60 Years Ago This Week
 

Truman ended the war by bombing civilians. Our truly righteous anger over the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor changed us from a pacific introverted society to one willing to do anything our executive branch masters deem necessary. This anniversary, coming as it does in the midst of more executive over-reach, should have been a time of national soul-searching but we're beyond that sort of thing today.

The Japanese slaughtered 15 million Chinese citizens in their war which preceded Pearl Harbor by one generation.

Unlike today the US was not necessarily more powerful than Japan and it was not certain that a similar fate would not be in store for us.

Now then, you were saying??

60 years ago, America TOLD Japan we had the bomb and begged them for 5 days to surrender or we'd use it. Then after we dropped the bomb in Hiroshima, we contacted Tojo and Hirohito and begged them to surrender again or we'd drop another one. Once again, they refused to put the lives of their people above their own stubbornness, and thousands upon thousands died.

In the end, far less people died by dropping those 2 bombs than would have ever died with a full-scale invasion of Japan.

60 years ago, America did the right thing by ending a war with less casualties than it would with any other option, and gave these people warning (something they didn't give us), and a way out (something they also didn't give us). At the same time we ended this war, we sent a message around the world that we aren't to be fucked with.

As much as I detest America being involved in wars and know we had no reason to be in most of them (including WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice, etc.) the men on the Enola Gay did the right thing by dropping those bombs, and actually saved lives.

overall, fewer people died. more importantly, NONE of OUR people died in an invasion to end a war we didn't start.

It's a shame there weren't bigger targets......or bigger bombs. :grouphug:

You guys make my point perfectly. I was saying we no longer even consider the possibility that we could have done the wrong thing dropping atomic weapons on civilians. I'm not minimizing what the Japanese were. I'm talking about what we have become. We talk about invading the Japanese home islands like it had to be done even though we had cut off their troops from supply and had destroyed their naval and air power along with their industrial capacity to replace them. Truman was apparently afraid not to use the bombs wanting to scare our commie "allies", making ours the only government in history to nuke people. I was also thinking about how we at least attacked the enemy after Pearl Harbor but after 911 we didn't even have to make a connection. We've hardened our hearts to the suffering we cause others while wrapping it in sanctimony. I'm whining about the abuse of Executive power and our uncanny ability to look the other way because our motives are never questionable.


http://www.atomicarchive.com/Photos/...mages/NG02.jpg

I'm also being a troll but its just that the anniversary passes without even a passing thought.

The notion of only weakening your enemies for a while, and not totally defeating them, is an entirely new one to history.

We don't really defeat enemies these days. But that may not be to the enemy's benefit. The transformation of Japan from a hardcore religious state to a peaceful polite culture only interested in trade only happened because their defeat was so total. The 3M killed after our departure from Vietnam was not really the best outcome either. Looks like eastern Europe was a good idea under Clinton so who's to say.

Never did consider the possibility, ever. There were no civilians in Japan. Every damn one of them was part of the national war effort and armed. They were all trained and prepared to fight to the death to protect Japan and the emperor.
Little did they know the Emperor was a prisoner in his own house but that's another matter.

I was thinking about that. Japan might have limped along with a petty tyranny like Iraq had for a long long time. The Japanese people did make the best of it when we gave them the opportunity. I won't minimize that. It may not be knowable whether the Japanese would have capitulated to us without the bombs to avoid a Russian invasion. There are countless ifs and buts.

I watched Tora Tora Tora a couple weeks ago btw. The most striking thing was how Western the Navy and its trappings were portrayed. I don't think the people in general were Westernized at all but many of their most powerful leaders were looking West. I think Macarthur probably took advantage of that. I'm not sure there is a group in Iraq of any consequence who would lead the people in that direction. I'm rambling so I'll just stop.

Actually, we didn't "drop the bomb on civilians" either. We dropped them on military installations near those cities, and civilians lived nearby. All of the people of Japan would have used their dying breath to save their god...Hirohito.

The real pity is that we went to war with them at all. America committed an act of war against Japan fully knowing their honor would force them to attack us. America cut off Japan's oil supply, steel supply, and others they were getting from the Netherlands and were using to murder Chinese people. While I don't think what Japan was doing was right, it was also none of our business. We had no legitimate reason to stick our noses into it. America knew that Japan was allied with Germany and wanted a legitimate reason to get into the war because, like WWI, England and France were, begging for our help. America even had enough advance notice to have avoided the Pearl Harbor attack but instead, moved out all of the expensive carriers, and new ships, and allowed the older ships to be attacked and Americans to die.

