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Say even after the bombs were dropped Japan never agreed to surrender no matter what thus causing OD to proceed, what do you think it would've meant for the Allies and Japan?
A huge amount of casualties (especially on the Japanese side) and eventual Japanese loss. If the Japanese military had their way it would mean the extinction of the Japanese population.
This is correct. Per a mid-August 1945 memorandum, General Leslie Groves (director of the Manhattan Project) stated that a third atomic bomb would be available for combat use by August 19th, a fourth by September 1st, and approximately one additional bomb every ten days thereafter.
Initial plans were to use at least seven implosion-type plutonium bombs (the sort of bomb dropped on Nagasaki - not Hiroshima, where a gun-type uranium bomb was used) on targets that Allied forces would hit some 48 hours later, that being sufficient time it was believed (wrongly, as it happens) to mitigate the effects of radiation on the Allied troops. This would be in Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, the southern-most of the four man Japanese Islands, tentatively scheduled for November 1, 1945. Operation Coronet was to launch on March 1, 1946, the invasion of the largest of the home islands, Honshu, hitting the Kanto Plain just west of Tokyo. Presumably, by this point another dozen atomic devices would be available. Together, Olympic and Coronet comprised Operation Downfall.
Results? More dead Allied troops, a lot more dead Japanese soldiers, sailors and civilians, and perhaps a People's Republic of Japan - consisting of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four home islands and the most proximate to the USSR, which probably would have made sure it got a piece of Japan.
The way that Japan fought did nothing to win it any friends, and this would have been magnified greatly if we had attempted to invade the home islands. Already by the end of the war, there was a not-insubstantial minority of Americans who wanted the Japanese people exterminated. If we had had to face what would have certainly been unceasing fanatical resistance, and our casualties mounted into the tens and then hundreds of thousands, the desire to exterminate them would have likewise mounted. Ultimately, if this had dragged on long enough, I honestly think that public opinion would have swung this way. In other words, we would have finally given in to our anger, and there would have come a point when we would have just killed them for killing's sake. And honestly, who would have stopped us?
I think that the end result of Operation Downfall would have been the virtual annihilation of the Japanese race, with at best a relative handful of survivors, mostly those who were located away from Japan (such as those in the U.S. POW or internment camps) at the time.
Say even after the bombs were dropped Japan never agreed to surrender no matter what thus causing OD to proceed, what do you think it would've meant for the Allies and Japan?
More casualties for the Allies and Japanese deaths orders of magnitude beyond what they already lost. Cities relatively undamaged would have been leveled.
In reality, if they hadn't thrown in the towel after Nagasaki it's highly likely they would have been hit with more atomic bombs until they came to their senses and ended the war that they started. Operations Coronet and Olympic (components of Downfall) probably wouldn't have been executed once the nukes were available.
Simple arithmetic, better to keep dropping bombs than lose men on the beaches.
That was not an option as the US was worried that continued bombings with out a ground assault would cause Japan to collapse internally via communist uprising (not all Japanese were automatons). Such an uprising would trigger an invasion by Soviet troops and the installation of a communist government.
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My Father was one of the first American troops to occupy Japan, he said they were trained to kill all of the Japanesse, that women and children would be suicide bombers and to shoot them too, had there been an invasion.
He said that they took fire before entering a Japanese village shortly after the surrender, they pulled back, and B-29s bombed the village for 3 days, when they went back, they didn't take fire..
Different time back then, war was terrible, and it was an enemy we hated.
Look at our propaganda films, the Japs were viewed as rodents, rats to be exterminated. I think it was Bull Halsey that something about after we are through with them the Japanesse language will only be spoken in hell
We could have wiped out their remaining air force and then just bomb them to dust. The need for an invasion could have been put off for months until the shore bombardment and bombings had done their work. Can you imagine the various battleships sitting offshore and just eliminating one city after another.
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