That's fine, now reason out how a blockade would work, even absent our continued air and naval attacks. Answer how our POWs survive, estimate the number of Jap dead before they are forced to the peace table, how much longer would the world have to wait before the stranglehold had its effect. You have a scenario across Sea of Japan similar to a blockaded Imperial Japan, where the military and the political leadership eats, the rest of the population not so much.
Look at the history of the war, learn to think rather than emote about the use of the bomb. I like Ike, I doubt he raised this issue in his run for the Presidency as he would have been crushed. I noted earlier that a blockade working was inevitable, but a war planner figures out the costs before planning or approving a Course of Action (COA). A blockade didn't meet the objectives unless the only objective was victory without a timetable.
“That’s fine, now reason out how a blockade would work, even absent our continued air and naval attacks.”
I find it an odd tendency that whenever someone argues something that they don’t like, to insert conditions that make no sense whatsoever. Why must a blockade not include air and naval attacks in order to contain the Japanese?
“where the military and the political leadership eats, the rest of the population not so much”
The IJN would be foolish to do so. The military at that point could not save Japan. By starving the people, it would lead to their own destruction.
” ‘Frankly I trust Eisenhower’s opinion on this matter more than you.’
... now reason out how a blockade would work, even absent our continued air and naval attacks. ...
... a blockade working was inevitable, but a war planner figures out the costs before planning or approving a Course of Action (COA). A blockade didn’t meet the objectives unless the only objective was victory without a timetable.”
I salute these suggestions.
As a purely practical point, it ought to be emphasized that Allied destruction of Imperial Japanese transport (aka “merchant”) shipping was by late 1944 already well under way, creating a blockade of increasing stringency. Submarines sank most, with the mining of coastal shipping harbors by B-29s (the only warplane with the payload to deliver anything larger than pinpricks), Home Island shipping was substantially interdicted.
Further blockade might have induced surrender eventually, but the timeline is inherently uncertain. Given the ever-shortening supply of foodstuffs, starvation deaths in the multiple tens of millions were not out of the question.
It’s more than a little disingenuous to cite stray misgivings from GEN Eisenhower and other senior officers, as if they constituted central, incontrovertible theses of a fully thought-out policies, unverifiable theses at that.
What’s really puzzling, is why the likes JCBreckenridge thinks the rest of us ought to care how many enemy deaths happened.