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In reply to the discussion: No Choice: Why Harry Truman Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan [View all]tonyt53
(5,737 posts)He said they would have fought until the last one was dead, and they would have taken as many Americans with them as they could. He spent time in Australia after Guadalcanal for a bayonet wound through his side and leg. Most of those in that first landing were evacuated and sent to Australia when they main US invasion force arrived. Those men, like my dad, fought against an army that would not surrender, even if it meant death. My dad was on Suribachi when the US flag was raised, but down a bit lower clearing caves of Japanese troops. He ended up with malaria and ended up spending the rest of the war hospitalized in Australia. Didn't come home for six months after the war ended. He said that more US troops would have died until Japan accepted an unconditional surrender, than the people that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The wounded would have been double the dead. And this was without an invasion. Hundreds of thousands Japanese troops were still on islands that were by passed and in other parts of Asia. Not a chance in hell they would have surrendered.
Before those that start writing novels about the events of WWII, they should have interviewed the thousands that fought against the Japanese. Too damned easy to sit in a chair and write about what they themselves, have only read about.