....."I looked at it and it was a B-29"

There was nearly a famine first year of the occupation even WITH
relatively intact transport and US help. The civilian deaths under the
famine-and-invade option -- leaving aside the US soldiers who'd be
killed invading and the Japanese who'd be killed fighting them --
would have been many more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together.


I heard some years ago a very different story why the bombs were used.
It was not to save US lives by making the US invasion obsolete but to
prevent the Soviet Union to invade Japan! Its from a German source linked
to the TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) project. TICOM captured in
1945 a German cryptoanalyst group that penetrated high level Soviet trafic
and then worked well for the US. Some (not the first) glimps of TICOM was
published in 2001 by Bamfords second book, for the NSA.

In 2005 a German Journalist reveald more about the background:

Frank Krüger: Amerika, das japanische Raubgold und Hiroshima
http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden...e-krueger.html

The main reason for the US to prevent a Soviet ocupation zone in Japan was
the fear the SU could capture part or all of the Japans gold reserve. They
looted whole east asia for gold and got an incredible stock in the 100s
Billion Dollar range - much needed by the US after Bretton Woods. The US
pressed on Stalin to stop the already launched invasion and used the bomb
to get Japan in fast capitulation before the gold could be shiped away.

Krüger found two further sources on the SU invasion. One was a paper by
Boris Slavinsky in 1993: "The Soviet Occupation of the Kurile Islands and
the Plans fort he Capture of Northern Hokkaido", in "Japan Forum"
(Vol. 5, No. 1, BAJS 1993)

In 1996, David Glantz, Director of the "U.S. ArmyÆs Military Studies Office"
wrote a paper "The Soviet Invasion of Japan" based on Slavinsky without
mentioning him.


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