This is a fact and if you read the de-classified OPERATINO RAINBOW 5 documents, you'll know it was a ploy to force Japan into attacking us.

Did they have tiny rifles for the infants and toddlers?

I hadn't read this thread, but this morning I was reflecting on the difference between 'evil' and 'enemy'.

Consider what happens when people visit countries like Vietnam. Some of the people who we meet there are directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. If they were evil then, nothing has changed and they should be killed. However, the reality is that they were merely enemies, the war is over, and killing them would be immoral and illegal.

We acknowledge that targeting civilians is wrong. In WWII we dropped a devastating bomb without warning on a city. We destroyed the second city only 3 days later.

A lot of discussion went into the use of the Atomic Bomb

In the end we decided that conventional means were too difficult and the bomb would have an important pschological effect if the first public use was against a live target. Technically, the target was military, but the choice was made to specifically destroy as much of the city as possible. The decision may also have been political and intended for the Russians.

If you can picture a group of Islamic terrorists debating the detonation of a 'dirty bomb' in a US city, you can appreciate the conclusions reached. Expediency will always win over morality.

Between blast and radiation, we probably killed about 300,000 people. Estimates are that an invasion of Japan would have resulted in 1 million deaths. Of course, other factors, such as Japan accepting a conditional surrender instead of the unconditional surrender we demanded, make the equation less clear.

Don't ask me what is right and wrong in situations like this. War is never a good place to determine right and wrong. I will say that if we had been on the receiving end of either of those two bombs, we would have used the word 'terrorist' freely. Of course, that's just politics.


From here

Honest question, Bruce. Where did you get this tidbit of information? I can understand that boys above a certain age and old men were prepared to fight, but the women and small children? The traditional role of a Japanese woman was not to be a new age liberated girl with a pistol on each hip. Are you telling us that Japan managed this massive cultural transfomation in just the few years it was involved in WWII? I am astonished! I'd love to read more about this.

Radar, I wouldn't try having it both ways like this: every single war you've cited, and more besides, were wars fought with nondemocracies, autarchies, dictatorships. Such things are our business, particularly if we want a good world. Is not dictatorship the most easily found and most prevalent evil on the Earth's face? I want a good world, and I'm willing to hang slavemakers to get it. Will you join me?

Marichiko, Japanese social organization has more in common with military organization than civilian-type mores even today. It's been this way since at least the Tokugawas, and seems to have sprung from the Age of Battles between rival power blocs that ended when the Tokugawas came out on top. I think that was after the battle of Sekigahara. Japanese society was very tightly organized and is so today -- every village had its headman, and there were designated persons in charge of every ten, every fifty, every hundred, and they were called according to how many people they were in charge of: han cho is the "captain of a hundred/village headman" and the English honcho is directly derived from this.

Most of the Japanese notion of social virtues are distinctly military -- the Japanese esteem the team player and protest at the eccentric in ways we don't. They are a very disciplined and orderly people in consequence.

Japanese society is so tightly conformist that they establish local festivals for the entire town to have fun together and blow off major steam, and boy do they. They holler, they carry on, they get lit on beer and sake out in the streets, which they don't do on ordinary days, and whiz into the roadside rain gutters (the best kind is very deep and roofed over with perforated concrete lids about a foot long by eight inches wide) -- as discreetly as they may. I like Sapporo and am not so keen on Ki-rin, which is considerably hoppier.

You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. The form of government another country has is none of our business. How they treat their people is none of our business. It's not the job of America to create a "good world" or to "hang slavemakers". No, I will not join you. In fact I'll fight against you, and anyone else who would try to use the U.S. military to do anything other than defend U.S. soil and ships from a direct attack. That includes using it to enforce UN sanctions, perform "humanitarian aid" missions, to settle foreign disputes, to train the military of other nations, to overthrow the leadership of non-democracies, to coerce other nations into adopting policies the U.S. wants, etc.

Look; you don't want a good world enough. I cannot make you want it, but I will say with my dying breath that you should.

If the blessings of liberty are to extend to all men, those who would not permit this must be converted or neutralized. Why would you willingly see peoples left unfree, having freedom yourself? Better to exert yourself, to strike the shackles away. Dead slavemakers make no more slaves, and that is what is wanted, is it not? Isolationism stopped being an option many decades ago. Aggressive, expansionist slavemaking has been the threat that has strained and imperiled democracy and liberty worldwide. While it is in retreat now, will it remain so? I think the way that I espouse and advocate makes a way to blunt this kind of expansionism.

