11th March 2004, 7:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 11th March 2004, 7:19 PM by Great Rumbler.)
Hindsight's always 20/20...
It's easy to sit back 60 years later and say "That wasn't necessary". Think about this though: If Truman had dropped out two atomic bombs, our ONLY two atomic bombs, somewhere isolated and the Emperor still refused to surrender, then what? And it's easy to say "I read a book about the emperor and I know that he would have surrendered after something like that", but the president didn't have the luxury of know what the emperor would or would not do. There was a chioce: Use the nukes in such a way that the Japanese would have no choice but to surrender, or risk an all out ground invasion which would have cost countless lives, destroyed the country, and be faced with the possibility of a war we couldn't win. There weren't any history books to read to try and find what the right chioce was, there weren't any autobiographies that said how far they would have to go to get a surrender. Truman chose to drop the bombs and end the war.
It's easy to sit back 60 years later and say "That wasn't necessary". Think about this though: If Truman had dropped out two atomic bombs, our ONLY two atomic bombs, somewhere isolated and the Emperor still refused to surrender, then what? And it's easy to say "I read a book about the emperor and I know that he would have surrendered after something like that", but the president didn't have the luxury of know what the emperor would or would not do. There was a chioce: Use the nukes in such a way that the Japanese would have no choice but to surrender, or risk an all out ground invasion which would have cost countless lives, destroyed the country, and be faced with the possibility of a war we couldn't win. There weren't any history books to read to try and find what the right chioce was, there weren't any autobiographies that said how far they would have to go to get a surrender. Truman chose to drop the bombs and end the war.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.