“the “god” emperor needed to be humiliated and humanized, not martyred”
Did you read the rest of my post? If that had been carried out then ‘martyrdom’ would not be an issue.
Who would be inclined to mess with the USA if the rest of my post had been carried out?
It is exactly like Patton said, paraphrased!: “The problem is that the politicians never let us finish the wars.”
Even Genghis Khan, who I admire, made only one mistake: He let the women and children live so that they could breed more evil.
what about the war with Japan was not finished by Truman’s action?
The US strategy was not to engage in a total war and not to seek the total destruction of Japan, but to use precision application of force to make the Japanese military regime surrender, and then use McArthur and western advisors to finally open Japan to the west and reconstitute Japan’s government and economy.
This was an effective end to the war. Since 1946 the US-Japanese alliance has served both of our nations to contain China and Russia and preserve western (and Japanese) interests in the western Pacific