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Old 12-26-2010, 11:10 PM   #49
Hack&Lube
Atomic Nerd
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PIMking View Post
Really? Got any supporting evidence? Or are you basing this on the idea that the Japanese would have stopped the kamikaze dives until the last man all of a sudden?
It has nothing to do with kami kaze dives which were largely ineffectual and a desperate last-ditch strategy. By the the time the bombs were even starting to get into play, the Japanese airforce was pretty much decimated and they had no real airpower left anymore.

You are right though, as a physical invasion of the Japanese home islands would have caused the deaths of millions of soldiers and civilians as was the imperial cultural conditional of the Japanese army to practice scorched earth, commit suicide (or even "assist" those civilians who did not want to kill themselves) and basically never surrender and fight to the death in jungle and urban warfare that is the most brutal kind of warfare.

The mentality of Imperial Japanese leadership would not have changed unless the bombs were dropped. Even after the bombs were dropped, the generals wanted to continue the fighting until there was absolutely nothing left and Japan was utterly destroyed (causing the deaths of millions of Japanese and Americans). Only the intervention of the Emperor swayed them into the camp of surrender.
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