Re: OT - A Moment of Silence

"Mithra" <mithra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:69ydnYlUe9QTW2ffRVn-vA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> As I said earlier, the Naval and Air battles were necessary.
> Once the IJN was dismantled, it was simply a matter of
> enforcing blockades. No, it's not as sexy and machismo
> as taking island by island with bloodshed after bloodshed
> but it can be as effective.

The IJN wasn't finished until after Leyte Gulf in October 1944. And the
Marianas, which were needed for the B-29s to reach Japan, were secured in
August 1944 with significant US casualties. The island-hopping campaign was
designed to target islands of strategic importance and skip over ones that
were less important with the objective of establishing bases close enough to
Japan for US bombers. A direct attack on the Marianas earlier in the war,
while the Japanese still held the South Pacific and still had a large
carrier force, could have been risky. US forces would have been a long way
from their bases in Hawaii and would have risked being cut off, and the
Western Pacific could have been vulnerable to a Japanese counterattack. I
don't know if the casualties in such a campaign would have been less than
those suffered in the South Pacific. There was also the political
consideration of liberating the Philippines, which were a US territory.
Nimitz, architect of the island-hopping strategy, wanted to skip the
Philippines and attack Formosa to cut Japan's southern supply lines, but
MacArthur convinced FDR to attack the Philippines.

Again, whether or not Iwo Jima and Okinawa were worth the cost in lives is
debatable. For a blockade and air bombardment strategy to be effective, it
would be necessary to cut off the Japanese supply lines to East Asia.
Enforcing such a blockade would have been more difficult with the Japanese
still holding bases on those islands protecting their southern perimeter.

> If you're seriously asking me, I would have gone with blockade
> and air bombardment limited to strategic targets as mentioned
> above by Paul Nitze. Much is made of the Japanese ability
> to resist surrender but the fact is they probably had 3 or 4
> months at the most before they capitulated, without the bomb
> and without all the US casualties you've estimated.
>
> I might have also attacked the Japanese soldiers occupying
> China, Taiwan and Korea for added pressure.

This seems a reasonable course, but again, given what happened at Iwo Jima
and Okinawa, attacking China, Taiwan, and Korea would have resulted in
signifcant US casualties. If, after such a campaign, the Japanese still
refused to surrender, and were faced with choosing invasion versus using the
Bomb, what wuld you have done?

One thing we haven't mentioned is the possibilty that Truman wanted to end
the war quickly to prevent the Soviets from encroaching farther into Asia.

> The US needed the war to escape the Depression.
> FDR recognized this but failed on several occasions
> to convince Congress. Almost miraculously Pearl
> Harbor happened, or so it seemed. It is very sad
> and revealing that Congress would not act to help
> China Korea and others until the US itself was
> threatened.

There was a signifcant isolationist faction in Congress and in the US
public, Charles Lindbergh being a prominent spokesman.

> I'm saying it's not <insert adjective> (right, moral,
> human) to punish the civilian population of your
> enemy with death when they are under control and
> threat of a military who has control of the country.
> Do you think it would be right for the US to slaughter
> Iraqi civilians to get Saddam to stop killing not
> only his own people but others?

It wasn't clear to me in your previous post which civilians you were talking
about, Japanese or the ones under Japanese occupation.


.

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