Quote:
Originally Posted by Webstral
I've been watching some of the more recent programs on the war in the Pacific. I'm struck by the increasing ferocity of combat as the fighting drew nearer to Japan. Honestly, I'm rather surprised that chemical weapons weren't used against the general population to soften them up before the initial landings. Too many of us look at the atomic bombings from our comfortable viewpoints and have no concept of the outlook of Americans who were facing fighting as brutal as anything on the Eastern Front.
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MY musings on the subject - all in
my humble opinion of course..
It is doubtless that Japan committed warcrimes on a large scale from 1933 - 1945. ( Their second world war period.) They eventually reaped the spoils of this and of course the populace bore the brunt.
Japan was subjected to a massive and near unprecedented atrocious aerial bombardment by the USAF. ( Conventional). Civillian centers were targeted as well as industrial and military targets. The USAF even commissioned 75 000 (!) V1 rockets or copies thereof to further slam the Japanese in the hope that they would give in. ( Dont know if any where used or how many actuallt were built).
The USN also blockaded Japan to the best of its ability leading to massive shortages, starvation and general need. Still the Japanese did not give in and indeed they conducted massive militarization programs to organise large parts of the populace into militias - some even armed with melee weapons.
The US / allied forces were faced with a large and professional force and a huge militia force that were well dug in and fighting in their homeland. Allied landing areas wrere limited. Japanese tenacity and so on were well known factors. Some allied analysts even believed that guerilla warfare would continue for years or even decades after a successful invasion and subsequent victory - if that was accomplished at all.
Casualties overall for the allies would have been staggering. So high, infact , that some believed ( like the Japanese high command as far as I know) that a truce or peace with some sort of acceptable terms would be possible for Japan.The allies had to take into account their public opinion back home as well as the military realities. This meant that they also had a timelimit to consider to see the victory through.
In this climate if you will , the decision to drop the atomic bombs was taken. The US gambled that Japan would surrender shortly after the event and that the loss of life would be relatively small compared to protracted and all out conventional warfare. This probably includes calculations on Japanese casualties.
So it is not easy to judge on the morality of the matter. The nukes probably killed a lot less people than the blockade and the conventional bombing campaigns against the civilian population did. Using WMD against populated areas is crossing a line nevertheless.
Everyone should make up their own minds I guess.