Non-interventionism is not isolationism. I wish freedom for all people, but freedom is to be earned by those who desire it, not won for them by someone else. America has absolutely no authority beyond our own borders unless it is to attack those who have directly attacked American soil or ships and nobody else.

The powers of the U.S. government are EXTREMELY limited and don't include spreading "democracy". In fact the United States is not a democracy. It never was, and hopefully it never will be.

Sticking our nose into the affairs of other nations is why we have so many enemies. Switzerland has been surrounded by war for more than 100 years and has not been in one. Why? Because they don't take sides in every dispute, they have a very strong DEFENSE but not an OFFENSE, and because they take care of their own.

I will never be "converted" or "neutralized" by you or your ilk. But I'm in Los Angeles and since you're in SoCal, we can meet up if you want to give it a shot.

Anyone who supports the war in Iraq is not worthy to call themselves American. They defile the U.S. Constitution and support violating each and every principle that made America great. America is supposed to always remain neutral, and never take part in the disputes of other nations. The U.S. Constitution (the highest law in the land) defines the role of the military as being a DEFENSIVE one.

It's too bad there are a lot of idiots out there who would misuse the U.S. military to violate that directive. These are the ones who truly need to be neutralized and when the day comes for violent revolution, I'll be among those doing the neutralizing.

An Anniversary to Forget (NY Times, reg. reqd)

Since reg is reqd, here is most of the article. By Joichi Ito from Chiba, Japan.

So a people who are in no position to help themselves and gain freedom, don't deserve it? If you saw someone pull up to your neighbor's house, don a ski mask and head in with a shotgun, would you call the police or let your neighbor suffer?

I don't see how helping people who need it when you have the power to do something is a bad thing.

Well, if we go back further, the Spanish-American war was with a constitutional monarchy. Japan was our ally in WWI, so we didn't complain about it's method of government then.

BTW, you do know that the Unites States isn't really a democracy, do you? Hint: "..and to the republic, for which it stands."

England is also a constitutional monarchy, a 'non-democracy'. Of course, we did go to war with them, twice, so I guess they bolster your theory.

We have propped up thugs and dictators in our self-interest and held down or subverted legitimate democracies. While I applaud the concept of our 'getting religion' and going after every single 'bad guy', we really aren't. The Saudi government is far from a 'democracy' even in the looser definition you seem to prefer. We have pretty much ignored Africa in favor of invading a country in a region with our strategic energy supply.

Of course, in the Spanish-American War, which was stared on the 'faulty intelligence' that the Spanish had sunk the Battleship Maine. In that War, the US annexed Hawaii and the Philippines, and took control of Guam. We also directly affected Cuba until 1934.

That was one 'faulty intelligence' war which really paid for itself.

Clinton was roundly criticized from both left and right for his involvement in Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Compared to Iraq, that conflict was a shining success. A lot of the criticism centered around the idea that there was nothing in it for us.

I actually like your honest desire to take on all thugs. I presume this means even if they happen to be our allies at the moment. However, if we were to measure the suffering of the population, Iraq under Hussein wouldn't top the list.

Unfortunately, if you believe that the US is only engaged in wars to support human rights, I will have to disagree. We are still at the point where we will support non-democratic caplitalist governments over democratic socialist ones. Economic theory plays a role in picking our enemies and friends.

Thanks for the article, UT. Very interesting. Was that in response to my question about the capacity of Japanese women to kill at the time?

My great-grandmother and my grandmother faced the occupiers alone, having ordered the children to hide. The Japanese had been warned that the invading barbarians would rape and pillage. My great-grandmother, a battle-scarred early feminist, hissed, "Get your filthy barbarian shoes off of my floor!" The interpreter refused to interpret. The officer in command insisted. Upon hearing the translation from the red-faced interpreter, the officer sat on the floor and removed his boots, instructing his men to do the same. He apologized to my great-grandmother and grandmother.

The old lady certainly sounds spunky, but she didn't run out with pistols blazing, either. That's kind of cool that the American officer would take off his boots and order his men to do the same, though.

she wasn't charging out with pistols because they had already been defeated. up until the emperor's public statements they were not defeated.

Well here in Philadelphia some people called the police to complain about their neighbors and they ended up burning down the neighborhood.

As many 'neighbors' have suffered under regimes we supported as have been freed from regimes we dissolved.

