[Vision2020] Bishop: Bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki Same As Terrorism

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to 
the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the 
Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or 
face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the 
Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly 
transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never 
submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender 
did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the 
imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic 
weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary." 

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512. 

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American 
occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, 
"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 
were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, 
"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was 
surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his 
advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping 
of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United 
States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution 
of the emperor." 

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
 
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

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No more posts from me today, I have exceeded the agreed limit already...

Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett
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