Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Box Ox" data-source="post: 5758606" data-attributes="member: 48469"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/16/122591119/hell-to-pay-sheds-new-light-on-a-bomb-decision" target="_blank">&#039;Hell To Pay&#039; Sheds New Light On A-Bomb Decision : NPR</a>&quot;Giangreco says that many Americans and Japanese lives were saved by avoiding a land invasion of Japan.&quot;It&#039;s astounding,&quot; he says. &quot;While we were looking at some of our own casualty estimates, the Japanese military was doing much the same thing, and the figure of 20 million appears again and again.&quot;Giangreco says just the number &quot;20 million&quot; is horrific — but he is most stunned by the casualness with which it was used by Japanese military leaders who felt that the loss of life was worth it.&quot;<a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-1.html#:~:text=In%20late%20July%201945%2C%20the,to%2010%20million%20Japanese%20dead." target="_blank">H-057-1: Operations Downfall and Ketsugo – November 1945 (navy.mil)</a>&quot;In late July 1945, the War Department provided an estimate that the entire Downfall operations would cause between 1.7 to 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400-800,000 U.S. dead, and 5 to 10 million Japanese dead. (Given that the initial Downfall plan called for 1,792,700 troops to go ashore in Japan, this estimate is indeed most sobering, and suggests many more troops than planned would need to be fed into a meat grinder).Other estimates in the U.S. government indicated U.S. deaths at 500,000 to 1 million. Which of these and other estimates would be the most accurate has been hotly debated over the years (and are caught up in the debate about whether the atomic bomb should have been used), and I’m not going to solve it. But it is clear that the cost of invading Japan would have been staggering for both the U.S. and the Japanese.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Box Ox, post: 5758606, member: 48469"] [URL='https://www.npr.org/2010/01/16/122591119/hell-to-pay-sheds-new-light-on-a-bomb-decision']'Hell To Pay' Sheds New Light On A-Bomb Decision : NPR[/URL] "Giangreco says that many Americans and Japanese lives were saved by avoiding a land invasion of Japan. "It's astounding," he says. "While we were looking at some of our own casualty estimates, the Japanese military was doing much the same thing, and the figure of 20 million appears again and again." Giangreco says just the number "20 million" is horrific — but he is most stunned by the casualness with which it was used by Japanese military leaders who felt that the loss of life was worth it." [URL='https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-1.html#:~:text=In%20late%20July%201945%2C%20the,to%2010%20million%20Japanese%20dead.']H-057-1: Operations Downfall and Ketsugo – November 1945 (navy.mil)[/URL] "In late July 1945, the War Department provided an estimate that the entire Downfall operations would cause between 1.7 to 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400-800,000 U.S. dead, and 5 to 10 million Japanese dead. (Given that the initial Downfall plan called for 1,792,700 troops to go ashore in Japan, this estimate is indeed most sobering, and suggests many more troops than planned would need to be fed into a meat grinder). Other estimates in the U.S. government indicated U.S. deaths at 500,000 to 1 million. Which of these and other estimates would be the most accurate has been hotly debated over the years (and are caught up in the debate about whether the atomic bomb should have been used), and I’m not going to solve it. But it is clear that the cost of invading Japan would have been staggering for both the U.S. and the Japanese." [/QUOTE]

Verification