Press Secretary Carney Knows Propaganda

[homersapien 11,393]

Killing 200,000 civilians does that.

That sounds a little high - at least for immediate casualties. Did you look it up?

[cptau 169]

Killing 200,000 civilians does that.

That sounds a little high - at least for immediate casualties. Did you look it up?

The estimated of deaths in Japan due to all strategic bombing ranges widely. Some estimates as high a 1.3 million deaths due to all bombing attacks. The Japanese government put the number at just under 400,000 deaths.

The 2 atomic bombings caused about 120,000 deaths immediately. About 240,000 total died including those with radiation sickness and other fatal injuries over the next few months.

The Russians enter the war on the day of the 2nd atomic bombing. The Japanese army still occupied a large area of China, Indochina, Korea and what is now Indonesia and Malaysia.

The Japaneses emperor decided they had to surrender as the Russians were destroying their army and the atomic bombing might destroy the homeland.

7 more atomic bombs were being assembled for use in the next 3 months. One was about to be shipped when the Japanese surrendered

The Japanese only decided to surrender when the allies agreed they could keep their Emperor.

If they had not done that, the war might have lasted several more months and included an American invasion, and more bombing.

[cptau 169]

Allies of convenience only. No love lost even then. The Soviet dictators were ruthless and there is no way anything symbolizing the Russian war regime would be prominently displayed in my house. To each his own.

Well, defeating the Wehrmacht was certainly "convenient" all right.

Not declaring war on Japan until after we dropped 2 atomic weapons on japan in august of 1945 and it looked like they would be left out of any reparations or territorial gains from Japan was also convenient.

Well, by that logic the US was just as bad - we let Hitler take over pretty much the entirety of Europe and had to wait for Pearl Harbor before we got involved militarily.

The US had not been attacked until 1941. The US declared war only on Japan the very next day, Germany then declared war on the US, however it really did not need to declare war on the US, Hitler made another strategic mistake.

The Russian army had been attacked by the Japanese army in 1939 losing close to 10,000 troops, The Russians and Japanese signed a neutrality pact that lasted 6 years until August 1945. Russia was more interested in attaching Poland and the Japanese had other plans in the Pacific. Russia then got attacked in 1941 by the Germans. Russia could not fight a 2 front war as the US and Britain did.

[Auctoritas 2,828]

cptau, I am really glad you hang around. That's really a really great summation of the information, thank you!

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Killing 200,000 civilians does that.

Another snippet of political wisdom.

Facts are stubborn things.

Btw, interesting how you can modify your post without it being noted in the field. smh

Yeah, mods can do that. But I did it within seconds and the only change was to up it to 200k over 100k. I didn't add the totals for both bombings. Was there a point to this comment?

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Killing 200,000 civilians does that.

That sounds a little high - at least for immediate casualties. Did you look it up?

The figures (with footnoted sources) came from Wikipedia and it gave a range of 150,000 to 250,000. I chose a midpoint.

[Elephant Tipper 430]

Killing 200,000 civilians does that.

Another snippet of political wisdom.

Facts are stubborn things.

Btw, interesting how you can modify your post without it being noted in the field. smh

Yeah, mods can do that. But I did it within seconds and the only change was to up it to 200k over 100k. I didn't add the totals for both bombings. Was there a point to this comment?

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K. Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

The point about your editing ability is that it isn't noted as such. Convenient ?

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K.

I was using a conservative estimate of immediate deaths so as not to be accused of padding the numbers.

Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

And that "perspective" is not the only one. There are plenty of people who do not think a land invasion of Japan was necessary - a group that includes none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Their naval capabilities were so degraded that they could not have broken a blockade, the Soviets declaring war put even more pressure on them and we had air superiority already and could bomb military/industrial targets without a lot of serious resistance. They were already defeated. That it ended things quicker is certainly not in dispute. That it saved millions of lives is contingent on one particular view on how the get Japan to surrender, but it is hardly the only one.

Bottom line is, we killed at least 150k innocent civilians in two swipes. And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion.

The point about your editing ability is that it isn't noted as such. Convenient ?

