Re:Hiroshima (1946)
by 542354234235 on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @09:36AM
(#44811830)
Don't forget the thousands of civilians that committed suicide. There are accounts of soldier interpreters pleading with civilians through loudspeakers on their ship to just surrender and be taken care of, while they jumped from cliffs into the sea. Every option (invasion, mass starvation via blockade, atomic bombing) was a horrific nightmare of death for the Japanese.
> Absolutely no one who knew about that battle would have claimed that Japan was already defeated.
On a strategic level they were. The archipelago was being blockaded, they had no way to contest Allied air supremacy, they were reduced to send children into battle, etc.
>...my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary,
The last major battle before the dropping of the atomic bombs was the battle for Okinawa and it was the bloodiest and fiercest battle fought against the Japanese. Absolutely no one who knew about that battle would have claimed that Japan was already defeated.
>...When the guns fell silent, more than 240,000 people had lost their lives in the campaign for Okinawa. The American loss rate was 35 percent of the force, totaling 49,151 casualties.
>...So close to the home islands, most Japanese soldiers refused to surrender and fought to the death. Their fanaticism contributed to a dreadful toll. Some 110,000 Japanese and conscripted Okinawan defenders were killed in action.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/okinawa-costs...