because of the way I grew up, I've always found it hard to lump the three axis powers together when the issue of "unconditional surrender" comes up. which is to say that I can't imagine what anything short of unconditional surrender could possible mean in the case of Germany. I've never been able feel that way about Japan. Paul Fussell t…
because of the way I grew up, I've always found it hard to lump the three axis powers together when the issue of "unconditional surrender" comes up. which is to say that I can't imagine what anything short of unconditional surrender could possible mean in the case of Germany. I've never been able feel that way about Japan. Paul Fussell titled a book of his essays "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," but he was operating on the assumption that dropping the bombs saved enough American lives to be justifiable. based on what you're saying, that argument can now be considered a "useful fiction" (ie--bullshit).
Not necessarily. If they had put Operation Olympic into operation, there would have been terrible loss of life. When I interviewed Colonel William E. Barber about Chosin, we also talked about his time in WW2. He was a company commander (by attrition) in the Sixth Marine Division at Iwo Jima. They were to hit one of the Kyushu beaches. In September after the surrender, the officers of the division went to visit that beach. All the defenses were still there, and several of the officers who would have been their opponents. He told me that after they took their tour of the beach and talked to their opposites, it was the unanimous opinion that they would have never gotten off the beach against those defenses, and that it would have been impossible to extract them from the beach. My father, who hated the bomb, also believed it saved him - he got orders back to radar picket destroyers on my birthday, after having been sunk by the kamikazes at Okinawa and survived.
So it's a very complicated question. If the Russians had invaded Japan, I'm sure Nimitz would have been told it didn't matter if he supported the event or not, just do it. There would have been no way we'd have let the Russians have the whole country, not after 4 years of the Pacific War.
because of the way I grew up, I've always found it hard to lump the three axis powers together when the issue of "unconditional surrender" comes up. which is to say that I can't imagine what anything short of unconditional surrender could possible mean in the case of Germany. I've never been able feel that way about Japan. Paul Fussell titled a book of his essays "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," but he was operating on the assumption that dropping the bombs saved enough American lives to be justifiable. based on what you're saying, that argument can now be considered a "useful fiction" (ie--bullshit).
if I'm being simplistic about this, let me know.
Not necessarily. If they had put Operation Olympic into operation, there would have been terrible loss of life. When I interviewed Colonel William E. Barber about Chosin, we also talked about his time in WW2. He was a company commander (by attrition) in the Sixth Marine Division at Iwo Jima. They were to hit one of the Kyushu beaches. In September after the surrender, the officers of the division went to visit that beach. All the defenses were still there, and several of the officers who would have been their opponents. He told me that after they took their tour of the beach and talked to their opposites, it was the unanimous opinion that they would have never gotten off the beach against those defenses, and that it would have been impossible to extract them from the beach. My father, who hated the bomb, also believed it saved him - he got orders back to radar picket destroyers on my birthday, after having been sunk by the kamikazes at Okinawa and survived.
So it's a very complicated question. If the Russians had invaded Japan, I'm sure Nimitz would have been told it didn't matter if he supported the event or not, just do it. There would have been no way we'd have let the Russians have the whole country, not after 4 years of the Pacific War.