1. They started the war with us.

Yep. It made sense, from their point of view, at the time. Japan in the
late 1920s and the 1930s headed down the same track that the U.S. is on
now ie gov't closely aligned with military industries.

2. They vowed to fight to "the death of every Japanese man, woman, and
child," even when it was clearly obvious that they could not win.

Also true, although it's hard to say wether every single Japanese man,
woman, and child, would have agreed.

3. We would have accomplished the same thing over a period of time with
conventional weapons, had the Japanese not surrendered, which was
unlikely.

We definitely could have accomplished the same thing over a longer
period of time.

4. It had to happen. Nuclear weapons had been developed, initially by
the
Germans and brought to fruition by the Americans.

Utter nonsense.

"It _had_ to happen" ??!?!!

The German nuclear research projects underway in the late 1930s was hurt
by the flight of some of their best scientists, most notably of course
Einstein, and most of the scientists remaining (while probably capable
of building a bomb, or at least radiation enhanced weapons) despised the
Nazis and would never have built such weapons for Hitler.

Remember, the fascist (or Bushist) state distrusts & shackles science,
sneers at intellect, and stamps out open enquiry.



It
was an inevitable step in the evolution of international relations, like
it
or not.

Jingoistic malarkey

5. The Japanese deserved it.

Possibly. But would you agree that had the Japanese developed the bomb
first (and they were closer than a lot of people think), tied one to one
of their strategic balloon bombers, and nuked the U.S. mainland, that we
"deserved it"?

Max, have you ever heard anything about this
http://tinyurl.com/57pvh

"he first atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima on August 5, 1945;
the second was detonated over Nagasaki four days later. On August 8th,
the Soviet Union declared war on an already beaten Japan. But other
Japanese attempts to surrender had been coming fast and furious prior
to these historically important developments.

There was no communication between the U.S. and Japanese gov'ts. There
were some attempts made by indirect channels to open negotiations, most
notably right after Pearl Harbor and early 1945. IIRC most of these
attempts went through Dutch colonial offices. The U.S. gov't rejected
these attempts to open negotiations, partly because there was no point
in negotiating peace when you're on the verge of victory (kind of like a
sports team down XXX to 0 in the last minute, offering a tie) and partly
because of commitments to the other Allies.



Amazingly, these were identical to the terms which were accepted by
our government for the surrender of Japan seven months later.

That is simply not true. The terms offered by the U.S. later in 1945
were rejected because we demanded that they give up the Emperor. Dozens
of historians, notably Shirer, have covered this point.


Makes you think that the lives of all those, Japanese and Allies were
sacrificed because the bomb needed to be completed and tested.


There was some motivation toward that by the military industrialists,
but I don't think it was the over riding factor at all. For one thing,
Truman became Vice President and then President because he had uncovered
the Manhatten Project in his Senate investigation of Army finances, and
he never considered *not* dropping the bomb.

Maxprop wrote:
Nice piece of revisionist history, Oz, but it won't fly.

On July 26, 1945 (it was 7/27 am in Tokyo) the Potsdam Proclaim was
broadcast in Japanese, demanding unconditional surrender.

I don't think the entire proclamation was broadcast, but that's a
quibble. More to the point, how good a translation do you think it was?
Possibly a bit like those garbled instruction manuals, hmm?


... The Japanese
rejected it, complaining that no provision had been made to insure the
protection of Emperor Hirohito, whom they believed to be a god.

Hmmph. You really swallow the whole package, don't you Max? The Japanese
revered the Emperor, in the same way that many in the U.S. revere
President Bush. However nobody seriously thought he was a god. Bear in
mind also that the military junta in charge of Japan used reverence for
the Emperor as a political tool, and juiced it all they could.

In short, lots of error and wishful thinking on both sides. No decision,
next inning please.

DSK