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- Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
- Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!rpi!batcomputer!alchemy.tn.cornell.edu!jfe
- From: jfe@alchemy.tn.cornell.edu (Brian Chung)
- Subject: Re: questions of the Korean War
- Message-ID: <1992Nov22.053822.8772@tc.cornell.edu>
- Sender: news@tc.cornell.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: alchemy.tn.cornell.edu
- Organization: Alchemy International
- References: <By1A80.8FF@acsu.buffalo.edu> <10025@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> <1992Nov22.015649.14288@wam.umd.edu>
- Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 05:38:22 GMT
- Lines: 39
-
- In article <1992Nov22.015649.14288@wam.umd.edu> south@wam.umd.edu (Daeshik Kim) writes:
- >Just one thing, the orig. poster mentioned about the military power
- >that threw up Japan in WWII; however, I don't think it was Army in WWII;
- >rather, U.S. won WWII in the air against Japan (along with nuke).
-
- No, the power that threw up Japan was Geroge Bush... :) But
- seriously, I would give more weight to the role of the navy than the air
- power (there was no air force, at this time). The US did quite a lot of
- bombing on Japan, but it took the atomic bomb to convince them to surrender.
- Of course, some people do argue that even without the atomic bomb, Japan
- would have surrendered once the Soviets entered the theatre. But IMHO,
- it was the American navy and the marines that were the decisive factors
- in defeating Japan.
-
- >W/o nuke, both Japan and U.S. would have had a lot more casualies including
- >Korean/Japanese civilians; I don't want to imagine what would have happened
- >if U.S. army needed to land on Japan.
-
- If the US army/marines were to land on Japan, it would have been a
- Soviet-US joint-effort. In my analysis, such effort would not have been
- necessary. Japan would have surrendered without a "Battle of Japan" or
- even an atomic bomb. Truman should have waited a few more days for the
- impact of the Soviet declaration of war to sink into the Japanese military.
- It probably would have saved all the souls in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (yeah,
- I'm fully aware of Truman Administration's need to contain the Soviets.)
- >
- >However, I don't know what happened to that air power when PRC involved
- >which would have been a good target for carpet bombardment.
-
- Well, air power isn't omnipotent. The terrain of the target
- matters quite a bit. In an open terrain like Iraq or Europe, carpet
- bombing can be very effective, but in a mountainous/jungle region like
- Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, there are so many nooks and crannies for
- the enemy to hide.
- --
- T. H. Brian Chung | Happiness is...
- Internet: jfe@alchemy.tn.cornell.edu | "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
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