Tater hits the high points and Frank's Downfall provides context to many of the one-sided arguments used by those who advocate that the Bomb should never have been used on a city.
Submit that Japan certainly brought Hiroshima and Nagasaki entirely upon itself. The junta in Tokyo could have ended the war at any time by accepting the Potsdam Declaration and refused to do so repeatedly. Also, diplomatic responses phrased in subtle manners requiring cultural insights that America was not likely to possess exacerbated the issue. Where clarity was needed the junta provided only obfuscation.
Whether Potsdam was the correct course of action for the Allies is a question entirely separate from the atomic bombings although it is common to lump the two together in order to victimize the Japanese and vilify Truman.
Japan had been well warned about what was going to happen, publicly and accurately so to invoke AM Harris' biblical imagery, having sowed the wind, Japan reaped the nuclear whirlwind.
|