Operation Olympic or Nuke Hiroshima/Nagasaki

[yellowwing]

Operation Olympic was to seize the southern island of Kyushu in preparation to move on the main Japanese island of Honshu.

Allied casualty estimates range from 100,000 to 500,000 just for seizing the lower third of Kyushu.

Not only did Fat Man and Little Boy save countless Marine lives, they also saved Japanese civilian lives. A
Imperial Japanese Planner writes: But even the highest-ranking government were horrified at the Army's primitive notions for militia defense. In July 1945, Premier Suzuki and his associates were invited to visit an amazing display of weapons to be issued the Japanese citizenry: Single-shot, muzzle-loading muskets; longbows and arrows (effective range 30-40 meters, hit probability 50%, said the placards); bamboo spears; pitchforks.

After defeating the Imperial regulars, we would have had to slaughter old men and women. Perhaps an honorable death for them, but not an honorable task for Marines.

The Imperial Staff just would not quit. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave the Emperor his face saving excuse to capitulate.

[Joseph P Carey]

Wing,

The Japanese had plenty of warning of what was to come! Even today, they do not heed the course of History, because they are not taught the history of the Second World War!

You have forgotten the Fire-Bombing of Tokyo that killed 50,000 civilians, and the taking of Okinawa that killed 100,000 civilans, but the strange thing is, it is not us that forget the lessons of WWII. The people of Japan Today, are taught the end of the war, where Americans pummeled them with such grandiose devices and of the Marines and US Army Troops that came ashore on Okinawa, and they are taught the deaths of the Tens of Thousands of Japanese that did live under 'The Bomb', but the people of Japan have very little information about how the war was started, and how the war was fought by the Japanese Imperial Forces, and they are not taught of the aggression of the Imperial Troops on the People of the Philippine Islands, 100,000 Philippinos died in just the City of Manila during the war, and on the People of China with the rape of Nanking (the Japanese troops killed half the population of the 600,000 strong city of Nanking from 1937 to 1938) it is estimated that in the single City of Nanking alone, there were 300,000 deaths at the hands of the Japanese Imperial troops.

The landing on Okinawa was the biggest, more so than Normandy, naval landing in the Second World War, and over 100,000 Okinawans died in the fighting, aside from the 130,000 Imperial Troops that defended the Island at the Southern tip of Japan's Island Kingdom.

The Japanese of today are taught in their schools that they were defending themselves from the Americans during WWII, and hence, the war was begun by the Americans. What lessons are learned by History, if history is not taught as it unfolded?

[marinemom]

I think that the American people should declare today Harry S Truman Day - for his courage in approving the dropping of the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Truman did this because he was a veteran of WWI and knew the cost that was predicted if we landed on the Japanese home islands - he cared about the troops.

As far as the Japanese whitewashing of their activities in WWII, also remember the treatment of the survivors of Wake Island, Marine and civilian and the 93 contractors kept on Wake who were slaughtered by the Japanese when they realized Wake was lost.

Drop another one - this time on Tehran.

[Joseph P Carey]

I do not know much about "Give-em-hell" Harry, I do know he was a Captain of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, and he was in combat for two months during the First World War. This after he was in the State Militia for a period of 12 years. And, During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me." But, to make a day for Harry is another thing all together.

We have had 43 Presidents, and the thinking was, some years back, that if we made a day for one of them, we would have to make a day for all of them, Hence President's Day, the third Monday in February is where we honor all Presidents for thier collective actions in the leadership of this country of ours!

It was a good Idea then, and it is a good Idea now! It is just not celebrated the way it should be!

[thedrifter]

08/13/2005
Waning days of WWII
JIM KINNEY , The Saratogian

GREENFIELD -- The volcanic sands of Iwo Jima caked on the treads of the Marines' Sherman tanks and broke the linkages between the treads.
A mechanic with the 3rd Marine Division, James Smith of Greenfield, was busy fixing one of those tanks in February of 1945 when the first American flag went up on Mount Suribachi. A buddy called his attention to it.

'For us, that flag meant that the island was secure,' he said. 'The island wasn't secure.'

By August 1945, when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered without an American-led invasion, Smith, now 84, was back in the U.S. working as a guard at the Brooklyn Navy yard. The 60th anniversary of V-J Day, the end of World War II, is either Sunday or Monday depending on how one counts the international date line.

A musician, Smith wrote his memoirs a few years ago, works on model planes and is now working to put his old radio performances on compact disc.

The flag-raising quickly became famous around the world but made little immediate difference to the Marines on the ground, Smith said. The tanks were still disabled and were still drawing a lot of mortar fire.

'The mortar fire was terrible,' he said. 'I really don't know how I survived.'

The Japanese fought from caves on Iwo Jima. According to a Marine Web site, the 70,000-man invasion force suffered 6,800 deaths in the 36 days it took the Marines to slog across the 4-mile-long island. About 20,000 others were wounded.

Smith joined the Marines in 1942 and recalled how the men who didn't pass the physical at the Albany induction center were sent to the other services' recruiting offices down the hall.

His division made it to Guadalcanal in June 1943, after the invasion, but there were still Japanese on the island.

'That made it training for us,' Smith said.

As a mechanic, he made beach landings on foot behind the tanks. He described the invasion of Guam, which occurred before Iwo Jima.

'A lot of mortar fire. There were dead Marines,' he said. 'I don't know why I'm here today.'

But he wasn't fatalistic at the time.

'I had the feeling nothing really was going to happen to me,' he said.

Ellie