If Truman refused to use the atomic bomb on Japan, what should he have done instead?

[avebury]

149. Another hard incident occurred when the

Japanese divided the POWs (before they left the Phillipines) into groups of 10 and told each member of a group that they were responsible for the other 9. If one of the group took off, the others would be killed. My uncle became aware of 3 men who were planning an escape (from 3 different groups). He ended up alerting the Japanese. As he told my mother, he felt he had no choice because it would have cost the lives of 27 other men. The 3 men were punished but survived. He could not have lived with himself if the 27 prisoners had been killed because of the actions of the other 3.

My aunt kept scapbooks of articles on POWs while my uncle was away. My mother was looking at one of them one time when she and my Dad were visiting them. There was an article from magazine in the scrapbook that contained a sketch of 3 men who were trussed up. My uncle looked over my mother's shoulder at the article and told her that he was involved in that incident and then told her the story in the paragraph above.