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To: JCBreckenridge
The options were not ‘invasion’ or ‘atomic weapons’. There was a third option, blockade.

That third option would not have gotten Japan to the surrender table on August 15, 1945, if ever. A blockade also meant keeping millions of conscripts in uniform for years waiting for Japanese capitulation. Note that Truk was a postage stamp sized installation with no fresh water other than from rain fall. The Japanese home islands have been continuously cultivated for thousands of years. Meanwhile, on the Asian mainland, Allied troops, POW and civilian slave laborers were dying every day that a Japanese surrender was not forthcoming.

196 posted on 08/10/2013 10:29:20 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: Zhang Fei

“That third option would not have gotten Japan to the surrender table on August 15, 1945, if ever”

True, it would have taken longer. No question there. How long, I think is the interesting question? Can you run a modern society with no oil? LeMay took out the refineries in May, and Japan had no way to get more, let alone use what they possessed. I do not believe they would have made it through the winter.


200 posted on 08/10/2013 11:39:31 PM PDT by JCBreckenridge
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