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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (136421)	4/11/2010 11:59:06 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541776

Simple blockade wouldn't work. Blockade + bombing would have killed at least as many civilians as the Bomb; more, if Saipan is an example. The Emperor had to actually surrender for these people to stop fighting. Civilian surrenders and suicides Saipan had been seized from Germany after World War I, and thus a large number of Japanese civilians lived there—at least 25,000.[10] The US erected a civilian prisoner encampment on 23 June that soon had more than 1,000 inmates. Electric lights at the camp were conspiciously left on overnight to attract other civilians with the promise of three warm meals and no risk of accidentally being shot in combat.[10] Emperor Hirohito personally found the threat of defection of Japanese civilians disturbing.[10] Much of the community was of low caste, and there was a risk that live civilians would be surprised by generous U.S. treatment. Native Japanese sympathizers would hand the Americans a powerful propaganda weapon to subvert the "fighting spirit" of Japan in radio broadcasts. At the end of June, Hirohito sent out an imperial order encouraging the civilians of Saipan to commit suicide.[10] The order authorized the commander of Saipan to promise civilians who died there an equal spiritual status in the afterlife with those of soldiers perishing in combat. General Tojo intercepted the order on 30 June and delayed its sending, but it went out anyway the next day. By the time the Marines advanced on the north tip of the island, from 8 July–12, most of the damage had been done.[10] Over 10,000 Japanese civilians committed suicide in the last days of the battle to take the offered privileged place in the afterlife, some jumping from "Suicide Cliff" and "Banzai Cliff". Weapons and the tactics of close quarter fighting also resulted in very high civilian casualties. Civilians shelters were located virtually everywhere on the island, with very little difference noticable to attacking Marines. The standard method of clearing suspected bunkers was with high-explosive and/or high-explosives augmented with petroleum (eg. gelignite, napalm, diesel fuel). In such conditions, high civilian casualties were inevitable. [11] In the end, about 22,000 Japanese civilians died. Almost the entire garrison of troops on the island — at least 30,000 — died. For the Americans, the victory was the most costly to date in the Pacific War. 2,949 Americans were killed and 10,364 wounded, out of 71,000 who landed.[12 en.wikipedia.org

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (136421)	4/11/2010 12:04:44 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541776

As far as a blockade goes---I have no information on that, but I have never heard that this was a viable option under consideration. One has to think the fanatical military leaders of Japan would not have been swayed by any blockade. It is true that the "fanatical military leaders of Japan" wouldn't have been swayed by it. But they weren't the only decision makers in Japan, or even the only decision within the military. Here is an interesting view: After the war, the world learned what U.S. leaders had known by early 1945: Japan was militarily defeated long before Hiroshima; it had been trying for months, if not for years, to surrender; and the U.S. had consistently rebuffed these overtures. A May 5 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace. Sent to Berlin by the German ambassador in Tokyo, after he talked to a ranking Japanese naval officer, it read: Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard. As far as is known, Washington did nothing to pursue this opening. Later that month, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson almost capriciously dismissed three separate high-level recommendations from within the administration to activate peace negotiations. The proposals advocated signaling Japan that the U.S. was willing to consider the all-important retention of the emperor system; i.e., the U.S. would not insist upon unconditional surrender. Stimson, like other high U.S. officials, did not really care in principle whether or not the emperor was retained. The term unconditional surrender was always a propaganda measure; wars are always ended with some kind of conditions. To some extent the insistence was a domestic consideration not wanting to appear to appease the Japanese. More important, however, it reflected a desire that the Japanese not surrender before the bomb could be used. One of the few people who had been aware of the Manhattan Project from the beginning, Stimson had come to think of it as his bomb, my secret, as he called it in his diary. On June 6, he told President Truman he was fearful that before the A-bombs were ready to be delivered, the Air Force would have Japan so bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength. In his later memoirs, Stimson admitted that no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb. And that effort could have been minimal. In July, before the leaders of the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met at Potsdam, the Japanese government sent several radio messages to its ambassador, Naotake Sato, in Moscow, asking him to request Soviet help in mediating a peace settlement. His Majesty is extremely anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible ..., said one communication. Should, however, the United States and Great Britain insist on unconditional surrender, Japan would be forced to fight to the bitter end. On July 25, while the Potsdam meeting was taking place, Japan instructed Sato to keep meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Molotov to impress the Russians with the sincerity of our desire to end the war [and] have them understand that we are trying to end hostilities by asking for very reasonable terms in order to secure and maintain our national existence and honor (a reference to retention of the emperor). Having broken the Japanese code years earlier, Washington did not have to wait to be informed by the Soviets of these peace overtures; it knew immediately, and did nothing. Indeed, the National Archives in Washington contains U.S. government documents reporting similarly ill-fated Japanese peace overtures as far back as 1943. Thus, it was with full knowledge that Japan was frantically trying to end the war, that President Truman and his hardline secretary of state, James Byrnes, included the term unconditional surrender in the July 26 Potsdam Declaration. This final warning and expression of surrender terms to Japan was in any case a charade. The day before it was issued, Harry Truman had al- ready approved the order to release a 15 kiloton atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. mediafilter.org

