I heard this evening on the Beeb that today is the anniversary of the American firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Over 100,000 people died in that event and most historians think that more died there than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The thing is that many will still try to justify the dropping of the atomic bombs by saying that the Japanese wouldn't surrender if we hadn't done it and we would have had to invade the mainland and suffer 100,000+ casualties.
But if we hadn't dropped the bombs we would still have had little or no difficulty completely devasting the Japanese mainland with firebombing tactics. The American Air Force had complete air superiority at that stage of the war and the only thing slowing down the Japanese surrender (at least on the Japanese side was the American demand that the Japanese announce that the Emperor was no longer a god).
It's sad. Basically, all those Japanese died and their cities were poisoned for a science experiment (would the bombs actually work and how well).
Posted by artandscience at March 9, 2005 07:42 PM