The difference is blockading is allowable under the Geneva convention. As long as the intent isnt genocide, which it wouldn’t be.
Also as far as calling/suggesting me inhumane that is laughable. You endorse burning and radiating civilians—children and women alive …not I.
Blocking off food shipments puts the ownership of the deaths of Japanese civilians on THEM not us. Can’t you see the difference?
You are just postulating your opinion they would not have disarmed or given up territory. Likely they would have accepted surrender with keeping their emperor, Korea and partial disarmament. We will never know but as they in fact did seek peace terms before much of ye mass fire bombing s and nuclear attacks. This does support my theory.
The Wikipedia article on WWII deaths shows Japanese civilian dead somewhere in the range of 550,000 to 800,000, which I suspect is low. I would have guessed around 1,000,000.
The population of Japan at the time was a little over 70,000,000.
The blockade/starvation option may have killed half the civilian population. 30,000,000+.
One million versus ten or twenty or thirty times that.
“Oh, but that would have been allowable under the Geneva Convention”.
Yeah, you’re inhumane.
“Kept sinking their merchant marine fleet go ahead with operation Starvation. Continue bombing military targets—wage war. They would eventually run out of food and supplies.
The Japanese sent out peace feelers both to Sweden and the USSR before the end...Eisenhower/Truman knew the Japanese wanted to negotiate surrender. Now WHY he didn’t want it is another matter…” [Phoenix8, post 22]
“You do know what “starvation” means, don’t you?...” [DuncanWaring, post 26]
“The difference is blockading is allowable under the Geneva convention. As long as the intent isnt genocide, which it wouldn’t be.
Also as far as calling/suggesting me inhumane that is laughable. You endorse burning and radiating civilians—children and women alive …not I.
Blocking off food shipments puts the ownership of the deaths of Japanese civilians on THEM not us. Can’t you see the difference?
... they in fact did seek peace terms before much of the mass fire bombings and nuclear attacks. This does support my theory.” [Phoenix8, post 28]
Your approach here isn’t clear.
Are you theorizing that it’s better to starve an adversary’s population than to firebomb urban areas?
The Geneva Convention is not a solve-all document agreed to universally at every point by the signatories. Neither do nations cary it out in honesty and good faith.
The Imperial Germans went on record - quite noisily - against the inhumane results of Allied blockade during the First World War. Folks did starve then. Before much of the Conventions assuredly, but international usage and accepted rules of “civilized” warfare already were in place.
In 1945 the Imperial Japanese weren’t being honest about peace feelers; after American warnings, the senior leaders decided to abide by the principal of “mokusatsu” - approximately, to negate a diplomatic proposal with scornful silence.
Whether Allied leaders knew this at the time is less than clear. The message interception and decoding process was far from the magical key to the kingdom you apparently believe it was. “We’re reading the enemy’s orders before they get them themselves” was more hot air than historical fact.
You seem more interested in flaunting your own morality than in conducting any supportable historical analysis. And your condescension is obvious, in declaring your moral take to be so unimpeachable as to be beyond challenge from the rest of us.