re: 80th anniversary of the first atomic bomb

quote:

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Blockades. They were running short on fuel as it was.

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Of the three options (a-bomb, invasion, blockade) to end the war, blockade was far and away the most cruel. It would have sentenced millions of people across Japanese occupied Asia to the slow, excruciatingly painful death from starvation and disease. The map below shows in blue the areas still under Japanese occupation in August 1945….



By the beginning 1945, as many as 14,000 civilians daily in these blue areas were already dying from starvation and disease. And that daily number was rapidly accelerating by August. And that’s not even counting the deaths from continuing conventional bombing raids.

In conclusion, ending the war with Japan via blockade would have resulted in one of the worst human catastrophes in history with a final death toll that would dwarf both atomic comings several times over.