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, to do some research on the Pacific war in World War II. The results were sickening – and the research had the practical effect of making me gain a new appreciation for the concept of rules of war.\n
\nHere is the sickening part first. We don’t actually have an appreciation for how bad World War II was. The atom bombs killed<\/a> around 3.5 lakh people, all put together. But the scale of devastation in WWII was such that the deaths would be considered somewhat above average for a single incident, nothing out of the ordinary. I am serious. Take a look at these figures. <\/p>\n
Bataan Death March<\/a>: 10,000<\/b> deaths. I’ve included all kinds of events, not just battles. But this is just a sample of the kind of casualties we are talking of, not an exhaustive list. I have included deaths among both Americans and Japanese, both military and civilian. Many of the civilian deaths were due to suicide,<\/i> especially in the Battle of Saipan<\/a>. They jumped off the cliff because they could not bear the shame of having been conquered by the Americans. Here<\/a> is a description of the choices facing the Americans at that time. They weren’t pretty. As I understand it, the Japanese were intent on fighting to the last. The civilian population was highly motivated and sincerely believed that it was better to die than surrender. The choices were 1) Leave Japan as it was, with the military government intact (something like what Bush I did in the first Gulf War) 2) Blockade Japan and watch millions die, 3) Invade Japan and have millions die or 4) Drop the bomb. <\/p>\n Given the circumstances, I cannot bring myself to condemn the decision – even if it was a mistake, it was an honest mistake. At those levels of deaths and devastation, arguing over a few lakh here and there seems like arguing over peanuts. <\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the 60th anniversary of dropping the atom-bomb on Nagasaki. Some time back, I was inspired by the novel Cryptonomicon, to do some research on the Pacific war in World War II. The results were sickening – and the research had the practical effect of making me gain a new appreciation for the concept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nManila Massacre <\/a>: 100,000<\/b> deaths.
\nBattle of Leyte<\/a> 54,000<\/b> deaths.
\nBattle of Iwo Jima<\/a> – for an island smaller than South Mumbai – 27,000<\/b> deaths
\nBattle of Okinawa<\/a>: 220,000<\/a><\/b> deaths. <\/p>\n
\nAlso note that as the fighting got closer to the home islands of Japan, the number of casualties shot up exponentially. The actual invasion of Japan<\/a>, if it took place, was estimated to cause 3 lakh American deaths (and if history was any guide, many times more Japanese casualties) <\/p>\n
\n *From the Emperor’s Radio Address<\/a><\/p>\n