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Originally Posted by Darren
I don't think that we mean the same thing by blockade here. I am talking about a total blockade, i.e. nothing gets in or out without the approval of the blockading force, nothing. The united nations had this capacity in 1945, but not in 1944 and certainly not in 1943.
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That had been going on since the ports were mined in March of 1945. Still no surrender in sight. As I noted in response to your earlier post, blockade does not end the war. No one has ever produced a scenario that leads to surrender from blockade. This is because blockade contains no mechanism or shock effect that forces Japan to end the war, nor does it render Japanese policy of resistance on Kyushu ineffective. And further, because blockade would not stop the killing in China and elsewhere outside of Asia, it would produce a far greater loss of life than nuking two cities to render Japanese strategy ineffective and end the war. Such a loss of life would stem from (1) deaths by bombardment and starvation in Japan and (2) deaths from fighting in China and elsewhere. Additionally, with no end to the war in April, the Russians would certainly have come ashore in Hokkaido, as they had planned to do, and were only stopped by fanatic japanese resistance that delayed their conquest of other places into Sept, when the WWII finally stopped.
Vorkosigan