Great Tokyo Air Raid was a war crime

[cstaylor]

As soon as Churchill learned of the atomic bomb's existence, he wanted to use it against the Soviet Union! Professor Gabriel Kolko

Not a direct quote, just an innuendo.

At Potsdam, Churchill `urged that they consider it as a diplomatic lever on the Russians'.

Can you give me some larger quotes? I looked on the net too, and this was the only site that had these quotes. It seems that the Field Marshall and Churchill didn't have a good relationship, and I have read that Chuchill had an infantile streak, so I could imagine him saying possibly something like this in private.

[cstaylor]

mike is a different hito

my apologies.

i got the numbers wrong, its a couple of years since i studied this stuff, sorry. two hundred thousand

There's a big difference. We would be in agreement if 2,000,000 civilians had died.

japan should have surrendered.

Yes, I firmly believe that. Now the reason they didn't surrender? Kantaro Suzuki's use of the highly ambigious word "Mokusatsu" when addressing military personnel.

their government was bad and their soldiers cruel.

No, I never said that. The actions of the few color the valor of the majority. The government was in turmoil... how many cabinets resigned during the 15 years of war with China and the United States? Additionally, the military could dissolve the civilian cabinet or block appointments at will, so I would hardly lay the blame entirely at the feet of the elected officials.

the point is about our actions. We keep on defending them. why?

That's a much better question, and more relevant to our lives anyways. I think that if someone wrote a book taking the Pacific War as a series of accidents (similar to the "Guns of August"), you'd find that a lot of what happened could have been avoided.

and the quotes i read were in a "history of the nuclear age" course at manchester university, in a historical journal, and im not dredging through those things to give you a quote.

Let me know if you know the author at all... Amazon brings up 236 entries when I put in "history of the nuclear age"