supporting+arguments

=Supporting Arguments=

Analyze the documents below and use them in you presidential briefing report to support your argument.

__Document 1__
In the latter part of June 1945, a note was posted in our camp. It was signed by Hideki Tojo. And it said, 'The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot.' And they meant it. I hadn't been a prisoner for fifteen minutes before they bayoneted a fifteen-year-old Filipino kid right next to me - a kid so innocent he scraped together this little dirt dam with his last bit of energy so he wouldn't bleed on my uniform while he died. That is why all of us who were prisoners in Japan, or were headed for it to probably die in the invasion, revere the Enola Gay. It saved our lives. __quoted in the September 26, 1994,__ //__Washington Post__//
 * Grayford C. Payne, Bataan Death March survivor**

__Document 2__
After their experiences in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, most people were aware of the fact that many Japanese would not peacefully surrender to conventional forces. //Umi Yukaba// is a traditional Japanese poem which demonstrates this. Below is an English translation.

I shall return a corpse awash;** A verdant ( green) sward (meadow) will be my pall; (Pall = coffin)** I will not die peacefully at home.**
 * If I go away to sea.
 * If duty calls me to the mountain,
 * Thus for the sake of the Emperor

__Document 3__
On June 18th, the president met with his top military officials to discuss the possible scenarios for ending the war against Japan. They recommended an invasion of Kyushu no later than November 1st. The operation would be enormous: 766,000 American assault troops engaging an estimated 350,000 Japanese defenders. It would be followed in 1946 by a decisive campaign near Tokyo on the main island of Honshu. Would the Kyushu operation, Truman asked, be 'another Okinawa closer to Japan'? With questionable optimism, the military chiefs of staff predicted the casualties would be somewhat lighter. Still their estimate for the first thirty days was 31,000 casualties. Truman gave his reluctant approval, but not without saying he hoped 'there was a possibility of preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to another'. In fact, Pentagon planners were at work on estimates that projected 132,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing) for Kyushu, another 90,000 or so for Honshu. Of these, probably a quarter would be fatalities. The figures were not wholly worked out by the June 18th, meeting but they would be given to Truman in due course and would constitute the estimates upon which he acted. In later years, he exaggerated them, but they required no magnification to make the atomic bomb a compelling option.
 * President Harry S. Truman and the atomic bomb, History Today, August 1995, by Alonzo Hamby**