Originally posted by Friedrich H@Jun 22 2005, 01:50 PM You accept then, that, had the bombing gone on, ALL Japanese cities would have suffered Tokio's fate, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a greater scale than they actually did? [post=35673]Quoted post[/post] Of course. It would have been a most honorable end. The Japanese and Western mentality is very... different. We embrace death, the Westerners don't understand the 'beauty' in it. That is why we can commit sekkupu, a form of ritual suicide, or train pilots to dive head-on into their targets. To us Japanese it is competely rational.
Originally posted by ryobreak+Jun 22 2005, 06:55 AM-->(ryobreak @ Jun 22 2005, 06:55 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'>The Americans had a highly effective blockade, as well as the B-29's (look at the Tokyo Raid- 96% of it was destroyed and more people were killed there than hiroshima or nagasaki). [post=35647]Quoted post[/post] [/b] If you think that would have done the trick, you are not alone in that opinion, many of the highest ranking officers of the US Navy and USAAF held the same veiw. I would point out that, with one exception I can think of (Serbia 1999), no modern nation has been brought to the point of surrender by airpower/blockade alone. Eventually, men on the ground would have been necessary, and the US government was not willing to wait for another year and a half. Downfall would have gone off as scheduled, Nov 1945, had the A bomb not been used. Japan might never have recovered, certainly not to the heights of success it has achieved today. Originally posted by ryobreak@Jun 22 2005, 08:05 PM <!--QuoteBegin-Friedrich H@Jun 22 2005, 01:50 PM You accept then, that, had the bombing gone on, ALL Japanese cities would have suffered Tokio's fate, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a greater scale than they actually did? [post=35673]Quoted post[/post] Of course. It would have been a most honorable end. The Japanese and Western mentality is very... different. We embrace death, the Westerners don't understand the 'beauty' in it. That is why we can commit sekkupu, a form of ritual suicide, or train pilots to dive head-on into their targets. To us Japanese it is competely rational. [post=35694]Quoted post[/post] I see your point, but I don't understand it fully. If one's country is destroyed, how is one type of anihilation better than another? The Emperor overruled the military leaders and surrendered after Nagasaki, because he knew his nation would be obliterated. Now to me, that's more honorable than to allow the country to be bombed into oblivion or to sacrifice 100 million civilians withstanding an invasion, all for a lost cause.