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (136421)	4/11/2010 12:30:37 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541776

No, you don't have to say that. It's not at all certain, if we had been more reasonable with the Japanese, that there would have had to be such a loss of life. And of course blockade was viable and was discussed. The biggest reason that wouldn't have worked (if, indeed, it did not) was because of the stupid focus on unconditional surrender. "There is probably no more controversial issue in 20th-century American history than President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. Many historians argue that it was necessary to end the war and that in fact it saved lives, both Japanese and American, by avoiding a land invasion of Japan that might have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in factPresident Harry S. Truman, November 1945 Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union. The United States did know from intercepted messages between Tokyo and Moscow that the Japanese were seeking a conditional surrender. American policy-makers, however, were not inclined to accept a Japanese "surrender" that left its military dictatorship intact and even possibly allowed it to retain some of its wartime conquests. Further, American leaders were anxious to end the war as soon as possible. It is important to remember that July-August 1945 was no bloodless period of negotiation. In fact, there were still no overt negotiations at all. The United States continued to suffer casualties in late July and early August 1945, especially from Japanese submarines and suicidal "kamikaze" attacks using aircraft and midget submarines. (One example of this is the loss of the Indianapolis, which was sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 29, just days after delivering "Little Boy" to Tinian. Of its crew of 1,199, only 316 sailors survived.) The people of Japan, however, were suffering far more by this time. Air raids and naval bombardment of Japan were a daily occurrence, and the first signs of starvation were already beginning to show. Alternatives to dropping the atomic bomb on a Japanese city were many, but few military or political planners thought they would bring about the desired outcome, at least not quickly. They believed the shock of a rapid series of bombings had the best chance of working. A demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb on an isolated location was an option supported by many of the Manhattan Project's scientists, but providing the Japanese warning of a demonstration would allow them to attempt to try toLittle Boy at Tinian Island, August 1945 intercept the incoming bomber or even move American prisoners of war to the designated target. Also, the uranium bomb (right) had never been tested. What would the reaction be if the United States warned of a horrible new weapon, only to have it prove a dud, with the wreckage of the weapon itself now in Japanese hands? Another option was to wait for the expected coming Soviet declaration of war in the hopes that this might convince Japan to surrender unconditionally, but the Soviet declaration was not expected until mid-August, and Truman hoped to avoid having to "share" the administration of Japan with the Soviet Union. A blockade combined with continued conventional bombing might also eventually lead to surrender without an invasion, but there was no telling how long this would take, if it worked at all. " They wanted quick; they wanted to use their cool new weapon, and they wanted to fuck with the Soviets- who also wanted to fuck with us, and take Sakhalin island, which is why they didn't mediate any sort of peace process- though the US knew all about that anyway, since we had broken the codes. Killing those hundreds of thousands of Japanese was all about expediency, controlling the Russians, racism, and revenge. Expediency I can understand, but in the context of war crimes I get leery about "the ends justifies the means" talk. Some things you should not try so hard to justify. cfo.doe.gov