While we have a volunteer military, maybe an extreme interventionist philosophy will work for some. Eventually, however, we will have to draft 18-year-old kids to police the new world order this philsophy wishes to establish. And we will bankrupt ourselves in the same way the Soviet Union did trying to keep up with US spending during the cold war.

Well, the article says she expected to be raped and pillaged. I'd have come out with pistols if I had them! :eyebrow:

No, their mothers were prepared to kill them if all was lost. The "civilians", anyone that could walk, had knives, spears, homemade grenades, some guns(ammo was a problem) but many of them were muzzle loaders. They were organized to reinforce a militia of several hundred thousand old men and boys. If you don't believe they were serious just look at the films from the islands of women throwing their children off the cliffs, before they themselves jumped, rather than surrender.......and that wasn't even the homeland. :(

Some images of a new role for Japanese women. Pressed into service for Home Island defence with obsolete rifles, or whatever could be found. Don't know how long they would have lasted against Allied tanks but it would have made for some ugly newsreel footage.

http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/inters...ice_spears.jpg
(Kikuchi Shunkichi) Women training with bamboo spears, 1945


http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/inters...trice_guns.jpg
(Kageyama Kôyô) Neighbourhood Association women training with rifles, 1943

And that was the kind of thing the Bomb trumped: the Japanese were going to try and defeat Operation Olympic with war emergency production fixed-sight Arisaka boltaction rifles, bamboo spears in phalanx, and smoothbore matchlocks. This up against the most experienced large amphibious forces in the world.

Southern Honshu and all of Shikoku would have been depopulated. Not merely decimated: empty. Then defeat still would have come to the Japanese. They knew full well that the only off switch to the world war was their unconditional surrender. Who lives, who dies? It's only a matter of timing. Hirohito, whatever his sins may have been, certainly had timing.

Rich, rest assured that here I am using democracy in its general sense, rather than pedantically lumbering my sentences with carefully parsed distinctions between the shades of representative governments, from tribal organization through bicameral legislatures and constitutional monarchies.

Representative governments with checks and balances incorporated beat all alternatives hands down. They are usually richer than all the alternatives, owing mainly to that one thing.

An aside to your aside: hardly anyone who isn't African is paying attention to Africa -- though I bet the Darfur's problems will end the day the Khartoum régime is hanged from lampposts or run into exile with all the bank accounts it can close.

I always think of it, but then I have a particular interest in the Manhattan Project.

Most neighbors don't store incendiaries on their rooves and empty human waste into the backyard.

We always feel like we're supposed to apologize for winning conflicts. Bollocks. We saved millions of lives and years of hell by ending the war with two strikes. The weapon was horrific, and as with all war, the innocent suffered as well. But we ended it as cleanly as we could, and what's more, we rebuilt them. To steal from an unknown quotable, the U.S. is the only nation on earth that, by conquering in war, rebuilds and revitalizes the losing side to a better standard of living. They should've dropped them on December 7, 1942, and saved that many more lives and years.

I'd be for dropping one each in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, except that it wouldn't really alter the landscape that much, and the targets would be strapping on firecrackers and hitching planes to New York before the mushroom cloud had cleared.

I think a 'scorched earth' policy was a little extreme, though. Followed by a corruption-plagued rebuilding.....

Hey! I'm seeing some parallels here.

1. They weren't trying to go for the rapid version of urban renewal.

2. It's Philadelphia. of course it was corruption plagued. There would have been something wrong had that not been the case.

Or by Philly standards, something very very weird.

After treating the Allied POW's the way they did, (or any others that were caught, i.e. most of China), Japan deserved everything they got and more. People can argue that "that was their way of thinking" all they want, but it was still barbaric. another 2 or 3 bombs would have REALLY taught them a lesson. I don't think any apology is necessary, nor shame. Allied soldiers were already on the home islands performing slave labour, so a prolonged military assault would have reduced their chance of recovery to nil.

Today Belmont Club points out the forgotten event of 100,000 Filipino civilians killed by retreating Japanese troops in Manila.

"The 100,000 civilians who died in the largest urban battle of the Pacific War -- more than at Hiroshima -- are not remembered in beautiful candles floating down darkened rivers or in flights of doves soaring into the blue sky; there is no anti-American significance to their deaths."

I can't really stomach all of this second-guessing. As our vetereans of the conflict die off, so do our memories, apparently.

