Quote:
Originally Posted by CYDdharta
I’ll take it up with you, since htperr6565 doesn’t actually have a position, other than US strategy was wrong.
Japanese offensive capabilities need to be assessed by the forces they’re fighting. Even at the start of the war, they didn’t have the ability to win against the US, and most of them, the upper echelons of the admiralty included, were well aware of it. Their hope was to sign a treaty with the US to keep us out of their sphere of influence.
At the start of 1945, the Japanese had lost a significant amount of their capabilities, but a significant amount remained. The US still had the only force that could have opposed the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were a formidable force compared to any navy in the world. If we hadn’t pressed the attack, if we hadn’t continued the bombing campaign, if we’d pulled our forces back to a defensive position where we couldn’t easily have been attacked by warships or kamikazes, which is what I understand htperr6565’s ambiguous position to be, then IMO the Japanese certainly retained the capability to rebuild and rearm.
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I agree with your assessments of Japan's strength at the beginning of the war.
I never said anything about pulling back to defensive positions in 1945.
What I don't like is carpet bombing cities, especially fire bombing cities and the use of the atom bomb on a city.
Look how we wage war now. Yes, I know technology has vastly improved, but we still had the capability to bomb specific targets, of course it was WAY tougher back in 1945.
I know Germany carpet bombed London, as well as other cities. I know Japan did horrible things during the war, especially to the Chinese and Phillipinos.
They also did horrible things to POWs.
Still, the Japanese people were brainwashed by their leaders.
They actually believed the lies they were told about the USA.
They actually believed that we would torture captives and rape women if captured.
Since Japan was an island nation with almost NO natural resources, a simple blockade would have prevented them from re-arming. We could have plinked away at the remnants of their navy and clogged their shipping lanes, cutting off their forces that were in theater and preventing them from rearming.
It is estimated that the firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 and injured another 100,000. It made 1,000,000 people homeless. This was just in Tokyo.
In the space of ten days, the Americans had dropped nearly 9,500 tons of incendiaries on Japanese cities and destroyed 29 square miles of what was considered to be important industrial land.
How many people died during all of these raids?
Could these massive deaths had been prevented?
Some questions can't be answered.
No one knows what would have happened if we had taken another approach to Japan back in 1945. We do know that they wanted terms for their surrender, terms to keep their emperor and to avoid occupation.
Yes, Japan did horrible things during the war, but these things were not done by women and children living in Japanese cities. In my opinion, stooping to their level was not the right thing to do.
Just my opinion.