Reply #132: It is not the only scenario during those times when there was

[rasputin1952]

massive loss of civilian life.

Looking at what the Japanese had done during their "reign of terror" gave the impression, if not the fact, that they were, at the time brutal in their occupations. Millions of Chinese were slaughtered, mostly civilians, under the Japanese; millions of Japanese died during the war, many of them civilians. Look at the fire-bombing of Tokyo...civilians died in a far higher # than at Hiroshima...and yet, the "official" line was to "continue to the death".

Whether you are convinced or not is irrelevant to the time, it happened because after great deliberation, it was deemed as the best option at that time.

How many more civilians would have died if conventional bombing of the cities and countryside continued? Millions...add to the potential Japanese deaths the # of Allied troops and the numbers cannot even begin to balance.

Children died in Moscow, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, London, Rome, Stalingrad, Nanking, Manila the world was littered with the bodies of the innocent. The relative few that died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought the murder to a close is no more nor less horrific than the others. It is the method that makes most agahst...not the #'s.

War sucks...we should have evolved far beyond it...but it appears to be enmeshed in our very fiber.