[Buddha-l] Hiroshima vs Terrorism..........?

[Stanley J. Ziobro II]

On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

>
>   There is no way Hiroshima "saved" lifes...............Dan arguments are "conceptual".
>
>   catalina
>
> It was anything but conceptual to the people who were no longer being eaten by Japanese soldiers, the POWs who were perishing en masse, the potential allied invading forces who would have suffered incalculable and needless casualties, the Japanese citizens who were mobilized and of an impassioned ethos to fight any invasion to the last women and child... those lives were all saved just for starters.

Dan,

If I can find a certain URL I'll send it along.  The author of a highly
informative article thereon analyzes hitherto top secret WWII U.S.
military and politcal documents relative to the planned invasion of Japan.
What one learns is that Japanese military strengths were severely
underestimated, that the Japanese populace was, as you've aptly indicated,
deternimed to fight Allied forces by any means available, that the
duration of the invasion and actual fighting would last much longer, and
that U.S. military and enemy casualities were accordingly highly
underestimated.  Anecdotely, I've spoken to WWII Vets of both the European
and Pacific Theaters, and not one of them expected to survive the
invasion.  In terms of statistics it is difficult to deny that dropping
the bombs saved lives.  We've now got information tat it was precisely the
dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki that decided the Japanese high command to
surrender to the Allied Forces.

Stan Ziobro