. . . and you know how many A-bombs we actually had after the first two, I suppose . . .Or maybe you don’t - because the number was a close secret. I think I read many, many years after the war that that number was zero, and that when Truman threatened the use of nukes to forestall Stalin’s invading Iran, that was entirely a bluff.
If that number is correct or very close, the Truman Administration was bluffing Japan as it was - and you are bemoaning the fact that they didn’t push their bluff far enough to suit you.
Actually, the worst thing Truman might have done to Japan at that point might have been - nothing. Nothing except give Japan time to work itself up into an extreme, unsustainable state of alert - and then try to survive for a year with an utterly disrupted national economy. The damage would have at least been comparable to the two A-bombs - and Truman could have had more of them by that time.
“and you are bemoaning the fact that they didn’t push their bluff far enough to suit you.”
Yes, I knew that there were no more atomic bombs.
No, you still do not ‘get’ it. I am not bemoaning the fact that they didn’t push their bluff far enough. What I am saying is that Truman lied to the American people and the world. He said, ‘unconditional surrender’ and it was NOT. There was a ‘condition’ tied to the surrender. The ‘condition’?.....that the emperor stay in power. The emperor should have been arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted and hung in Tokyo for all to see.