[Blogatron]

I've been following the daily posts on the war 70 years ago. At this point in the war US and British carriers were cruising unchallenged off the east coast of Japan and launching fighter-bomber raids with 100's of planes and sinking Japanese battleships docked in their harbors. B-29's were dropping 1000's of tons of bombs on each raid and setting major cities on fire. Our battleships were parking just a few thousand yards off shore and blasting Japanese industry to ruins, completely unchallenged. They were almost completely helpless to stop it. If they had more sense than pride they would have surrendered weeks before the bomb was dropped. But then you look at the maps and see that Japan still controlled almost all of southeast Asia, a good third of China, all of Manchuria and Korea. They must not have thought they were losing.

[Theoria]

'But then you look at the maps and see that Japan still controlled almost all of southeast Asia, a good third of China, all of Manchuria and Korea. '

One of the interesting points post WWII was the great repatriation of Japanese back to Japan from their 'colonies' and such.

This MacArthur report gives a taste of it, and this map.