> And let 50 million of them die of famine and disease?
It is extremely unlikely anything that severe would have happened. In a blockade, there would likely have been fewer deaths than resulted from the atomic bombs. Food and medicine would have been provided, but industrial capacity would have continued being destroyed.
> Wait - let me guess - you call yourself a “humanitarian”, right?
Not at all.
I’m a Christian. I endeavor to make my focus Christ, not humanity, though compassion for fellow human beings is part of what Jesus taught.
And I’m not the only one who believes the atomic bombs were not as necessary as is commonly thought, as moonshot925 posted here.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2915320/posts?page=16#16
The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki just three days after the first, even before the Japanese government had fully understood what had happened in Hiroshima.
Don’t know what I would’ve done in Truman’s shoes, though.
The U.S. had suffered a LOT of casualties, and the Japs were particularly maniacal. That did not work in their favor in the end.
Hindsight is almost always 20-20.
Had relatives and older friends who served in both theaters. They didn’t talk about it much.
Did watch the “Victory at Sea” series more than a few times, though. That was when most American journalists were still Americans first.
HelenInTheHeartland:
> Sheesh; shouldn’t have someone post that on a
> conservative website.
Being pro-life is conservative, and AFAIK, my post follows all the rules of this forum.
You are free to your opinion. I strenuously disagree with it based on historical fact.
I am glad the we dropped the 2 atomic bombs on Japan killing tens of thousands.
Not glad about the tens of thousands; but glad that leaders realized either hundreds of thousands could die in an invasion, or tens of thousands with atomic bombs.
They had a hard choice to make and made it correctly.
Are you really suggesting that, absent Little Boy and Fat Man, in late 1945 we would have blockaded Japan, continued to bomb their industrial capacity, but ferried food and medicine ashore "for the starving chirruns"?
What color is the sky in your world?