Charlie Self wrote:
On Dec 22, 12:17 am, "John E." wrote:
Mr. Self,

I don't consider myself a "revisionist asshole" but I do believe
that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were immoral. As were
the fire bombings of Dresden, the raids over Tokyo, the bombing of
London, the concentration and the internment camps, et al.

War is an immoral business, no matter who starts it.

It if solved anything, we wouldn't need to keep having them.

John E.

"Charlie Self" wrote in message

...

16 million served in the Armed Forces during WWII, if my memory is
working. I still ahve a partial book or two of the green stamps
around, stamps my parents bought for me when I was 3-4-5-6.

Now, we get revisionist assholes stating that A-bombing Japan was
immoral, and killed far more people than necessary. Oh, yeah. And
it
was racist because we didn't A-bomb Germany. True enough, but,
IIRC,
Germany quit about the same day Truman was sworn in to replace
Roosevelt, who had just died. Hitler suicided that same day and
that
war was effectively over. Too, I guess the revisionists haven't
heard of the fire bombing of Dresden, nor the fears that all the
top brass in the U.S. had at the time that the Japanese were
prepared to defend their land to the last person. I still believe
that.

Semper fi.

It would have been more moral, then, to invade the Japanese home
islands which they had sworn to defend the last person?

During WWII, the Japanese showed an unusual taste for last ditch
defense, actually suiciding in preference to being captured.

I think that it should be made clear that that penchant for suicide
extended to the civilians, it wasn't just the soldiers. On Saipan
about 20 percent of the civilian population committed suicide. I
don't know the number for Okinawa but it was also substantial. If 20
percent of the Japanese home islands population did the same that
would have been 14 million dead over and above however many died in
the fighting.

They were
tough, tenacious fighters with good (in the terms of fighting)
leadership, and more than a little ability to dream up new ways of
killing U.S. troops.

Estimated casualties for an invasion of the Japanese homeland ran
from
one to five million, including Japanese civilians.

A-bombing immoral? Actually, the invasion would have been immoral.

Perhaps he feels that Japan should have just been blockaded forever?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)