Japanese were ready to fight to the last man, and they meant it.
The bombs probably saved a lot of Japanese lives.
What if the Soviets beat us to Tokyo?
My father turned draft age in the fall of ‘45. If no atomic bombs, I’d rate his chances of having been killed in an invasion of Japan at approx. 50-50. My existence is as likely as not owed to Truman, Oppenheimer et al.
My Dad would have been in that invasion force.
I remember in college, a number of professors were debating the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasakki. One professor stood up and told us he was onboard a ship preparing to invade Japan in Operation Downfall. They had been told to expect more than 75% losses in the invasion. He said God bless the President’s call to drop the bomb.
They manufactured so many Purple Hearts in advance of Downfall that they lasted through Korea, Vietnam, and Gulf War I, until sometime in the early 2000s during the WoT.
We still are awarding purple heart medals that were made for the final invasion of Japan....to this very day.
The Japanese heavily re-enforced southern Kyushu after Okinawa. In early August of 1945 US intelligence and the Operation Olympic planners were just staring to pick up on how much it had been re-enforced. Unaltered, US forces would have gone into Kyushu at 1-1 odds which would have been a slaughter...
Now the Olympic plans would no doubt have been modified, but it shows how much the Japanese were putting into the defense of the Home Islands.
Dad was in the Philippines with the SeaBees, building a huge armor and motor repair depot for the expected invasion of Japan. He was literally on his way to Okinawa with his unit to do something similar, when the war ended.
Correct. And Japanese historians such as Asada have confirmed we were WAY WAY LOW in our estimates of casualties, as they had moved an entirely new division into the southern island alone.
Operation Downfall: What If The US NEVER Dropped The Atomic Bomb & Invaded Japan? | History Undone
Summary: The A-bombs saved lives not just in the Allied countries, not just Japan, but in many asian countries that were Japanese occupied and starving. Literal cannibalism was starting to break out.
Maybe the Russians would have made out better - that's about it.
Just keep a naval blockade around the islands and starve them until they decide to surrender.
If they hadn’t surrendered we would’ve tested a third bomb.
I’m not sure what they would’ve called it. After fat-man and little-boy, maybe corn-fed-girl would work.
I have no problem w/dropping the big ones on them. The best thing about it was that it wound up inspiring the Godzilla franchise.
If Truman had ordered an invasion instead of using our atomic bombs and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers had died, when the public found out that we had atomic bombs but decided not to use them, Truman would have been impeached, removed from office, and charged with treason.
Side note: Russia and Japan have never signed a WW2 Peace Agreement. Technically still at war ( some say).
I wouldn’t be alive if the US hadn’t dropped the bomb.
The choices were:
1. Negotiate surrender. This would have been a half victory and would have included the Russians.
2. Blockade. This was already happening and it would have taken years and millions of deaths by starvation until capitulation. The Russian gains in Asia would have been significant.
3. Bomb them into oblivion. This was pretty much already accomplished. By the summer of 1945 more aircraft were being lost as they were ferried to the Pacific than we being shot down over Japan. There was simply nothing of significance to bomb.
4. Invasion. The Japanese would resist to a degree we had only begun to understand at Okinawa and Iwo. Again, millions of Japanese and American lives would be lost.
5. Drop the bombs. This killed a significant number of civilians. But nothing like the Japanese deaths from the above options. No Americans would be killed. The Russians would be stopped where they stood. Plus it saved the Americans from devastating economic impact of losing nearly a million more men; draining our country of resources, and an inability to help Europe recover.
The cold hard math of the problem is obvious. They are ALL bad solutions. Dropping the bomb was the least bad.
An invasion would have been as stupid and needless as to invade the likes of Pelileu when the troops of that garrison could have just as easily been starved out of existence. Had we followed the ideas of others and cut off oil supplies from the likes of Borneo early then cut off raw materials Japan and Japanese would have starved to death. All it would have taken was time but we were tired of war and anxious to end it even at known high costs. There was also the motive to end it before Russia joined it and did their usual to create a bigger problem out of anything they touch.
Okinawa and other islands were a costly contingency taken if the bomb had not been successful. Few knew they were actually a contingency at the time of the battles.
There were reasons and great ones to end the war quickly and drop the bombs and as many as it might take. We saved more Japanese lives by dropping the bombs than we and they would have lost if we had invaded Japan.
The Kokutai principle played a decisive role for Japanese surrender in 1945. The Japanese lived within a spiritual/political fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Subjected to this authority, average citizens forfeited individuality to a collective soul defining Japan and awaited the Empire’s decrees. With such national unity committed to Total War beneath the slogan of the “honorable sacrifice of 20 million Japanese lives”, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Hirohito foresaw inevitable defeat. However, his government of peace and war factions conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, firebombing of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
When they reached impasse after the two atomic bombs Hirohito assumed an unprecedented roll to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the palace bunker. The bombs became a force of nature; equivalent to earthquakes or typhoons against which even a god/king was impotent. Only Imperial submission to such a catastrophe could match the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit because he held the heavenly Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable and conclude the war. The war and peace factions relented and no one lost face, but importantly Kokutai, the spiritual essence of Japan, was preserved. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the negotiations.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Twenty Million”
. “When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
Paul Fussels excellent article on the bomb. Well worth the read.
https://archive.org/details/thankgodforatomb00fuss