Posted on 12/18/2006 3:03:14 PM PST by sushiman
Moreover, the Japanese were engaged in bacterial warfare and used human beings as live subjects.
Also, the Japanese had an order to kill all our American POW's when the U.S. invaded.
Every decent military thinker and strategist agrees that we would have lost 100,000 PLUS invading Japan. They were using terrorist tactics like human bombs loooooooong before it was fashionable.
Wow. A little late with the criticism.
An icon of the U.S. Air Force; a remarkably creative tactician; and one of the Cold War's fiercest warriors; General Curtis LeMay led a colorful if extremely controversial career. From early on he argued that, "if you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force. Use too much and deliberately use too much... You'll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy's too." His men called him "Iron Ass" because he demanded so much of them. But because of his own physical courage and his military rigor most of them respected him immensely.
In the last months of the Second World War, LeMay took command of the main air effort against Japan, turning around its tactics. Instead of the established U.S. policy of daylight, precision bombing, he ripped out the armaments on 325 B-29s and loaded each plane with firebomb clusters. On March 10, 1945 he ordered the bombers out at 5 - 9,000 feet over Tokyo.
The devastation wrought that first night was catastrophic: the raid incinerated more than 16 square miles of the city, killing 100,000 people. According to the official Air Force history of the Second World War, "No other air attack of the war, either in Japan or Europe, was so destructive of life and property." For months LeMay's bombers went out night after night, relentlessly keeping up their fire-bombing campaign, so that by the end of the war, flames had totally or partially consumed 63 Japanese cities, killing half a million people and leaving eight million homeless.
Asked later about the morality of the campaign, LeMay replied: "Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."
I have often wondered what Japan would have done had they had the bomb on December 7, 1941. In my opinion, they would have nuked Hawaii in a second.
Human-guided and occupied torpedoes, too.
Not all war is immoral, killing in defense of freedom and to protect the weak and helpless is legimate.
As an American who lived under Japanese occupation, my only regret is that we didn't have another dozen A-Bombs so that we could have (and should have)blasted that country back to the stone ages!
Until they got an "attitude adjustment", they were ruthless, domineering, nasty people!
Japan was working on the A-bomb at the time. Germany also had an A-bomb program. Would they have used the A-bomb? One guess.
thanks to the A-bomb, Japan is the most peaceful, productive, and successful country in the world.
You're welcome, Japan.
not only that but MANY more Japanese lives were saved in that a full out war was avoided- I wonder- does that feller think pearl harbour was an unnexcusable crime? http://sacredscoop.com
Shoulda known it was a cut n runner.
We should have bombed Tokyo while we were at it, IMO.
It only took two for them to say "Oh! You said we should surrender? We missed that."
Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
It's that compound interest thing again
Bump for later reading.
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