My father was on Okinawa and would have been part of the invasion.
Thousands of US military personnel would have died in the invasion of Japan.
Millions of Japanese would have died in the invasion of Japan.
Russia would have participated in the invasion of Japan and it is possible that Japan would have been partitioned, like Germany.
We only had two working bombs, there were none available for a so-called demonstration.
Even after the first bomb, the Japanese military didn’t want to surrender.
As a result of the second bomb, the Emperor imagined the sky filled with US bombers all equipped with these bombs (he had no idea that we had exhausted our supply).
Truman did the right thing by ending the war with these two bombs.
Did I leave anything out?
I think these Japanese are victims of revisionist history, ie, clueless.
We only had two working bombs, there were none available for a so-called demonstration.
I’ve often heard liberals say that we should have done a demonstration of the bomb for the Japanese, and show them the power of the bomb, to encourage them to surrender.
but would that have worked? They didn’t surrender after Hiroshima. They surrendered after Nagasaki, and the shock and awe and fears that many more were coming their way.
We had one more bomb available after Nagasaki. Series production was starting up and we would have had one to two bombs per month beginning in September.
/Millions of Japanese would have died in the invasion of Japan./
The Atomic bombs (along with Russian attacks)did save
millions of Japanese.
“Gas attacks of the size and intensity recommended on these 250 square miles of urban population,” the US Army report declared, “might easily kill 5,000,000 people and injure that many more.” In the first attack, which would be launched 15 days before the Kyushu landings, American bombers would drench much of Tokyo and other cities in an early morning attack with 54,000 tons of lethal phosgene gas. Tokyo would be the largest poison gas target, because an “attack of this size against an urban city of large population should be used to initiate gas warfare.”
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p12_weber.html
...Allen, T.B. and N. Polmar, “Poisonous invasion prelude,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 4, 1995 [New York Times special features].)
Some sources say only tactical use had been approved.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/pacific-online-forum/
“Politics” told Truman that if one American life could have been saved by the use of the Atomic bombs...it must be done...
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/no-other-choice-why-truman-dropped-the-atomic-bomb-japan-13504
& agreed...without the Atomic Bombs there would be fewer of us Baby Boomers.
After visiting several interesting countries of Europe my Father was on a cruise ( ; ) ship to Japan when the Atomic Bombs were used.
As a result of the second bomb, the Emperor imagined the sky filled with US bombers all equipped with these bombs (he had no idea that we had exhausted our supply).
After the wars end, one of our diplomats was talking with his counterpart about the Bomb. The Jap said that they had to surrender as they were afraid we'd keep on dropping atom bombs on them. When our guy told him that we only had two, he blurted out "If we knew you had only two . . ." and then thought the better of continuing.
Truman did the right thing by ending the war with these two bombs.
It was a political no-brainer. If he hadn't of dropped those bombs for humanitarian reasons and we invaded instead, with all its casualties, and the public later found out, he would have been impeached, if not worse, and the Democratic Party would have been destroyed forever.