Reply #87: This is an appallingly ignorant post

[Gringo]

Everything I've ever read indicates that the emperor was opposed to much of what the military did in WWII and was powerless to stop them. In spite of his being a deity, he was a nearly powerless figurehead, and though he wanted to surrender quite early on, his generals would not hear of it. Although he bore some complicity in the war, the much-reviled General Tojo showed a great deal of class in shouldering all the blame personally.

Whether we could have brought him to the table is nothing but specualtion, since we never really tried.

As for the few post-war holdouts - there are still would-be confederates in this country praying for a race war, so I don't quite get your point.

And yes, many more were killed in the firebombings, but if you escaped unharmed, that was the end of it. The people lucky enough to survive Hiroshima/Nagasaki "unscathed" were shocked days later when their hair started to fall out and blood gushed out of their asses, only the beginning of a horrible new kind of death. Personally, I'd take a conventional firebombing any day over an a-bomb.