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Re: Whoa!

At 09:16 PM 4/21/2001 -0500, Ed Evanhoe wrote:
>
>And the do-gooders of the world fault the US for using the A-Bomb.  I 
>wonder how many of these same people would have been born if we had of 
>invaded Japan and fought our way up the island chain?  Estimates were a 
>million plus casualties on our side alone and 30 million Japanese.  In 
>other words, they didn't expect to take many prisoners, even among civilians.

Not really.  The actual casualty estimates used by the War, Navy, and State
Departments were more along the lines of 100,000 US battle deaths, 300,000
wounded, and around one million civilian casualties.  The Okinawa paradigm
suggested by Nimitz to template the Home Island casualty estimates was
rejected before Potsdam due to the differing operational concepts behind
Okinawa and DOWNFALL.  Still one hell of a butcher's bill, though.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!