One amusing thing about the protests is that either a strong blockade or
continued incendiary attacks would have killed far more civilians and
would have prolonged the Japanese occupations throughout asia. FFM

Duck Dog wrote:

Olivers wrote in message ...


(f) No single military commander and none of the Allied governments seems
to have even considered or suggested blockade as single course to victory.
All involved understood the Japanese well enough to comprehend that
invasion seemed the only available option. Even LeMay did not believe that
the Japanese could be caused to surrender by air attack.


Just one point here. In the World at War series, Gen. LeMay was
quoted as saying that in July of 1945, the conventional wisdom among
commanders in the Pacific was that Japan would have to capitulate in
6-8 weeks given the nightly firebombings on Japanese cities, and the
resulting loss of warmaking capacity. So I believe you're wrong WRT
LeMay; he most certainly DID believe that Japan could be forced into
surrender from air attacks.

One aspect of the atom bombings that most people miss is that the B-29
incendiary campaign did far more destruction to the home islands than
the atomic bombs, and were primarily responsible for severely
crippling Japanese industry. This led to the curious situation where
the Japanese field army in Asia (which constituted the lions share of
Japanese ground forces) were relatively intact but their support
structure was almost completely obliterated. Nevertheless, while the
Japanese commanders still had such an intact army in China and
elsewhere, they felt they had a chance. They were disabused of this
notion when the USSR invaded Manchuria (a brilliant, understudied
campaign for the Soviets, btw).

My point? One can conceivably argue that the atomic bombings were
unnecessary, but only from the standpoint that the incendiary bombings
were already having the desired effect of destroying Japanese
infrastructure. The atomic bombings by themselves would not have
induced a surrender, but coming as they did at end of a long bombing
campaign that essentially destroyed Japan, they were (along with the
Russian invasion in the north) the final knockout punches that ended
the fight. The atomic bombings can be seen then as merely an
escalation of the means of destruction, and the question of whether
they were "necessary" becomes less urgent.