Read about Manchuria and Nanking and you will see that the japanese decapitated the women in front of their children. Then they decapitated the children.

The Japanese were "eliminators" but the Russians, just brutes.

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After reading these accounts, it is easy to see using the A bomb, if for nothing else, a punishment. We know that it saved countless scores of US lives, but it was also a hellacious payback for the japanese behavior during the war.

last I checked, the top five selling car brands in the United States are all japanese makes. they may have lost the WWII, but they are kicking our a** in the war of economics.

depends on how you look at it, and besides, that doesn't change the fact that we beat them down.

Perhaps not but they have been tending to win the economic wars since. Those wars that have basically replaced the physical ones that is. Most of our population do not seem to be aware that this has been going on for a long time now. Just the other day for example I noticed that up here in Canada the chinese alone have put ten billion dollars into the oil sands project. We just cannot seem to help ourselves giving things away.

I also was under the impression that the japanese where trying to surrender. When the decision for political reasons rather than military was made to use the a bombs. Russia may have acted in bad faith as the japenese where apparently trying to use them as a go between for the surrender before that.

Our politicians may have felt it weakened their position. Remember Russia had just declared war on japan as well near the end and had ambitions there as well. In fact they did get some territory that may have been returned to japan by now.

Propaganda for the masses is one thing. Reality may easily be something else. At least some of the more serious island battles may have easily been avoidable once the japanese navy had basically ceased to exist. The only fear politicians and our systems might have in the western societies to what they want. The loss of life percentagewise exceeding what the population will bear. It is far less difficult for government structures of a more dictorial totally self empowering type to allow it.

Since at that point american industrial output was far more capable of functioning at a much higher level than the japanese industry. Time and effective blockading might have been used instead of sacrificing lives to prevail. Possibly a fear of the russians becoming involved as they eventually did was the motavation to speed things up at much higher costs in human lives. Remember the russians had enourmous resources freed up as soon as Germany was defeated. Same as the so called western powers did. At that point Japan knew it had no chance at all one way or another.

Actually it was interesting that Russia declared war on Japan. The japanese had not attacked russian interests although russia had feared or claimed they might. I very much doubt the japanese had the required reserves and resources to start a campain against them. Plus that the fact was well known by the russians.

The only point of speculation in my mind is how things might have worked out over the years if Germany had not opened hostilities with Russia. Would it have been an almost endless situation or would some accomadations have been made? We will never know. Although I suspect an accomadation of some sort might have occured.

I also have little doubt that the further sacrifice of american lives especially to achieve a faster political timetable at that point would have been used. This when invading the home islands. The starving of japan for resources and total destructuion of japanese infastructure was already well underway. It would just have taken somewhat longer before they threw in the towel.

nope toyota got its ass kicked GM is technically on top at the moment.
Toyota has its existance because of the US needing someone to assemble trucks for the korean war.

Did they kick our as in economics? I think not. I think we kicked our own ass for them. We had the upper hand. Instead, we squandered it and let our stuff go downhill while they upgraded their stuff.

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Honestly, from everything I've read over the years I don't think that very many people looked at Fat Man & Little Boy as punishment. They saved hundreds of thousands of lives on BOTH sides.

It's just a good thing that Truman and his folks kept the fact secret that they only had a couple more of them. If the Japanese had known that only one or two more were available, they might have forced the invasion. It would have been UGLY.

Of ALL the stuff I've read about the Japanese in WWII, I think what effected me most was a story that Pappy Boyington told. After the fire bombing, he and some other POW's were taken out to do clean up work. A nice, very elderly Japanese man sauntered by and Pappy had found a butt of a cigarette for which he asked the old man to light for him.

The old man, kindly and respectfully lit the butt for Pappy and a guard saw the act. The guard came and smacked the elderly gentleman down with the butt of his rifle.

It's one thing for an Army to be mistreating POW's and doing things like the Bataan death march, and that's plenty bad enough. It's quite another to brutally injure one of their own civilians, a somewhat helpless one at that.

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at that time, I don't think many in the US cared how many japanese were saved by not invading, but certainly we had had enough with our own combat losses.

You may be correct about that. People were pretty fed up.

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Where they occupied wasn't a picnic either. Decapitation and rapes were common. I'd say Russians and Japanese are a tie when it comes to letting the inner beast out.

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