Japan was no Iraq. We were *attacked* without provocation. There was no ambiguity, no oil to be had. Whatever they got was whatever they got. An apology would be completely out of line, unless it was something like "We're sorry your leaders were stupid enough to attack us, so we had to kick your asses."

Right on Elspode. :thumb: I talked and listened to literally hundreds of those vets coming back from WWII and they weren't the least bit sorry.

That we were attacked again without provocation (despite the fact that the attacking parties can in either case point to something they will call a provocation) puts us in the identical moral position in the War On Terror as in WW2. Iraq is but one campaign in the WOT, and inseparable from it if we want Islamoterrorism to go extinct. I certainly do, but I do wonder about some of those who take exception to my views. Now why is it that I should be obliged to wonder, eh?? Terror's breeding ground is extremist social orders, and what are nondemocracies but extremist societies? Democracies never feel like they need terrorists to push out the bad and bring in the good; they aren't that rigidly structured. This is why democracies tend to view terrorist cells as criminal gangs and treat them so -- and there is much justice in that view.

It's when the cells metastasize into mass movements that one has to shift to the war paradigm. Even more so when they get used as a means of proxy war.

Which is why we felt the need to attack Iraq without provocation, or, more correctly, with fictitious provocation.

BS, Rich. It's quite like the North African Campaign, right down to being sandy and the locals speaking Arabic and some of them being less than sympathetic.

You should remember just how harsh I am on anti-American viewpoints, and how much I believe America should win her wars. The we-shouldn't-win-this view is incomprehensible and reprehensible.

You really should not beat yourself up so much.

TW, as usual you are perfection in wrongness. I am pro-American, far more than you can manage to be if your posts accurately reflect your beliefs. I mean, dear boy, you're a leftist! Half-bright, at best. Me, I don't adhere to ideologies that make me stupid. Consequently, my kind of thinking is better than yours any day of the week, and twice over on Sundays and holidays.

"Beat yourself up," quotha!

What you didn't mention is that Japan offered the U.S. peace terms in July 1945 on almost exactly the same terms that eventually were accepted. The hold-up? They wanted an assurance that we weren't going to hang their Emperor.

We didn't end up hanging him anyway, of course, but in order to prove the point that we could if we wanted (i.e., "unconditional surrender"), we killed an extra 120,000 people.

Don't take my word for any of this...look it up yourself.

The japs offered peace terms a few hours before the attack on Pearl, too. A cute little trick, the people that were living then, had not forgotten.
Even after the two A-bombs they would have fought to the death if the Emperor hadn't finally over ruled the military that were running the show. Don't forget the soldiers that were left on remote islands and still fighting the war 20, 30, 40 years later.
Unconditional surrender was the only way. :mad:

Yes, but the Emperor could've made them swallow it on July 15 as easily as on August 15. He was a god, remember?

Yes, but he didn't, did he? It took two bombs to convince him.....or convince the people that advised him. :cool:

Notice two fundamental facts. First, purpose of war is to take a conflict back to the negotiation table. Getting there was a problem because, second, 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management.

To end WWII, destruction had to be so great as to force top management to concede to reality. Reality was unconditional surrender. Japan leaders refused to concede to that bottom line long after the war was lost. Therefore people had to keep dying. Keep dying until Japan conceded to conditions for negotiations. The purpose of war - and death - that negotiation table.

What in the hell does that mean?

"Unconditional surrender" was a demand made by the U.S. because it sounded bad-ass and we like to be bad-ass. In the context of the moment, the difference between it and conditional surrender was rather superficial; as I've pointed out, we saw no need to kill the Emperor.

But since you're getting metaphysical on me here, "unconditional surrender" was not a fact of reality, it was a political demand that was framed in a specific way by specific people and could've been framed in a different way if attaining peace were the goal of the creeps in power, which it wasn't.

(I suppose the Holocaust was a way of bringing the Jews into line with the "reality" that they weren't wanted in Europe?)

I was answering a particular argument, by you, which implied that the Japanese would've gone on fighting despite the Emperor. The Emperor, as I stated, offered peace terms in July. Why they weren't accepted in preference to capping off the orgy of destruction with even more destruction, is the question.

Then you need to learn the concept called "strategic objective". Unconditional surrender defined the conditions upon which a military operation would lead to a political solution. It was the strategic objective that even defined the exit strategy. It was defined by Churchill and Roosevelt when both meet in the White House to define how WWII would be won.

