Originally posted by ATA
You proved my point that US nuked japan when Japan was already defeated.
Saved lives?
Excerpts from "CASUALTY PROJECTIONS FOR THE U.S. INVASIONS OF JAPAN, 1945-1946"
Eventually those numbers would reach what General LeMay described as "well up into the imaginative brackets and then some," because it was clear that American forces would have to fight literally "millions of well-trained men." And unlike the final death throes in Germany, which saw Soviet troops engage the bulk of German strength and suffer 352,475 casualties (including 78,291 dead) during their final, twenty-three-day assault on Berlin and central Germany, the twin U.S. invasions of the Japanese Home Islands were to be conducted almost exclusively by American forces.
The implied top-end figure of approximately 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 battle casualties built on the basis of the Saipan ratio was slashed down to a best-case scenario figure that was not so huge as to make the task ahead appear insurmountable, and use of a 500,000 battle casualty figure was "the operative one at the working level" during the spring of 1945. Andrew J. Goodpaster was then with the Strategy Section of the JWPC. He noted that Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson used the number regularly.
The Saipan ratio was 1 American death and several wounded for 7 Japanese deaths.
500,000 Americans + 3,500,000 Japanese = 4,000,000 lives
It can be argued with some validity that Fat Man and Little Boy saved 3.7 million lives.
I ask how many American and Japanese lives would it have taken for us to be righteous?
It's an easy question, ATA, just give us a number.
>spelling