Take it up with IPB who makes the forum software. Sometimes edits of people's posts are necessary but aren't of a nature that there needs to be a notation (i.e. - it wasn't a correction of content, it was due to some glitch in formatting, etc.) and thus we wouldn't want to give the appearance the poster did something wrong and we came in to edit it. So the software has the default setting that it doesn't show the edit line.

Should you ever have a question about an apparent edit, you can simply ask. I have nothing to hide.

[japantiger 4,051]

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K.

I was using a conservative estimate of immediate deaths so as not to be accused of padding the numbers.

Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

And that "perspective" is not the only one. There are plenty of people who do not think a land invasion of Japan was necessary - a group that includes none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Their naval capabilities were so degraded that they could not have broken a blockade, the Soviets declaring war put even more pressure on them and we had air superiority already and could bomb military/industrial targets without a lot of serious resistance. They were already defeated. That it ended things quicker is certainly not in dispute. That it saved millions of lives is contingent on one particular view on how the get Japan to surrender, but it is hardly the only one.

Bottom line is, we killed at least 150k innocent civilians in two swipes. And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion.

The point about your editing ability is that it isn't noted as such. Convenient ?

Take it up with IPB who makes the forum software. Sometimes edits of people's posts are necessary but aren't of a nature that there needs to be a notation (i.e. - it wasn't a correction of content, it was due to some glitch in formatting, etc.) and thus we wouldn't want to give the appearance the poster did something wrong and we came in to edit it. So the software has the default setting that it doesn't show the edit line.

Should you ever have a question about an apparent edit, you can simply ask. I have nothing to hide.

Actually, MacArthur favored the land invasion. He was going to lead operation Downfall. In general, the Navy came to oppose it because their casualty estimates were the highest. MacArthur also felt that the Japanese would have surrendered, negating the need the to drop on Hiroshima, had we earlier granted their desire to keep their emperor vs sticking with the unconditional surrender demand.

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Yeah, I probably should have written that better. But though MacArthur favored that option if it came to that he didn't think it nor the atomic bombs would have been necessary had we gone along with the emperor staying.

[cptau 169]

This is an account of what the Russians did in Asia after the Japaneses formally surrendered....... Just because their new enemy surrendered was no reason for the Russians to stop fighting.

http://hnn.us/article/22336

On August 8, 1945, after weeks of deflecting Japan’s requests to mediate a surrender to the United States and its allies, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov presented Japanese Ambassador Sato with a declaration of war, thereby breaching the Neutrality Pact that remained in force between the two countries. The declaration stated that, “the Soviet Government decided to accept the proposition of the Allies and joined the [Potsdam] declaration of the Allied Powers of July 26….”[1] Soviet acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation meant recognition of the content of the Cairo Declaration of December 1943, which stated that the Allies “covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion.”[2] Two years earlier, the Soviet government had also clearly expressed “agreement with the basic principles of” the Atlantic Charter, which stated that the signatories “seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other… [and] desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.”[3] The Soviet Union and the United States, between Yalta and the immediate postwar months, would fiercely negotiate territorial and other parameters of power centered on the distribution of territories including both the homeland and colonies of the defeated Japanese empire and the division of Korea into Northern and Southern zones.

Stalin’s promise to Roosevelt and Churchill to enter the war against Japan, long sought as a means to bring the war to a swift end and reduce allied casualties, manifested itself as Operation August Storm, the Soviet offensive in Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula, the island of Sakhalin and the Kuriles.[4] “August Storm” can be divided into two phases. The first was the week from August 9 to 14 when Soviet forces swept aside demoralized Japanese defenders in Manchuria and Korea and moved south in Sakhalin over the border at the 50th parallel.[5] The second was the two-week period from August 15 – the date when Japan formally accepted the Potsdam Proclamation – to September 2, when Japanese government representatives signed the instrument of surrender on board the U.S.S. Missouri. While the former period saw a short but effective Soviet campaign that dealt a body blow to the Kwantung Army, the latter saw a determined push to occupy the territories discussed at Yalta and the unleashing of acts that targeted not only the Japanese military but also the helpless civilian population.

