{"id":576,"date":"2008-07-21T03:53:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T08:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=576"},"modified":"2008-07-21T03:53:56","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T08:53:56","slug":"decisions-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/576","title":{"rendered":"Decisions, Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>No one knows why anyone does anything.<br \/>\nWhy did I choose these socks today? <\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/\">Trinity +1: the Decision to Use the Bomb, 17 July-6 August, 1945<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The truth of the matter was that it was a very complex issue, an easily misunderstood tapestry of circumstance and consequence. The major issue of course was that the Japanese would not surrender, and that there would be \u201cfanatical resistance\u201d once the invasion of the Japanese islands had begun.    The battle of Okinawa had just been fought\u2014it was a horrible confrontation taking 12,5000 American lives and more than 1000,000 Japanese , demonstrating that even in impossible circumstances that the Japanese simply would not surrender (unconditionally).   This is just one instance\u2014there are many others, not the least of which was t he recent firebombing of Tokyo, taking 150,000 lives.  Air strikes in general seemed to not make a difference in the will of Japan to fight\u2014as was demonstrated again and again in the British and American bombing of Germany\u2014as was further demonstrated in General Curtis LeMay\u2019s and General Hap Arnold\u2019s  60-city attack in the May-August span.  The thought was that if there was an invasion that it could well cost the U.S. 1000,000+ casualties and would be completely devastating to Japan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Something odd (in a US-centric way) going on with the numbers \u2014  12,5000 and 1000,000 correlate to 12,500 and 100,000, respectively, when I compare to other accounts of the battle of Okinawa.<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com\/2008\/07\/this-weeks-good-reads.html\">Physics Buzz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No one knows why anyone does anything. Why did I choose these socks today? Trinity +1: the Decision to Use the Bomb, 17 July-6 August, 1945 The truth of the matter was that it was a very complex issue, an &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/576\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,39,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-physics","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}