There is a great deal of documentation, from many sources, of the
fact that not only was the bomb dropped to keep the USSR out of
postwar occupation of Japan, as it was one of the four occupying
German, but that the bomb was developed for that very purpose. I
write in Saying No To Power, p. 175: "The Nobel Peace Prize
winner of 1996, physicist Joseph Rotblat, said that he had quite
the atom bomb project in 1944 when told that its purpose was to
develop a weapon not against the countries we were then fighting
but against our ally, the Soviet Union."
William Mandel
Sorrento95@aol.com wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox <cbcox@ilstu.edu> writes:
>
> "What makes the pilot of the Enola Gray [sp?] a
> war criminal is not dropping the bomb but
> continuing after the fact to glory in his action"
>
> Actually, it was the Enola Gay.
>
> We're talking about a lot of stuff here
> besides the 60s, but I guess that's OK
> if the list members like it that way.
>
> A lot of World War II veterans still shriek
> at anyone who dares to question the dropping
> of the bomb. That is because for many of the
> GIs it was a big relief. They wanted to go
> home instead of having to invade Japan.
>
> The propaganda justification for dropping
> the bomb was that if it wasn't done, we would
> have been compelled to invade Japan, at a
> cost of a million Allied casualties.
>
> From no less a source than our own dearly
> beloved David Horowitz, author of The Free
> World Colossus, I came to understand in the
> 60s that the above notion was a false dilemma.
>
> I recall Horowitz pointing out that the
> Russians were about to invade Japan when
> the bombs were dropped. It looks like
> the real motives for dropping the bomb
> were:
>
> 1. to make sure the US would have exclusive
> occupation of Japan after the war, instead
> of having to share it with the USSR; and
>
> 2. to force the Japanese to submit to an
> unconditional surrender, instead of some
> other possible outcome, such as a
> negotiated armistice.
>
> It was the commitment to the above two goals
> which forced the choice between the costly
> landed invasion or dropping the bomb.
>
> I also recall Horowitz pointing out that
> Truman was delighted to drop the bomb as
> a means of scaring the Russians and gaining
> an advantage in the upcoming Cold War.
>
> ~ Michael Wright <-- waiting for Horowitz
> Norman, Oklahoma to shriek
>
>
>
-- To be removed from list, e-mail "Opt Out." You may find of interest website www.BillMandel.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 22 2000 - 01:07:34 CUT