quote:
Bacchus: You could easily reverse the Japanese and Allied words there.The racism went both ways
I would agree with you on both counts. However one kind of racism doesn't nullify another kind of racism.
Outside of the question of the merit of bombing Hiroshima the way the U.S. did, I think that Judes' commentary could leave the impression that the poll question itself referred to race when it did not. That's a little misleading.
quote:
Bacchus: Japan had a substantial force still left for convential warfare ...
To the best of my understanding a very large and strategic portion of the Japanese forces weren't even on the islands of Japan. They were in Manchuria and they took a pounding from the combined Soviet and Mongolian forces between early August to the date of surrender on September 2, 1945.
Some numbers:
quote:
By August 1945 the Japanese armed forces numbered about 7.2 million officers and men of whom 5.5 million formed the land forces. The Kwantung Army was a particularly highly organized force which consisted of several front formations and had more than one million officers and men, about 1,200 tanks, 5,400 artillery pieces and mortars and 1,800 planes. Tokyo considered the areas it occupied in China as its strategic rear.
W. Averill Harriman and Elie Abel, [i]Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941-1946,[/i] Random House, NY, 1975, p. 462
quote:
On August 9, Soviet and Mongolian troops began hostilities against Japan along a front of more than 5,000 kilometers. The Kwantung Army was routed in 23 days; its losses were 84,000 killed or wounded, and 593,000 Japanese officers and men, including 148 generals, were taken prisoner.
[i]Recalling the Past for the Sake of the Future[/i], Novosti Press Agency, Moscow, 1985.
quote:
The entry into the war of the Soviet Union this morning puts us in an utterly hopeless situation and makes further continuation of the war impossible.
Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki on August 9, 1945.
Edited to add: It is noteworthy that this last statement was not made in relation to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for which there was no need militarily.
[ 04 August 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]