Soviet and now Russian writers emphasize September 2 as the end of the War in the Far East, blurring the fact that the Soviet military advance and acts of brutality towards Japanese civilians occurred not only before, but also after the Emperor’s surrender broadcast on August 15. The most horrific Soviet atrocity committed in the days before Tokyo accepted the Potsdam Proclamation occurred near Gegenmiao in Manchuria on August 14 when a Soviet armored unit attacked approximately 1,500 Japanese civilians - mostly women and children. Survivor, Kawauchi Mitsuo, seven years old at the time, remembers the incident as follows 60 years later.

It’s known as the Gegenmiao Incident. It was a massacre at a place called Gegenmiao in Manchuria in which one thousand several hundred Japanese refugees were attacked by a Soviet armored unit. Over one thousand people were slaughtered. The tanks came after eleven in the morning, attacking as we fled from the fighting around Kou’angai. It was a crazy mix of sound from the tank engines and machine guns. Everyone was screaming as they ran to get away. Some people fell hit by bullets; others were crushed by tanks.[6]

The indiscipline and depravity of the Red Army in Germany a few short months earlier was mirrored in Manchuria and Southern Sakhalin. Fueled by propagandists such as Ilya Ehrenburg,[7] some of those same units that had raped and pillaged their way through East Prussia. Thoroughly dehumanized by their experiences on the Eastern Front, these units had transferred eastwards directly after the fall of Berlin. The youngest survivors of massacres in Manchuria become zanryu koji (orphans who were adopted by Chinese families and remained in China,) another tragic legacy of Japan’s failed attempt to create a continental empire. [8]

Applying the brakes to the Soviet offensive after Japan accepted the Potsdam Proclamation on August 15 proved no easy matter. After some confusion among the Kwantung Army commanders over communication from Tokyo regarding Japan’s capitulation, General Yamada sent a telegram to Marshal Vasilevskii’s headquarters on August 17 offering a ceasefire, which was rejected. The next day, Yamada’s chief-of-staff flew to the First Far Eastern Front HQ to offer surrender, and on August 19 a surrender agreement was signed. In the interim, Soviet forces continued their advance through Manchuria in line with an August 18 order from Soviet Chief of Staff General Ivanov to ignore all ceasefire offers unless Japanese soldiers had already clearly surrendered and laid down their arms.[9]

Early in the morning of August 18, Soviet forces landed on the island of Shimushu at the northern extreme of the Kurile chain. Faced with a sudden pre-dawn assault, the Japanese 91st Division on Shimushu defended its positions fiercely, only surrendering after five days of heavy fighting. Well over 1,000 Soviet troops, and half that number of Japanese, were killed in the last land battle of World War II.[10]

On Sakhalin, Soviet forces moving southwards from August 10 encountered the Japanese 88th Division along the line of fortifications near the border with the Soviet sector of the island. The defenders’ objective was to buy time for civilians to flee by ship to Hokkaido. Six thousand residents of Maoka (now Kholmsk) on the western coast had already been evacuated when the Soviet attack commenced before dawn on August 20. Soviet warships entered the harbor, firing on the town and the 18,000 refugees waiting to be evacuated. Civilians were machine-gunned as they ran towards the hills in an attempt to escape the Soviet troops pouring off the warships. Japanese records suggest that approximately 1,000 people were killed that morning. After reporting the happenings of the previous few hours, the final message from the last of nine young telephonists at the exchange at Maoka, 22 year-old Itoh Chie, ended with these poignant words.[11]

To everyone back in Naichi [Japanese mainland]…. To our friends at the Wakkanai Exchange... Soviet soldiers have just entered the building here in the Maoka Exchange. This will probably be the last message from Karafuto [sakhalin]. The nine of us have stayed at our posts right through to the end, and it won’t be long before all nine of us will have departed for the next world.

The Soviet troops are coming closer. I can hear their footsteps getting nearer. Everyone in Wakkanai, sayonara, this is the end. To everyone in Naichi, sayonara, sayonara….

Moments later Itoh took cyanide.

