Opinion of Douglas MacArthur?

[GeneralMacArthur]

HP but successful regime in Japan.  I actually do think nuking Korea would have been the tactically smart choice as well and the USSR was in no position to retaliate . However the standard it would have set would have been dangerous for the future.

FTR MacArthur wanted to nuke China, not Korea.  And he didn't want to use nuclear bombs to kill people, he wanted to use them to basically create a wall between Korea and China so that China wouldn't be able to battle Americans in Korea by land.

[GeneralMacArthur]

HP but successful regime in Japan.  I actually do think nuking Korea would have been the tactically smart choice as well and the USSR was in no position to retaliate . However the standard it would have set would have been dangerous for the future.

FTR MacArthur wanted to nuke China, not Korea.  And he didn't want to use nuclear bombs to kill people, he wanted to use them to basically create a wall between Korea and China so that China wouldn't be able to battle Americans in Korea by land.

No, he wanted to use the nuclear bombs to kill people — that's what they're for. He proposed dropping 30-50 on cities in both Korea and China. The "wall" would have been radioactive waste or some other sort of radioactive substance, used to create a line across the northern border of Korea (would be highly inefficient to create such a line with nuclear bombs). You're conflating the details of two separate but linked proposals.

Sorry, I didn't mean to downplay the impact of the nuclear bombs -- just that the tactical purpose was to block Chinese logistics on the Korean peninsula, not specifically to cause death and destruction like the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs.