enthusiasm for the point they are trying to make has gotten the better of them since the reduced nutritional value of meals is somewhat different than "imminent starvation."" mtholyoke.edu Transcript of "OPERATION DOWNFALL [US invasion of Japan]: US PLANS AND JAPANESE COUNTER-MEASURES" by D. M. Giangreco, US Army Command and General Staff College, 16 February 1998 If its true that Japan did not face starvation it could be used as either an argument for or against the dropping of the bomb. For, because it would mean that Japan faced less pressure to force them to surrender (the argument the site I link to makes). Against, because it means that ending the war did quicker did not save a great number of Japanese from starvation. The above link makes a strong argument for the use of the bomb, but the whole argument relies on the assumption that the Japanes would not surrender without the bomb or an invasion. I understand that you think that Japan would have surrendered soon anyway. Tim