After witnessing the massacre of civilians in Maoka, pockets of Japanese troops in the vicinity continued to resist until August 23. During that period some who had withdrawn from Maoka to nearby Arakaizawa were shot to death as they came forward to discuss surrender.[12]

On August 22, one full week after Japan had surrendered, Soviet warplanes attacked Toyohara (now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). Despite the local authorities having set up a large white flag and a tent marked with a red cross in front of the railway station for the throng of refugees, five or six fragmentation bombs and approximately 20 incendiaries were dropped into the crowd, killing several hundred people. [13]

Early in the morning that same day, reminiscent of the sinking of ships packed with fleeing German civilians in the Baltic Sea just months earlier,[14] a “wolf pack” of three Soviet submarines (SHCH126, L12, L19) attacked the Japanese refugee transport ships the Dai-Ni Shinko-Maru, the Ogasawara-Maru and the Taito-Maru off Rumoi in western Hokkaido.[15] As they floated in the water the survivors of the Ogasawara-Maru were strafed by fighter planes – only seventeen of the 750 people on board were rescued. The Dai-Ni Shinko-Maru limped into port but the other two ships sank with a loss of 1,708 people.[16]

The Soviet Union completed the occupation of Sakhalin and Habomai - the southernmost island of what the Japanese call the Northern Territories - on September 5. Over the next two years, the Soviets repatriated all Japanese civilians and expelled the indigenous Sakhalin and Kurile Ainu as well as part of the Nivkhi and Uilta population. Not everyone, however, was repatriated. The Korean workers taken to Sakhalin by Japan in the period 1920-1945 on forced labor programs (kyosei renko) remained, consigned to equally harsh treatment under a new regime. The tragedy surrounding the repatriation of the 43,000 Korean laborers left behind on Sakhalin has created yet another painful conundrum in Japan’s postwar relations with its neighbors.

Almost 600,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered to Soviet forces in Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kurile chain. Most were transported to labor camps in Siberia, where roughly 10 percent died in the following decade.[17] Some of the Japanese POWs repatriated in 1956 had been captured in the large-scale border clashes at Nomonhan and Changkufeng in the late 1930s, all of this in violation of the Potsdam Proclamation, which Japan had accepted before surrendering.[18] While Japanese acts of brutality towards Allied POWs rightly attracted outrage and punitive justice, following on from the violation of a neutrality pact and the refusal to honor a surrender, the Soviet use of Japanese POWs as slave labor in the immediate postwar era was Stalin’s third major contravention of the tenets of international law in the Far East to go unquestioned by any postwar tribunal.

Genuine vergangenheitsbewältigung – overcoming the legacy of the past – not only requires brave politicians, bureaucrats and academics to study and debate the past, but to be prepared to accept that wartime excesses and violations of international law were conducted by all parties. If we are ever to create a meaningful global human rights regime, crimes ranging from what might neatly be categorized as “collateral damage” to acts of outright barbarism must all be subject to the same scrutiny, whether committed by the victors or the vanquished. That principle of equality before the law was the core of the Nuremberg concept, one unfortunately that was honored in the breach with punishment restricted to the defeated Germans and Japanese.

Every year, the “Association of Bereaved Families from the Three Ships Incident” asks the Japanese government to request an apology from Russia for the killing of 1,708 people on the Ogasawara-Maru, the Taito-Maru and the Dai-Ni Shinko Maru in the days immediately following Japan’s surrender.[18] Every year, the Japanese Foreign Ministry replies that they are waiting for a response from the Russian government about these incidents. The Putin administration seems as likely to respond to this request with contrition as it is to return the disputed islands.

For the Japanese government, dealing with war crimes committed against its citizens during the Pacific War (even those committed after the war) has little appeal. Sadly, the issue is complicated by the fact that memories lurk on the other side of the door to a collective repository - a kind of Pandora’s Box – in which everything is inextricably linked to the excesses of Japan’s own dark past.

[cptau 169]

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K.

I was using a conservative estimate of immediate deaths so as not to be accused of padding the numbers.

Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

And that "perspective" is not the only one. There are plenty of people who do not think a land invasion of Japan was necessary - a group that includes none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Their naval capabilities were so degraded that they could not have broken a blockade, the Soviets declaring war put even more pressure on them and we had air superiority already and could bomb military/industrial targets without a lot of serious resistance. They were already defeated. That it ended things quicker is certainly not in dispute. That it saved millions of lives is contingent on one particular view on how the get Japan to surrender, but it is hardly the only one.

Bottom line is, we killed at least 150k innocent civilians in two swipes. And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion.

The point about your editing ability is that it isn't noted as such. Convenient ?

Take it up with IPB who makes the forum software. Sometimes edits of people's posts are necessary but aren't of a nature that there needs to be a notation (i.e. - it wasn't a correction of content, it was due to some glitch in formatting, etc.) and thus we wouldn't want to give the appearance the poster did something wrong and we came in to edit it. So the software has the default setting that it doesn't show the edit line.

Should you ever have a question about an apparent edit, you can simply ask. I have nothing to hide.

It was not just the Japanese home islands that were under consideration for allied bombing and invasion.

The Japanese military still held a huge amount of captured territory in Asia.

We wanted them to just quit fighting everywhere.............

The area is white was controlled by the Japanese military in August 1945. They also still controlled many small

islands in green by passed by US forces using island hopping.

For comparison the area in dark gray was Nazi German controlled in May 1945 at the time of surrender.

[AUDub 11,158]

...And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion....

What do you think the other options were?

[TitanTiger 20,499]

...And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion....

What do you think the other options were?

For one thing, MacArthur and others believed the Japanese were already willing to surrender if the condition about their emperor would have been removed. But aside from that, many also believe the tipping point for Japan realizing defeat was imminent was the Soviets declaring war on them.

But among the other options were a naval blockade preventing Japan from either receiving or sending out any supplies and and since we had air superiority over the island of Japan, continuing with conventional bombing campaigns targeting military sites and industrial sites that supported the military effort. There are probably other options I could list but the bottom line was, our choices simply weren't "incinerate 200,000 civilians" or "suffer millions of Allied lives lost in a land invasion." That's a false dichotomy.

[TheBlueVue 177]

I could be wrong but, allowing Hirohito to remain in power was not a viable option. Japan's government had to be changed to prevent too much power again accruing to an Emperor. Hirohito had the Japanese believing he was the Son of God. MacArhtur was instrumental in changing their govt to a Constitutional Monarchy which had to be done. Hirohito did remain as a Monarch until 1989 but not as an Emperor.

http://www.biography.com/people/hirohito-37173#awesm=~oBC3rdgY3sStOi

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Titan.......Not dropping the atomic bomb would have saved many Japanese lives but would also have prolonged the wars end, thus resulting in the loss of more of OUR troops. The same is true of your other options. The object of war is to defeat the enemy ASAP, thus minimizing the loss of your own.

[Elephant Tipper 430]

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K.

I was using a conservative estimate of immediate deaths so as not to be accused of padding the numbers.

Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

And that "perspective" is not the only one. There are plenty of people who do not think a land invasion of Japan was necessary - a group that includes none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Their naval capabilities were so degraded that they could not have broken a blockade, the Soviets declaring war put even more pressure on them and we had air superiority already and could bomb military/industrial targets without a lot of serious resistance. They were already defeated. That it ended things quicker is certainly not in dispute. That it saved millions of lives is contingent on one particular view on how the get Japan to surrender, but it is hardly the only one.

Bottom line is, we killed at least 150k innocent civilians in two swipes. And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion.

Your presentation of MacArthur's viewpoint is flat out WRONG ! How do I know that ? His former Chief of Staff (Korean Conflict, but served with DM throughout the Pacific in key positions including Japan), General Ned Almond, was my next door neighbor and a very close friend of my father's. I was privy to some of their discussions about how hardened the Japanese were, military and citizenry. It was a fight to the death for the whole nation of Japan with NO capitulation as an option. The US viewpoint had resolved itself to destroying the Japanese will to fight by any means necessary because otherwise it meant a protracted war for YEARS and potentially millions of deaths. The discussion you mention was early on and decided to NOT be an option. Frequently revisionists like yourself make errant, unfounded statements that get passed along in an attempt to create a new historical narrative, one that demeans the honor of those on the front lines of war. Your statement that the Japanese were "already defeated" is wrong. Dropping the atomic bombs saved lives, millions.

