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To: Radioactive

Incorrect in every respect.


24 posted on 08/03/2005 11:18:52 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Scratch a Liberal. Uncover a Fascist)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
Incorrect in every respect

SO says you.

But documents released by the US government has supported the claims that Eisenhower disagreed with the dopping of the bombs. Japan was worried that the Emperer would be tried and executed for the war and was trying to get the US to drop any plans for that.

Check this out:

In fact, none other than Gen. Eisenhower, Gen. Macarthur, Gen. "Hap" Arnold, and Adm. Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff, among others, thought the war with Japan could have been ended without invading and without dropping the bomb. The following is heavily exerpted from here: (http://www.ncesa.org/html/hiroshima2.html) Eisenhower reported in his 1963 Mandate for Change that he had the following reaction when Secretary of War Stimson informed him the atomic bomb would be used: "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as measure to save American lives." Eisenhower also said: "Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face.". . .It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." In his memoirs, Leahy said: "The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . in being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Army Air Forces commander, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, in his 1949 Global Mission: "It always appeared to us that atomic bomb or no atomic bomb the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." For Macarthur, and the opinions of others, see here. (http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm) From this site, on Macarthur and the bomb: William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512. Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

So there you go........Incorrect in every respect....hardly.

36 posted on 08/03/2005 3:28:14 PM PDT by Radioactive (I'm on the radio..so I'm radioactive)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks; Radioactive
I wish I had time to get into this but I don't.
However - part of the Japanese plan for peace was to force the Americans onto the shores of Japan. The Japanese had hoped the God awful numbers of US KIAs would force the Americans to negotiate peace rather than have an unconditional surrender forced on them.
If the Japanese had planned to surrender as has been stated they would have done so the moment the first Atomic bomb was dropped. It took two bombs to convince them and not even that convinced everyone. There was even active resistance by the Japanese military to the peace announced by the Emperor
An excellent read is " The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima " By Daniel Marston.
Marston goes into great detail about recently declassified radio transmissions from the Japanese which convinced the US the A-bomb was the only way. The radio transmissions contain the info I mentioned on the first paragraph.
50 posted on 08/04/2005 6:01:01 PM PDT by warsaw44
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