What the Oliver Stone docu says about the nuclear bombing of Japan is...

[MADem]

198. Please. Not all of your nineteen million were under combat arms.

In fact, contrary to your assertions, most of them were NOT. Your lack of understanding of this matter is nothing short of profound, and I will back up that statement with a source.

Plenty of males were "in the rear with the gear." They worked logistics, they worked HQ jobs, they worked "combat support" functions, and they worked in life support roles.

You apparently don't even bother to consider tooth-to-tail ratios as a function of warfighting, and that omission is what makes your comments so painfully inaccurate.

Here's a research work that might help you on this score. I invite your attention to the chapters on WW2, you'll be shocked to learn that a massive percentage, well in excess of one third, and in some cases considerably upwards of half, of your nineteen million weren't slogging and shooting, as you want us to believe.

There were plenty of paper pushers, desk jockeys and skivvie stackers in your nineteen million--not all of 'em have a bayonet in their teeth, about to go over the ridge.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA472467

You'll read details in this report along these lines:

...Despite the expansion of command and control elements, the World War II infantry division was still primarily a combat organization, with one and a half combat soldiers for every support soldier (Figure 12).

...Since motorization in 1941, logistical elements (including life support) ranged between 36 and 57 percent of the total force or between about half to three-fourths of all noncombat elements....

...The biggest shift in the functional T3R ratio was between World War I and World War II. Reflecting the effects of mass motorization and mechanization, the percentage of combat forces fell from 53 percent to 39 percent. While a drop of 14 percent is not as great as the post-World War I range (15 percent—see Table 9) of combat values, never do combat figures rise higher than 40 percent again. This provides a range or band of combat and noncombat values. Using average figures, combat forces have been about a quarter of the force, while logistics elements were roughly a third of the force or half of the noncombat elements. On an average, headquarters elements composed a quarter of the force (or slightly more than a third of all combat elements). Units or contractors providing life support functions formed less than 10 percent of the total force and slightly more than a tenth of all noncombat elements....

See? You have some learning to do.

But thanks for clarifying that one point, albeit begrudgingly.

You're wrong about "no one at that time..." too. See, the generation smack dab in front of me is chock-a-block full of all those "no ones" you reference. This isn't ancient history to me--it's one generation away, and I know, for a fact, that the men and women in my family, who served IN UNIFORM, didn't say that the women were "less than" because they were constrained from serving in combat.

In fact, you're the only one I've heard that kind of guff from.

You know, all those guys who were blown to smithereens at Port Chicago were also constrained from serving in combat--were they "not really in the military" either?


You just aren't coming at this issue from a place of knowledge, sexist implications aside. Read the paper I provided, I can guarantee you will learn a lot, and most of it, plainly, based on your uninformed comments, will be news to you.