As an aside, I have seen the primary battle map of Inchon that Gen. DM gave Gen. Almond. Amazing !

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

ET,,,,,,,your account is consistent with other military history narratives, including those I studied in NROTC at AU.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

Titan.......Not dropping the atomic bomb would have saved many Japanese lives but would also have prolonged the wars end, thus resulting in the loss of more of OUR troops. The same is true of your other options. The object of war is to defeat the enemy ASAP, thus minimizing the loss of your own.

I think you are correct regarding what the object of war was at that time. I wonder if that changed in Korea? Can you successfully engage in warfare if your objective is not total defeat and capitulation of the enemy? Do you have to be totally committed to winning?

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Titan.......Not dropping the atomic bomb would have saved many Japanese lives but would also have prolonged the wars end, thus resulting in the loss of more of OUR troops. The same is true of your other options. The object of war is to defeat the enemy ASAP, thus minimizing the loss of your own.

War is an evil, sometimes a necessary one. That does not mean that any and all options are on the table ethically or morally. We had other options and the only way we were going to lose many more of our troops was if we insisted that our only option other an atomic bomb was to launch a land invasion of Japan. That was not our only other option. We could have still bombed the hell out of them but decimated them industrially and militarily through conventional means.

Purposely targeting civilian population centers with an indiscriminate and massively destructive weapon was not the only way to win and protect our troops.

[TitanTiger 20,499]

Yes, facts are a "stubborn thing", but let me help you with the facts. FIrst, the atomic casualties, including long-term radiation illness, puts the number over 300K.

I was using a conservative estimate of immediate deaths so as not to be accused of padding the numbers.

Having said that, PERSPECTIVE is what matters to the "facts". The low-end calculated loss of life to invade Japan was estimated in the millions. America stopped the killing of millions more, and THAT is the stubborn fact.

And that "perspective" is not the only one. There are plenty of people who do not think a land invasion of Japan was necessary - a group that includes none other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Their naval capabilities were so degraded that they could not have broken a blockade, the Soviets declaring war put even more pressure on them and we had air superiority already and could bomb military/industrial targets without a lot of serious resistance. They were already defeated. That it ended things quicker is certainly not in dispute. That it saved millions of lives is contingent on one particular view on how the get Japan to surrender, but it is hardly the only one.

Bottom line is, we killed at least 150k innocent civilians in two swipes. And our choices were not limited to dropping atomic bombs or a ground invasion.

Your presentation of MacArthur's viewpoint is flat out WRONG ! How do I know that ? His former Chief of Staff (Korean Conflict, but served with DM throughout the Pacific in key positions including Japan), General Ned Almond, was my next door neighbor and a very close friend of my father's. I was privy to some of their discussions about how hardened the Japanese were, military and citizenry. It was a fight to the death for the whole nation of Japan with NO capitulation as an option. The US viewpoint had resolved itself to destroying the Japanese will to fight by any means necessary because otherwise it meant a protracted war for YEARS and potentially millions of deaths. The discussion you mention was early on and decided to NOT be an option. Frequently revisionists like yourself make errant, unfounded statements that get passed along in an attempt to create a new historical narrative, one that demeans the honor of those on the front lines of war. Your statement that the Japanese were "already defeated" is wrong. Dropping the atomic bombs saved lives, millions.

As an aside, I have seen the primary battle map of Inchon that Gen. DM gave Gen. Almond. Amazing !

That doesn't jive with any of the things he said on the record:

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

On the 40th Anniversary of the bombing former President Richard M. Nixon reported that:

[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off. . . . (See p. 352, Chapter 28)

Former President Herbert Hoover met with MacArthur alone for several hours on a tour of the Pacific in early May 1946. His diary states:

"I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria." (See pp. 350-351, Chapter 28)

Saturday Review of Literature editor Norman Cousins also later reported that MacArthur told him he saw no military justification for using the atomic bomb, and that "The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." (See p. 351, Chapter 28)

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm

[Elephant Tipper 430]

Titan.......Not dropping the atomic bomb would have saved many Japanese lives but would also have prolonged the wars end, thus resulting in the loss of more of OUR troops. The same is true of your other options. The object of war is to defeat the enemy ASAP, thus minimizing the loss of your own.

