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To: tanknetter

Fine. Produce it. Better yet, produce the evidence that four submarines (even ones carrying aircraft and radiological bombs) would have allowed Japan to keep fighting or even to win the war on anything approaching favorable conditions. While you're at it, you can explain to me why the Japanese would even CONSIDER such a thing when they had already witnessed firsthand (in their home islands)the American reaction to a CONVENTIONAL attack on Pearl Harbor?

And YOU need to read more history (I have a master's degree in it); the same thread runs through ALL JAPANESE MILITARY STRATEGY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: that the Western allies, having been surprised, humiliated,militarily defeated and stripped of their colonies and rights in East Asia, should negotiate a surrender on terms favorable to Japan. This is a cultural shorsightedness peculiar to most Oriental nations and peoples: that having once proven your superiority to an enemy, the enemy should gracefully bow out. Once the Japanese had acquired either an outright surrender or a recognition of their primacy in East Asia, the Japanese could go back to the business of finishing the war in China.

The American enemy not only refused to bow out gracefully, he struck back in ways that struck most Japanese as barbaric (i.e. outside the Bushido code of conduct, but which were obvious to any student of western warfare and history). I seriosuly doubt Japan (even if it had the capability) would have gone to such lengths knowing the Americans would respond in an overwhelming fashion, particularly not when the more serious and sober Japanese commanders and diplomats had already seen the handwriting on the wall as far as their prospects for a victory of any kind.

You assume that because SOME Japanese were willing to commit suicide in the war that the entire nation would. Nothing could be further from the truth.


298 posted on 06/01/2006 11:06:32 AM PDT by Wombat101 (Islam: Turning everything it touches to Shi'ite since 632 AD...)
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To: Wombat101
Fine. Produce it. Better yet, produce the evidence that four submarines (even ones carrying aircraft and radiological bombs) would have allowed Japan to keep fighting or even to win the war on anything approaching favorable conditions. While you're at it, you can explain to me why the Japanese would even CONSIDER such a thing when they had already witnessed firsthand (in their home islands)the American reaction to a CONVENTIONAL attack on Pearl Harbor?

Read the article I linked to in my earlier post. The Japanese leadership thought they could end the war on favorable terms as late as July 1945. I don't see how it isn't believable that they wouldn't have proceeded to use dirty nukes (radiological bombs) against US civillian targets had the war been extended. Afterall, isn't this the same nation that employed incendiary balloon bombs to try to burn down the Pacific NW? Isn't this the same nation that tried to drop bubonic plague infected rats into the US?
313 posted on 06/01/2006 1:31:35 PM PDT by tanknetter
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