From: "Gary Wiltshire" 

On Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:15:07 -0400, Rich Gauszka  wrote:

>
> "Phil Payne" 
wrote in message
> news:4434215b{at}w3....
>>> >> Our experience of the desperation of Japanese defense
on outlying
>> islands
>>> >> was more than instructive.
>>
>>> > Shades of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  What would they have
>>> done -
>>> > bitten your legs off?
>>
>>> You mean like Okinawa?
>>
>> Is ANYONE reading what I write?
>>
>> Of course not like Okinawa.  That was a well-supplied garrison - before
>> the
>> blockade of the homeland became effective.  No way could the Japanese
>> have
>> repeated Okinawa.
>>
>>
>
> I read what you wrote. Okinawa was an outlying island. It was the last
> stop
> before the scheduled invasion of Japan ( 6th Marines etc ). Was the
> morale
> of Japan's people lowered enough for them to surrender prior to the
> scheduled invasion?  I think it may have been but I can understand
> Truman's
> decision to drop the bomb . In his shoes I would have probably done the
> same
> thing . A mistake where you risk a million casualties is better argued by
> what-if historians.
>
>
>
I would also make two more points, which I'm SURE will have Phil howling in
his pen.  1)Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated to the world that atomic
weapons were not merely theoretical, and 2)we could easily have ended up,
after years of siege, with a Soviet-occupied or -partitioned Japan, with
historical consequences far worse than Korea.


--
Gary Wiltshire

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