Your idea that it was a 'bad-ass' expression suggests you don't even understand why the "Mission Accomplished" war cannot be won. We have no strategic objective and therefore have no exit strategy. It also defines why a Vietnam war could only be lost. Why body counts rather than fundamental military and political objectives were how we fought Vietnam to a loss.

Unconditional surrender was THE objective in WWII because those politicians (unlike Cheney, Rumsfled, Wolfovitz, etc in the George Sr administration) did their job, up front, when the US entered that war. Unconditional surrender is extemely important in understanding why WWII was won AND changed the entire worldwide political landscape. A military objective that also demonstrates why WWI was so inconclusive.

Because they proved they were not to be trusted when they offered peace a few hours before Pearl Harbor. Previous to that they had done the same thing to the Russians, talk peace and sneak attack. No, unconditional surrender was the only acceptable conclusion. :cool:
btw, it didn't matter what the emperor was offering through diplomatic channels in July because the military was still running the show. Some of them even had the Emporer in "protective custody", for a while, so he couldn't speak to the Japanese people.

It was defined by specific persons, and could be redefined by specific persons to accommodate new circumstances. You seem not to understand the difference between metaphysical facts and man-made demands.

This also begs the question, though, of why I should give a damn about Roosevelt, Churchill, or their "strategic objectives." Had I been alive at the time, and experienced enough to see through FDR's bullshit the way I see through Bush's today, I would've opposed entry into the war in the first place. In that case I wouldn't have cared all that much if their "strategic objectives" were achieved or fell to pieces.

The political objective in the Vietnam war was fairly clear--to preserve the dominance of non-Communists in South Vietnam. It wasn't a practical objective because the entire country was ridden with Communists, which we should've figured out.

They "did their job"? Yes, they did...if you agree with Groucho Marx's view that "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and misapplying the wrong remedy." That describes WWII to a tee, and most other wars, for that matter.

WWI was inconclusive precisely because the Versailles treaty tried to impose the "political objectives" about which you have been waxing enthusiastic. (And because it left a government in power in Russia that was worse than any the West had faced before--at least since Genghis Khan--or would face later.)

For awhile? He was seized for a few hours on August 14. Didn't take him long to get back in the saddle, so to speak. He was detained for less time than Gorbachev in 1991.

The peace terms offered in June and July 1945, at any rate, were proffered by Foreign Minister Togo by way of Japanese Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. Sato. Even if you buy the idea of an impotent Emperor, Togo, presumably, had full credentials to speak for his government.

It's not a matter of credentials. Your problem is you're looking from 2006 with hindsight. In 1945, they were justifiably not trusted. :headshake

However, in July 1945 they had already had their clocks cleaned. Their idea of an offensive was a kamikaze attack. Apples and oranges.

Kamikaze was about defense - not an offensive strategy. Kamikaze was a last ditch attempt to lose a war WITHOUT unconditional surrender. The allies' strategic objective was a last remaining purpose to keep fighting. Unconditional surrender meant occupation of the Japanese homeland - that had never happened. It meant the emperor could be removed and imprisoned - which the Japanese just were not yet prepared to accept. The Japanese expected to fight for every inch all across mainland Japan. Not to win the war. Everyone knew that would never happen. Japan feared the allied strategic objective - the requirement to end hostilities - the exit strategy - the only reason the Pacific War continued. Unconditional surrender was that requirement. A requirement that good leaders established up front and maintained to the end.

BTW, why could Americans demand nothing less after so many years of war? The smoking gun - Pearl Harbor. Just another example of why a smoking gun is so essential to win a war.

Sure, their capability of launching an offensive against our superior forces, that had pushed them back to the homeland, was fizzling. Now what? Surround the country forever? A costly, to both sides, invasion? Trust them to behave?

American’s wanted it over, finished, WON........bring the troops home. The most expedient unconditional surrender possible. That’s what Truman gave us.

I was thinking about this last night, while watching a show on PBS, about the bridge on the river Kwai. The story behind the railroad being built, interviews with some of the POWs that survived and the documentation that remains today.
We'll have to agree to disagree because you'll never convince me it wasn't the absolute right thing for Truman to do. :us:

Remember that your perspective is completely different from his perspective. It is but another reason why we learn history. Same exact facts can appear completely different from different perspectives. It is why Kennedy so saved all our lives when he kept asking the important question during a Cuban Missile Crisis. What is he being told? What does he see? What does he know? Without those questions, it is a sure probability that the 1st Marine Division would have been nuked on the beaches of Cuba.

Same must be asked before judging Truman from our perspective.