My dad served with Patton’s Third Army. Upon the surrender of the Germans, he was sent back to the US for more training.
Next stop, the INVASION OF JAPAN! He was Not looking forward to it.
When word of the nukes came everyone in his army base were relieved as they knew the war was over and there would be no need for an invasion.
How many US Army personel would have to die in an invasion of Japan to make a Leftist feel good about not using the bombs?
RE: Next stop, the INVASION OF JAPAN! He was Not looking forward to it.
It was estimated that 250,000 people died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (COMBINED TOLL ).
Question: How may would have died had the war continued?
My Dad did, too, in the 26th Infantry ‘Yankee’ Division Combat Engineers, thru all of Europe and The Battle of The Bulge, where he was shot by a nazi sniper while rescuing downed American Troops. He was sent back to UK and then to US to recoup.
Estimates at the time were that Allied troops could suffer a million casualties, if we had to launch a conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands. And untold Japanese also would have died in such an invasion.
The bombings actually saved lives in the long run.
I interviewed a guy who was a Higgins boat driver in the Pacific in 1945 and was going to be taking troops to the shore of Honshu. He said when word came out on the ship about the bomb, wild cheering broke out, because those men knew they weren’t going to die in an invasion.
My Dad was in an infantry regiment on V-E Day that was ordered to withdraw 60 km westward to let the Red Army in. His unit was getting ready to ship to the Pacific when the A-bombs were dropped. For that I’m both grateful and here.
IIRC, the second-guessing about Hiroshima/Nagasaki started in 1985 on the fortieth anniversary with floating candles down the river in Hiroshima, and with scolding & finger pointing from Walter Cronkite & other libs.
Not hard to see why. The evil racist warmongering nuclear cowboy Ronald Reagan had just been reelected, and the A-bomb observance was just another way of bullyragging him & anticommunism in general.
But the Hiroshima remembrance has since taken on a life of its own, especially in Japan where it is widely believed that World War Two did not really begin until August 6, 1945.
Consider the alternative to invasion: blockade. Cut them off from any oil and food imports; have planes drop poison on the rice fields; wait for 90% of the population to starve to death, and the rest to be too weak to resist.
Have you ever noticed that those who criticize us for dropping the A bomb[s]on Japan are quite as a mouse concerning the Japanese terror bombing the Chinese cities, bombing Manila after it was declared an open city. Not one complaint do they make about the German bombing of Warsaw, Stalingrad, Rotterdam, London, or Coventry ?
Have you ever noticed that those who criticize us for dropping the A bomb[s]on Japan are quite as a mouse concerning the Japanese terror bombing the Chinese cities, bombing Manila after it was declared an open city. Not one complaint do they make about the German bombing of Warsaw, Stalingrad, Rotterdam, London, or Coventry ?