This Knocks the Legs Out from Under the Atom Bomb Revisionists Who Criticize Truman for Hiroshima

by Guest Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:59 pm

D. M. Giangreco was invited to the Pritzker Military Museum, Chicago,to speak about the new expanded edition of Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947.The following remarks are drawn from his June 14, 2018, presentation and focus on the book’s new chapters detailing US-Soviet cooperation in Pacific war.

This Knocks the Legs Out from Under the Atom Bomb Revisionists Who Criticize Truman for Hiroshima 169567-akjbascds

The best way to get across the situation that Czarist Russia and then the Soviet Union faced in the Far East is to make it clear that the Maritime Provinces and their principal port, Vladivostok, were far, far more vulnerable than even the tenuous US position in the Philippines at the time of Pearl Harbor. The lifeline upon which so much depended for the Russians was the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the chief of the US Military Mission in Moscow, Major GeneralJohn R.Deane, did not mince words when describing the situation its limitations put the Soviets in:

This Knocks the Legs Out from Under the Atom Bomb Revisionists Who Criticize Truman for Hiroshima 169567-khjbsdfdsf

This Knocks the Legs Out from Under the Atom Bomb Revisionists Who Criticize Truman for Hiroshima 169567-khjbsdfdsf

"The Trans-Siberian railroad constitutes the bottleneck in the support of military operations in Siberia. It is now double-tracked for most of its ten thousand miles, but there are still enough stretches of single track to reduce its capacity considerably. On its eastern end the roadbed is within a few miles of the northern and eastern borders of Manchuria, and it was therefore quite vulnerable to Japanese land and air attack. It has a number of bridges and tunnels the destruction of which would have indefinitely interrupted traffic between western Russia and the Maritime Provinces.

The only other source of supply was from across the Pacific, and it was reasonable to suppose that Japan would be able to blockade that route."

It’s important to add that the Japanese did not have to limit their attacks to the most apparent spots and, as post-war studies demonstrated, they didn’t plan to. The rail line follows the giant arc of the Amur River, which forms the northern border of Manchuria, for more than 1,200 miles. Along most of this distance the tracks run a bare 30 to 35 miles from the river and as little as 10 to 15 along numerous stretches. Bridges and tunnels abound. Turning south, the railroad follows the river valley of the Ussuri 250 miles toward the Vladivostok area, all the while under easy observation --- and reach --- of the Japanese Army on the west bank.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169567

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