Quote:
Originally Posted by noodle
Ok, lets put it this way... lets say the estimation for the 500,000 deaths was over a period of 3 months of battle for example (i'm not too sure what it was excatly)
Why couldn't they have tried a land based battle for lets say 15 day?... that would have cost roughly 83,000 deaths from BOTH SIDES (according to the estimate), not just 200k japanese and 0 US... And then, if the americans realised that the death toll will only increase and increase and increase for NO REASON, THEN drop the A-bomb...
And i will use the civilians argument because the civilians were not becoming soldiers... They might have been told to/(believed it was right to) fight for their country, but they certaintly didn't have the weapons to and will/training to be called a soldier... IF you say that the civilians were becoming soldiers, then that will JUSTIFY ALL killings of civilians during a war.
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Last thing's first. They were training to become soldiers, and you are right, they didn't have weapons. That's why they were sharpening bamboo sticks to uses as spears.
Invasion: You can't simply divide the estimate number of deaths over number of days you invade. In an invasion you don't have the same death toll on day 1 as you do on day 15. On D-Day 10,000 soldiers (out of an invasion of 150,000) were killed in just a few hours. The invading force would have been much higher, and so would have the casualties on both sides. Keeping the random number 3 months (though I doubt they planned on it taking that long) I would say half of the deaths would have occurred within the first 1/4 of that time period. That's 3 weeks and 250,000 deaths. Still higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Good military leaders don't get into situations where "the death tolls increase and increase and increase for NO REASON". Switching strategies mid-stream ALWAYS leads to higher death tolls, so you have to engage in a winnable plan. That's just military strategy.
So I am afraid that option wouldn't have been on the table very long.