tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10585025.post2350451866727991256..comments2023-10-21T03:28:00.596-04:00Comments on Mad Minerva 2.0: History: On Defeating Japan in World War II, the Answer Is "Yes."Mad Minervahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01649780647476573087noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10585025.post-69993003314100061152009-11-16T17:14:40.327-05:002009-11-16T17:14:40.327-05:00Good points, Michael, and ditto on the revisionism...Good points, Michael, and ditto on the revisionism.Mad Minervahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01649780647476573087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10585025.post-67473457159481022692009-11-16T07:37:56.893-05:002009-11-16T07:37:56.893-05:00On Nov 1 1945 Japan had but three days of rice lef...On Nov 1 1945 Japan had but three days of rice left. Dougout Doug, in what surely was his finest moment and one of our greatest as a nation, had the US import rice to stave off starvation. <br /><br />Had we not dropped the bomb, the death toll would have been in the millions from starvation and fighting. We proposed invading the most heavily urbanized nation in Asia, densely population. Let's recall that in similar savage fighting in Russia, nearly every citizen of Stalingrad was killed, and similar events occurred in Leningrad. Japan would have been even more brutal. Typical death rates among Japanese soldiers were in the high 90 percents in most of our island landings, and there were 800,000 Japanese boys in Kyushu, almost all of whom would have been killed.<br /><br />This does not even begin to touch on the widespread starvation elsewhere in Asia -- but revisionism never discusses that, because it is a Japanese invention and has inherited Japanese prejudices against non-Japanese, and it would have been brown people dying. Starvation was averted in many places only because the fighting ended. Ending the war also gave us the opportunity, which we blew, to save China from Communism and millions of lost lives too.<br /><br />Dropping the Bomb sucked, but what sucked was that we had to incinerate two cities to get the Emperor's attention so he would quit the war. By dropping the bomb, we adumbrated the imperial strategy of making the invasion so costly that the US would quit the war and leave Japan at least some of its empire in Asia and the Pacific. The Bomb did so by showing that we could destroy Japan without loss to ourselves. <br /><br />I could go on. Revisionism makes me ill, from both its ethical blindness and its vast ignorance of history.<br /><br />MichaelMichael Turtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17974403961870976346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10585025.post-84001788652678132942009-11-15T21:39:13.329-05:002009-11-15T21:39:13.329-05:00I had not thought along those lines -- an interest...I had not thought along those lines -- an interesting "what if"!<br /><br />And adding a weekly history post to your blog would be a great idea!Mad Minervahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01649780647476573087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10585025.post-47988232047038240092009-11-15T18:52:53.524-05:002009-11-15T18:52:53.524-05:00From the "let's put that in a different l...From the "let's put that in a different light" department: <br /><br />The conversation can get very interesting when you ask an American who condemns Truman's decision to reflect on whether he or she would have been born without the dropping of the A-bombs. (And that goes for a huge number of Japanese too.) If a million or so future fathers would have died, that's millions of baby boomers who wouldn't have been born, and, of course, many millions of children and grandchildren of boomers. It doesn't hurt to point out that the Americans who would have died were not only those serving in the Pacific theater of war, but, as you know, also those who had survived the European theater and would have been sent to the Pacific. In other words, relatively few Americans descended from WWII veterans could assure you that they would even have been born without Truman's decision. <br /><br />Minerva, if you do put that history blog together, let me know--I'd love to contribute. I've been thinking about adding a weekly history post to my blog, and would have already, if the Obama administration were not distributing at least one incomprehensible "fresh hell" <i>every day</i>!Quite Rightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06454908849040454661noreply@blogger.com