On Nov 4, 8:07?am, "Eisboch" wrote:


You realize, of course, that one of the reasons Truman fired MacArthur
during the Korean conflict is because MacArthur publicly pushed for using
nukes on the Chinese after they (the Chinese) became involved.

Eisboch

And if you take the broadest possible view of the situation, that
actually reinforces MacArthur's statement about the use of the atomic
bomb to end the war with Japan.

MacArthur never said, "We shouldn't have nuked Japan because it was
morally wrong", but instead said that we didn't need to nuke Japan
because the country was already willing to capitulate if we would
simply let them keep the institution of the Emperor as one of the
conditions in the documents of surrender (which we ultimately did).

MacArthur apparently felt that we couldn't win the war in Korea unless
we *did* nuke China. It would be difficult to make a resounding case
that we achieved a decisive victory in Korea, so maybe MacArthur was
right.

So Douglas MacArthur cannot be counted among those who were *morally*
opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, only among those who claim to
have felt, back in 1945, that using nuclear weapons on Japan was not
*strategically* necessary to force a Japanese surrender.
In fact, he claims to have thought that Japan would have surrendered
weeks before the bomb was dropped (and of course that event would have
saved American lives as well) if we had been flexible enough to allow
them to keep the Emperor in place.

One of the many shoulda, coulda, wouldas, and what-ifs of discussing
history. :-)