• AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Where is that in the document? I tried to find it but it’s long and I couldn’t spot it. Weren’t the bombs dropped in August '45?

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Not as a quote but the picture painted is extremely clear. They knew the war was unwinnable. The high command knew it and the emperor knew it.

        I will say the idea that we weren’t saving a million lives by nuking them depends on hindsight. We had just gotten done with some of the most brutal fighting in the world’s history. We had no reason to suspect they would just lay down their arms.

      • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Man, it would be a shame if you looked at page 107. You know you can just control f search PDF’s right?

      • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Thank you.

        Reading it over, I can see that scenario would have involved continued fire bombing campaigns, which had already killed over 300,000 people and left over 8 million homeless. It also suggests that many of Japan’s 2 million troops and thousands of planes would have been destroyed before surrender.

        It says the vast majority of people surveyed in Japan at the time were willing to continue fighting the war, and the political structure made surrender particularly unlikely.

        What do you think the US should have done in 1945?