4) Truman Diaries: July, 17, 18, 25 (1945) / Letters to his wife Bess: July 18, 22 (1945)
http://www.doug-long.com/hst.htm
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/w.....ocumentary

1) United States Strategic Bombing Survey
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm (http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#jstetw)

2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki:Decision to Drop the Bomb (Michigan Journal of History, 2002)
The official report prepared by the Joint War Plans Committee on 15 June 1945 presented the following calculations to the Chiefs of Staff: Killed ?€“ 40,000; Wounded ?€“ 150,000; Missing ?€“ 3,500; Total ?€“ 193,500. With Okinawa weighing heavily on the mind of Truman, top military officials assured the President that losses suffered in an invasion of Japan would be lighter. According to the Joint War Plans Committee, the Tokyo Plain had many more beaches suitable for amphibious assault, with its geography precluding the concentration of defense. The favorable terrain would allow American forces to outmaneuver the Japanese in combat. With this in mind, the military planners concluded, ?€œin terms of percentage of casualties the invasion of the Tokyo Plains should be relatively inexpensive?€? (1945, 342).
http://www.umich.edu/~historyj.....oh2.html#3

Q) Would a United States Government today, confronted with the same set of choices and approximately the same degree of military intelligence, reach a different decision as to using the first A-bomb?

A) I think it depends on the person of the President. Truman did not understand what was involved. You can see that from the language he used. Truman announced the bombing of Hiroshima while he was at sea coming back from Potsdam, and his announcement contained the phrase - I quote from the New York “Times” of August 7, 1945: “We have spent 2 billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history - and won.”

To put the atomic bomb in terms of having gambled 2 billion dollars and having “won” offended my sense of proportions, and I concluded at that time that Truman did not understand at all what was involved.

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Truman was returning to the United States from Potsdam aboard the USS Augusta. “He was not actually laughing, but there was a broad smile on his face,” United Press reporter Merriman Smith said of Truman’s expression as he announced the bombing to crew members.

As a matter of fact, there was much celebration too on the streets of New York - yes, in Manhattan - and elsewhere in the United States and especially on a ship sailing back from Europe to the United States bringing back the U.S. President from Potsdam, Germany. The date was 6th August 1945. The cause for celebration was the utterly senseless atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States. The then U.S. President, Harry S. Truman, who was leading the celebrations without an iota of guilt, had just announced to the world the successful strike on Hiroshima by the U.S. airforce. The U.S. President had been informed over the wireless that the atomic bomb had achieved the desired results. The Japanese’ city of Hiroshima, which had been deliberately left untouched by “conventional” bombing, had been obliterated by a single atomic bomb. (When the truth began to sink in, those concerned U.S. citizens who were better informed quickly distanced themselves from the celebrations and started expressing their outrage at the senseless act. Later reports showed that over 200,000 of Hiroshima’s population of 350,000 had been wiped out.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/jayaprakash1.html

It was characteristic of Marshall that while others were celebrating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Gen. Groves recalled that “General Marshall expressed his feeling that we should guard against too much gratification over our success, because it undoubtedly involved a large number of Japanese casualties.”
Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told, pg. 324

Okinawa is a small island in comparison to the main islands of Japan. US casualties were around 38,000. 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan soldiers were killed. 100,000 Okinawan civilians died.

I don’t know about the study you mention. In light of the US experience at Okinawa, the projected casualty rates seem very low. US planners of the time, without the benefits of hindsight, would most likely have felt the same way. Moreover, if Okinawa was any sort of example, a full-scale invasion would have been a monumental disaster for Japanese civilians, much more than they had suffered even up to that point.

Of course, there are ways to argue that the Okinawan experience would not have been representative. There’s no way to be sure though, and the those trying to decide at the time had even less reason to be sure. There was no time at which “all possible doubt” was “dispelled.”

As far as the Japanese “trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing,” one Japanese perspective on this can be found in the book “Japan’s Longest Day” (which I’d have a bit more confidence in than something from disinfo.org).

Now, I think that the atomic bombing of Japan was a Bad Thing. If I had been in Truman’s place, I doubt I would have ordered it, but I couldn’t say for sure. Neither could anyone else now living, however much they might want to ignore all the complexities of that time.

Reference “American rejoicing after dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.

Minor point: The highest casualty ratios (death and seriously wounded ratio for the size of the forces involved) suffered by American forces in WWII were in the Pacific theater against the Japanese. ALthough the Imperial Army lacked the firepower and combined arms capabilities of the Wermacht, their cult of death and no surrender attitudes led to much higher casualties. That butcher’s bill climbed higher as U.S. forces approached the Japanese mainland. Projected casualties for the invasion of mainland Japan was over one million, with one tenth of those killed. (i.e., soldiers expected to be killed in the invasion of Japan would amount to 1/5th of all WWII U.S. deaths in action)

They weren’t dancing in the streets because we’d just crispy-crittered a few ten thousand human beings, although the feeling that the Japanese had only brought this on themselves was present. They were dancing because their boyfriends, husbands, sons, and fathers at that moment stood a much better chance of coming home.

One example:

I asked “why Palestinians trust Osama bin Laden or Arafat to do the right thing should be anything different than Americans trust Bush or Kerry to do the right thing?”, which is quite different than saying “Trusting Osama Bin Laden to do the right thing is the same as trusting George H.W. Bush to do the right thing” - mine specifies the subjects as Palestinian and Americans, yours don’t.

Without the specified subject, the objects of “trusting” automatically become the main emphasis of the statement as whoever speaks the statement substitutes the empty place of the subject. This is very crucial because it implicates that ‘whoever” is trusting A and it is same as ‘whoever” is trusting B. Since they have common subject and action, therefore you can deduce the equation of A= B.
So how do we know whether this equation is true or false?
Simple. Since they share the subject, if the subject trusts A and B equally (or believes that the values of A and B are equal), we can also conclude that the value system/assignment of the subject is applied to A and B equally: If somehow A and B exhibits different value system, the whole equation is false. So your excellent choice of “gas chamber= fart in the elevator” proves that the equation is false in this case: if someone believes that running a gas chamber and farting in the elevator have the same value, it means that his/her value system was not applied equally to the objects.

Then what about my statement? If it is converted to an equation, it looks like this:
“A trusts B = C trusts D” Do you recognize the difference between yours and mine?
If you understand the difference, you will also understand what it means: go figure.

If you agree on the logic, why dispute the result?

So long (this is my last post here, I am already bored with dull arguments-no offence, mine is equally tedious.),

sincerely,

The prosecution rests.