LogFAQs > #914062767

.... continued from previous post.

2) With all that in mind, the costs of waging a land invasion of the Japanese mainland were, in short, astronomical. People may like to claim that their estimates were inflated, but that doesn't change the fact that American policy planners really believed that a land invasion would lead to the deaths and woundings of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the deaths of potentially tens of millions of Japanese. In fact, in preparation of the invasion, we began making en masse in preparation for the losses they expected to suffer. To this day, there are still 120,000 WWII era Purple Hearts in stock, despite all the ones that have been awarded in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere over the past six decades.

3) Logistically, there would've been only two alternatives to nuking or invading, either increased conventional bombing campaigns or enacting a blockade. Just to give you a reminder, more people died in a single day during the firebombing of Tokyo than died in either atomic blast. And a blockade of Japan would've resulted in mass starvation, as evident by the fact that Japan was already starving by the time that the bombs were dropped and by the fact that thousands of Japanese died from malnutrition-related problems in the weeks after the Occupation began, in spite of the massive amount of foodstuffs and medicine that MacArthur started sending in.

4) Look at the regional theater. China was still suffering losses in huge quantities. The Soviet Union was preparing to (and, indeed, did) invade Japanese Manchukuo (Manchuria). Had it not been for the dual punch of the Soviet invasion and the American nuking, you'd better believe that the Japanese would've tried to hold out even longer, Hirohito in power or not. Additionally, look what happened after the war. The Soviets were prepared to take all of Korea, but they stopped because the Americans asked them to. Do you really think that they would've stopped if America didn't display a willingness to use their exclusive nuclear power? Do you think that Korea would be better off right now if all of Korea was under Northern control? Instead of having one totalitarian regime and one thriving democracy on the peninsula, there'd just be a single totalitarian government. And, with all of Korea, so you think that the Soviets wouldn't have wanted a piece of Japan as well? They could have very well demanded a North and South Japan, which clearly would have worsened the situation for the Japanese up to this day.

So, with all of this in mind, I really don't see how you could possibly say that the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't justified. It's not a matter of what's right. War is almost never like that. What it's a matter of is what is the lesser of two evils. Would you rather have inflicted horrific damage on a portion of a country in exchange for a better chance for peace, prosperity, and overall lower casualties or would you rather have a prolonged war with greater suffering, even more widespread destruction, greater fragmentation, and more potential for open conflicts?
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Irregardless, for all intensive purposes, I could care less.