I think you are correct regarding what the object of war was at that time. I wonder if that changed in Korea? Can you successfully engage in warfare if your objective is not total defeat and capitulation of the enemy? Do you have to be totally committed to winning?

Depends on the enemy. With the Japanese the citizenry had shown that they would rather commit suicide by hurling themselves off of cliffs rather than surrender. The military would rather endure being burned alive by flame throwers than surrender. Pilots routinely crashed their planes into our ships. The Japanese attitude was "war at all costs", ours was "what cost to end war?". We decided that to break the will of the whole nation required extreme efforts, which did end the war within one week.

Yes, ichy, the USA can engage in war without total defeat. With the Korean conflict S Koreans/USA and the N Koreans/Chinese came to a point that the costs were too great to proceed. China had already allowed 100,000s + of their soldiers to die and we had driven out the rest so it was time to stop. Some generals wanted to take into China. Cooler heads prevailed.

[TitanTiger 20,499]

I could be wrong but, allowing Hirohito to remain in power was not a viable option. Japan's government had to be changed to prevent too much power again accruing to an Emperor. Hirohito had the Japanese believing he was the Son of God. MacArhtur was instrumental in changing their govt to a Constitutional Monarchy which had to be done. Hirohito did remain as a Monarch until 1989 but not as an Emperor.

http://www.biography...~oBC3rdgY3sStOi

I believe MacArthur's view was that we could have created a situation not unlike the monarchy in England where the emperor could remain in place but that it would be a more or less ceremonial position with no real power....that we could have allowed them to save face in this way while in reality getting what we wanted. Regardless, it was his view that the atomic bomb was not necessary.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Titan......So you are saying it would have been OK for us to lose just a "few" more of our troops to allow other options to be pursued? I strongly disagree! In war you go all out to protect your own. Enemy casualties, unfortunately including civilians, are secondary priority.

[TheBlueVue 177]

I could be wrong but, allowing Hirohito to remain in power was not a viable option. Japan's government had to be changed to prevent too much power again accruing to an Emperor. Hirohito had the Japanese believing he was the Son of God. MacArhtur was instrumental in changing their govt to a Constitutional Monarchy which had to be done. Hirohito did remain as a Monarch until 1989 but not as an Emperor.

http://www.biography...~oBC3rdgY3sStOi

I believe MacArthur's view was that we could have created a situation not unlike the monarchy in England where the emperor could remain in place but that it would be a more or less ceremonial position with no real power....that we could have allowed them to save face in this way while in reality getting what we wanted. Regardless, it was his view that the atomic bomb was not necessary.

Thats exactly what happened. MacArthur did the heavy lifting in setting up a Constitutional Monarchy much like that of the UK and Hirohito became a figurehead, aka Monarch, while retaining the title of Emperor, and remained in that capacity til his death in 1989

I could be wrong but, allowing Hirohito to remain in power was not a viable option. Japan's government had to be changed to prevent too much power again accruing to an Emperor. Hirohito had the Japanese believing he was the Son of God. MacArhtur was instrumental in changing their govt to a Constitutional Monarchy which had to be done. Hirohito did remain as a Monarch until 1989 but not as an Emperor.

http://www.biography...~oBC3rdgY3sStOi

I believe MacArthur's view was that we could have created a situation not unlike the monarchy in England where the emperor could remain in place but that it would be a more or less ceremonial position with no real power....that we could have allowed them to save face in this way while in reality getting what we wanted. Regardless, it was his view that the atomic bomb was not necessary.

Thats exactly what happened. MacArthur did the heavy lifting in setting up a Constitutional Monarchy much like that of the UK and Hirohito became a figurehead, aka Monarch, while retaining the title of Emperor, and remained in that capacity til his death in 1989. Im not challenging you whether or not MacArthur felt the bomb was unnecessary