There is a pretty long way between blockaded and "unarmed" . Japan wouldn't be able to do $#@!e against a blockade that is true, but the assumption that they would just all die out there because of it is ridicuals. Japan produces more than enough food to feed itself if hey ration the food adequetly. which everyone in WW2 was doing anyway. meanwhile, the production of rifles and other basic weapon require only miniscule resource that they could easily acquired by (and were to some extend) melting other stuff. it would be laughable to think that if the allies landed they would be facing nothing but bamboo spears.
Sure, the US didn't nuke Japan to help China, but the thing is that the US is also costing a ton of money to maintain a blockade, and had land forces still engagned in the Phillipines and elsewhere, and is also involved in the supplying of China a the least through the Burma - India route. and the truth is, without an invasion or something like the bomb. the whole $#@!e could have dragged on for many more years. the idea that Japan would surrender simply because they may not have a full belly is ridiculas. meanwhile, the abosalute % of civilians being killed in Japan at that point wasn't actually that high. despite being the loser and in the war the longest and operating in the widest range outside of the USA. Japan in the end lost less % of their population than pretty much all eastern Europe states / China and the Phillipines, their colony in Korea suffered roughly as much casaulty as they did.
Also, cold war calculation was already beginning at the end of WW2, with the USSR steamrolling down Manchuria, if the US didn't end the war soon their post war position would be significantly weakened. for example, the original ally agreement on Japan was actually to divide it like they did with Germany occupation, which included Russia holding Hokkaido and China holding Shikoku. now imagine if that became the reality, and while on it's way rolling through China Stalin had already helped Mao into power (he eventually did soon after the war anyway.) and how that would effect say.. the Korean war?
Last edited by RollingWave; 09-19-2012 at 10:24 PM.
I have to weigh in here with personal experience. One of my best friends and mentor is named Akazuki. He was nine years old when McArthur's troops rolled through his home in the outskirts of Tokyo. He tells me that they had been prepared for slaughter, that Americans had horns and ate children.
They were starving. He remembers vividly trying to catch rats and digging in garbage for food for his sister and mother.
They were completely defeated, the troops who were around were as starving as they.
They were astonished to the point of tears when the US troops dropped the tailgates of their trucks and started distributing bags of rice. He recalls vividly they had the Stars and Stripes on them and he was later to know the words "Product of USA."
From his stories, told over many years of hiking the mountains of British Columbia, harvesting Bonzai - the hobby he taught me -- I came to wonder about the "official" version of events. Today, I believe Harry Truman used the atomic bomb for his own political ends.
First, the Japanese did not want a war with the US. But Roosevelt gave them and ultimatum: leave China or be attacked by the USA. He even rounded up all the obsolete battleships and put them in Pearl Harbor as a show.
So, the Japanese figured, they could stop Roosevelt long enough by eliminating the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. Little did they know that Roosevelt was very eager for them to attack. He even had Mac Arthur park his planes close together. The next day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese went to attack MacArthur's place. He kept the planes on the ground until the Japanese began their attack, and most of his planes were destroyed.
Pearl Harbor was a set up.
2nd. When our nice Talmud reading vice president took over, he kept the war going for months after the Japanese asked to end the war, so he could set up Korea and Manchuria to be taken by the Soviets, and drop nuclear bombs on the 2 main Christian cities of East Asia.
Last edited by Ivan88; 09-23-2012 at 11:26 PM.
FDR did provoke Japan, but it was via an oil boycott. http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/...accauses_2.htm
MMC (09-24-2012)