Re: [sixties-l] Hiroshima as military target (Not a whole lot new here)

From: William Mandel (wmmmandel@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Jun 26 2000 - 22:31:12 CUT

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    The last paragraph is unquestionably true. Those soldiers had no
    way of knowing what the submariner who participated in this
    thread did, and what the higher-ups in Washington did, that Japan
    could not continue. So the boys who might lose their lives in an
    invasion thought the bomb meant deliverance, while the managers
    of the war used it for another reason.
                                    William Mandel

    Jerry West wrote:
    >
    > Further to our discussion on Hiroshima, see attached text.
    >
    > --
    > Jerry West
    > Editor/publisher/janitor
    > ----------------------------------------------------
    > THE RECORD
    > On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast
    > An independent, progressive regional publication
    > http://www.island.net/~record/
    >
    > -----------------------------------------------------------------
    > "Their primary target was Hiroshima.... 120,000 civilains had been
    > evacuated to the countryside, but 245,000 still remained.... it was
    > headquarters of 2nd General Army and was an important military port of
    > embarkation....
    >
    > Everything was gone-towering Hiroshima Castle and 2nd General Army
    > headquarters....
    >
    > Marquis Kido immediately informed the Emperor that Hiroshima had been
    > laid waste by some secret weapons. 'Under these circumstances we must
    > bow to the inevitable,' said His Majesty."
    >
    > >From THE RISING SUN, Volume 2 by John Toland, Random House, 1970
    > ___________________________________________________________
    >
    > ".... none of the critics of the atomic bomb decisions has been able to
    > demonstrate how the Japanese haigh command might have been induced
    > to surrender without the combined shock of Russia's entry into the war and
    > the use of two atomic bombs. The most careful and authoritative study of
    > Japan's decision to surrender notes that 'although the atomic attack on
    > Hiroshima had made it impossible for anyone present to continue to deny
    > the urgency of Japan's situation, it apparently had not lmade a deep
    > enough impression on the chiefs of staff and the War Minister as to make
    > them willing to cast their lot outright for the termination of the war.' (Butow,
    > Robert J, JAPAN'S DECISION TO SURRENDER, Stanford University
    > Press, 1954) Some Japanese leaders were alreadly speculating that
    > perhaps the Americans had but one bomb or that a defense could be
    > quickly improvised....
    >
    > To the infantrymen and marines preparing for the assault on Japan, to the
    > sailors who had undergone the weeks of kamikaze attacks off Okinawa, the
    > atomic bombs seemed not the first chapter of a catastrophe for mankind,
    > the dawn of a new age of terror, the first gun of the cold war but, in
    > Churchill's words, a 'miracle of deliverance.'"
    >
    > >From EAGLE AGAINST THE SUN by Ronald Spector, The Free Press,
    > 1985.

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