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The Japanese language would only be spoken in hell....
They were training women and children for banzai charges with spears.
We were training soldiers to kill them all
I had a conversation with a Japanese woman in my church back in the mid 80s. She had been a little girl in Osaka during the war. (Her father had actually been a Japanese Christian missionary in China when the Japanese invaded. He was held in a prison camp until after the war.)
As Christians, she and her mother had been strongly discriminated against as "follower's of the white man's religion," and she confessed that sometimes during American bombing of Osaka, she wasn't sure who she wanted to prevail.
But she did tell me that toward the end of the war, the Japanese were teaching little girls like her how to carve knives from bamboo, to lure US soldiers close, stab the soldier, then kill themselves.
Any further use of atomic weapons would be limited or not employed due to the threat of collateral damage to our own troops and the after effects of radiation. Even without nuclear weapons there would be unprecedented civilian casualties due to the effects of actual battle and starvation. There would be staggering US casualties and a huge surge in Gold Star mothers with no end in sight. There would be calls for the impeachment of President Truman.
Nope. Check your history of "atomic soldiers" tests in the late 40s and early 50s. The effects of radiation were poorly understood. The US tested having soldiers duck into foxholes and trenches only a few miles from a nuclear blast, then leave the trenches and march into the blast zone as soon as the dust settled. They would have most definitely done that in actual combat.
Nukes would have been used for the invasion, had not the Japanese surrendered.
And the continued use of nuclear weapons in Japan by the US would have held the Soviets at bay.
Any further use of atomic weapons would be limited or not employed due to the threat of collateral damage to our own troops and the after effects of radiation.
Gen. Marshall was to be given nine atomic bombs, over and above those used to try to force a surrender. Three for Kyushu, six for the Tokyo/Kanto Plain area. Troops would have gone through the drop points fifteen minutes after the bombs detonated. We didn't understand that "collateral damage"* would happen. Col. Groves and Robert Oppenheimer had their picture taken at Ground Zero of the Trinity test two day after that explosion.
*Properly, "collateral damage" is unintended death or injury to non-combatants.
Say hypothetically the plans for the invasion of Japan during WWII had commenced, what do you think would have been the ultimate outcome for both the Allies and the Japanese?
From my own selfish perspective, I wouldn't be here. My Dad was a Marine and was on an invasion ship bound for the main islands of Japan when the bombs were dropped. He survived Bouganville, Peleliu and Okinawa. But he always said there is no way he would have survived the main island invasion. He saw the bunkers and the underground, narrow gauge railways to resupply those bunkers. He said "it would have been hell to get them out of there".
So maybe many of you think that would be a good thing that I wasn't here But to me, I'm glad they dropped the bombs.
The Russians didn't have much in the way of invasion forces, but Vasilevsky told the Great Stalin he could fling a force ashore on Hokkaido by August 22nd. That was canceled on the 20th. By November, with Kyushu was to play host to the Western Allies, they could have gotten a sizeable force onto Hokkaido, and might have still been there when the USSR collapsed.
If you look back at earlier threads regarding "should we have dropped the atomic bomb", you'll see several posters who all claimed that we should not have dropped the bomb because Japan was about to surrender or even "Japan was desperately trying to surrender".
So according to those people, there would not have been a big fight because Japan was going to surrender and soon, any day now. All we had to do was promise to leave the Emperor alone, and they would have thrown on the towel.
What saved Japan and the West was the US dropping nukes on Japan. If the invasion was possible. Japan would have to face two invasion forces. From the North and West are the Red Army which has conquered Manchuria and Korea from the Japanese. Than the Japanese would have to face the Americans, and British Empire from the South. The US and allies would have a tough time with the invasion, but the Soviets who are battle hardened from fighting the Nazis would fight tooth and nail against the Japanese. Both Japanese and Soviets would be suicidal against one another.
I'm trying to figure out how the Russians would have kept the Red Army supplied. It's one thing to mount an invasion of Manchuria or the occupation of the Kuril Islands. It's another thing to load up ships and cross the Sea of Japan to invade the Japanese mainland. I just don't think they had the sealift capacity.
I haven't read every response yet, so this may have already been mentioned. Had the Soviet Union been able to invade Japan, it's quite likely that the country would be split in the same way Korea and Viet Nam was.
Also, there would have been a LOT more casualties if the war had continued. I think it was Richard Frank in his book, Downfall, that stated there were 100,000 civilian casualties per month.
If you look back at earlier threads regarding "should we have dropped the atomic bomb", you'll see several posters who all claimed that we should not have dropped the bomb because Japan was about to surrender or even "Japan was desperately trying to surrender".
So according to those people, there would not have been a big fight because Japan was going to surrender and soon, any day now.
Those people are what we refer to as "wrong."
Quote:
All we had to do was promise to leave the Emperor alone, and they would have thrown on the towel.
If Japan was "trying desperately to surrender," then they would have surrendered and they wouldn't have lost Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were prompted to do exactly that prior to the first bomb being dropped. They refused, so they lost Hiroshima. They still didn't surrender. So, they lost Nagasaki. If they hadn't come to their senses at that point, Operation Downfall called for the use of 7 more nukes.
They can be very grateful that their pig-headed leadership finally saw the light before they suffered an additional 10 million deaths and multiples of that number wounded/disabled.
I'm trying to figure out how the Russians would have kept the Red Army supplied. It's one thing to mount an invasion of Manchuria or the occupation of the Kuril Islands. It's another thing to load up ships and cross the Sea of Japan to invade the Japanese mainland. I just don't think they had the sealift capacity.
Underestimating the difficulty of amphibious operations is widespread. A classic example is how many people think the United Kingdom barely averted a German invasion during World War II. The Kriegsmarine never had any hope of coming anywhere close to even parity with the Royal Navy, much less the sea superiority that would have been required to cross the Channel en masse (to say nothing of the air superiority they would have required and also were never particularly close to achieving). They also lacked the experience and even the most basic equipment - the plan for Sea Lion rested on floating troops across the Channel on river barges, most of which would have needed to be towed. Compare that with Overlord, where with air and sea supremacy, extensive amphibious experience, and proper equipment provided by the combined industrial might of the U.S., the UK and Canada, the operation was still considered perilous and with no guarantee of success.
So could the USSR have invaded Hokkaido? I wouldn't rule it out. The Japanese did not expect the Soviets to go to war as early as August 1945, and Hokkaido was essentially undefended. Nothing like the Atlantic Wall there. And the Soviet plan was to invade on August 24, 1945, even after the Japanese had surrendered - presumably, resistance wouldn't have been significant. But it would have had to be minimal, since the invasion plan consisted of a mere two regiments. Perhaps that would have been enough, under the post-surrender conditions, to seize a port, where sufficient men and materiel could be brought ashore. But when Stalin asked Truman for permission, Harry said "Nyet!". And that was that. Could they have successfully invaded pre-surrender? I'm skeptical.
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But to me, I'm glad they dropped the bombs.
