Uh-huh. But it might in the future take 4 billion lives. Particularly if it gets into the wrong hands, which I think may already have happened.
Link? Who is "Davis"?
http://www.danieldrezner.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=736
"JUNE 18, 1945 - When A Democracy Chose GenocideThe United States government decided on June 18, 1945, to commit genocide on Japan with poison gas if its government did not surrender after the nuclear attacks approved in the same June 18 meeting. This was discovered by military historians Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen while researching a book on the end of the war in the Pacific. Their discovery came too late for inclusion in the book, so they published it instead in the Autumn 1997 issue of Military History Quarterly.
Polmar & Allen ran across references to this meeting in their research and put in a Freedom of Information Act request for related documents. Eventually they received, too late for use in their book, a copy of a document labeled "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic." The word "retaliatory" was PENCILED in between the words "possible" and "use".
Apparently there were only five of these documents circulated during World War Two. The document was requested by the Chemical Corps for historical study in 1947. In an attempt to "redact" history, another document was issued to change all the copies to emphasize retaliatory use rather than the reality of the US planning to use it offensively in support of the invasion of Japan.
The plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of poison gas on Japanese cities in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu, then another 23,935 tons every 30 days thereafter. Tactical air support would drop more on troop concentrations.
The targets of the strategic bombing campaign were Japanese civilians in cities. Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were five million dead with another five million injured. This was our backup to nuking Japan into surrender. If the A-bombs didn't work, we were going to gas the Japanese people from the air like bugs, and keep doing so until Japanese resistance ended or all the Japanese were dead.
Genocide is defined by treaty as the murder of a large number of people of an identifiable group, generally a nationality or religion, which number comprises an appreciable percentage of the total group. Five million dead is 6.4% of then 78 million people in the Japanese Home Islands, so this proposed gas attack would certainly have qualified as genocide.
What brought the United States government to that decision was the prospective casualties of a prolonged ground conquest of Japan against suicidal resistance, after Japanese Kamikaze attacks and suicidal ground resistance elsewhere had thoroughly dehumanized them to us.
The American people certainly would have supported such tactics at the time, especially as Japanese Imperial General Headquarters issued orders a month later, provided to us courtesy of code-breaking (MAGIC), to murder all Allied prisoners of war, all interned Allied civilians, and all other Allied civilians Japanese forces could catch in occupied China, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Malaya, etc., starting with the impending British invasion of Malaya in late September 1945. The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal. They'd probably have killed at least an additional 50 million people, more than had died in all of World War Two to that point, before Allied armies could eliminate Japanese forces overseas.
The horror would not have stopped there. An estimated ONE THIRD of the Japanese people (25-30 million) would have died of starvation, disease, poison gas and conventional weapons during a prolonged ground conquest of Japan. The Japanese Army planned on locking up the Emperor, seizing power and fighting to the bitter end once the US invasion started. Thank God for the atom bomb - killing 150,000 - 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved 75-80 million lives. One of whom would have been the writer's father, an infantry lieutenant who survived Okinawa.
So the United States has within living memory made a decision to commit genocide on a whole people as a matter of state policy. We didn't have to do it because the Japanese Emperor knew we'd do it."
Our soldiers would have had to kill massive numbers of these irregulars. Of the 28 Million, very few would have survived.
To me, 4 Million dead seems wildly optomistic. Dropping the bombs was a no-brainer.
bump for later read.
On March 11, 1958, at 3:52 P.M. (EST), a B-47E departed Hunter AFB, Georgia, as number three aircraft in a flight of four en route to an overseas base. After level off at 15,000 feet, the aircraft accidentally jettisoned an unarmed nuclear weapon which impacted on a sparsely populated area approximately 6 miles from Florence, South Carolina. The Bomb's high explosive material exploded on impact. The explosion caused property damage and several injuries on the ground.
Huh?
I saw a documentary once with some Japanese officials from that time period, older now of course, and they were asked what caused them most to shudder, and they all agreed that the atomic bomb didn't scare them HALF as much as they Russians, who of course were planning their own invasion.
If the Russians had come, their Islands would have been called "Russia #2". So they said that they weighed being taken over by the Russians, and surrendering to the Americans, and we didn't look so bad.
As an Army brat with my folks in Japan in the 1950s I can testify to the great number of fortifications in the sandstone bluffs around Yokohama. As a little kid, my buddies and I played in those caves.
Thanks for posting this article pabianice.
I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we had the balls to drop 1 or 2 after 9/11.
BTTT
It can save a billion lives now if we just give it a chance. The Muslim world is just screaming for it.
I am an Atomic Bomb Baby. My father was an Army medic and in August 1945 he was in Tacoma, Washington, awaiting orders to ship out with the first wave of the Japanese invasion. His unit was told to expect 90% casualties.
I read a fictional account of the invasion once. The book was titled 'downfall' I believe and was written by a army general.
The US was also seriously considering the use of chemical munitions in the invasion and a shipload of mustard gas was already in the Pacific theater.
Pingu desu.
"On these islands, seaplane bases would be established and radar would be set up to provide advance air warning for the invasion fleet"
My father was a USN Crew Chief for a PBY (Patrol Boat Plane, aka sitting duck.) He had orders to leave for Okinawa in Mid August. The bomb probably saved his life. My thanks to Einstein and Fermi!