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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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To: warsaw44
Agreed.

I wonder however, if we shouldn't have used the two bombs on Kyushu... based on the fact that this was occurring (McArthur's doubts nothwithstanding):

From mid-July onwards, Ultra intercepts exposed a huge military buildup on Kyushu. Japanese ground forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of four. Instead of 3 Japanese field divisions deployed in southern Kyushu to meet the 9 U.S. divisions, there were 10 Imperial Army divisions plus additional brigades. Japanese air forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of two to four. Instead of 2,500 to 3,000 Japanese aircraft, estimates varied between about 6,000 and 10,000. One intelligence officer commented that the Japanese defenses threatened "to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory.

If our two nuclear bombs were detonated over the Japanese airfields in Kyushu (this assuming they could get into release range unmolested) would have annhilated a good portion of the residual air corps of Japan...both men and machines. What would THAT have done to their grim determination?

82 posted on 08/06/2005 2:11:05 PM PDT by Paul Ross (Strict Constructionist Definition=Someone who doesn't hallucinate when reading the Constitution)
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