” ‘Frankly I trust Eisenhower’s opinion on this matter more than you.’
... now reason out how a blockade would work, even absent our continued air and naval attacks. ...
... a blockade working was inevitable, but a war planner figures out the costs before planning or approving a Course of Action (COA). A blockade didn’t meet the objectives unless the only objective was victory without a timetable.”
I salute these suggestions.
As a purely practical point, it ought to be emphasized that Allied destruction of Imperial Japanese transport (aka “merchant”) shipping was by late 1944 already well under way, creating a blockade of increasing stringency. Submarines sank most, with the mining of coastal shipping harbors by B-29s (the only warplane with the payload to deliver anything larger than pinpricks), Home Island shipping was substantially interdicted.
Further blockade might have induced surrender eventually, but the timeline is inherently uncertain. Given the ever-shortening supply of foodstuffs, starvation deaths in the multiple tens of millions were not out of the question.
It’s more than a little disingenuous to cite stray misgivings from GEN Eisenhower and other senior officers, as if they constituted central, incontrovertible theses of a fully thought-out policies, unverifiable theses at that.
What’s really puzzling, is why the likes JCBreckenridge thinks the rest of us ought to care how many enemy deaths happened.
In the pause between Nagasaki and the surrender, we were losing 7000 men a week! Further delay for a blockade was unconscionable, and that was with two cities destroyed by atomic weapons. To be fair, I doubt JC cared about Jap casualties, the problem with a blockade was our casualties, including those of the POWs with no end in sight. The invasion was planned for Nov45, further plans for Homshu in Mar46. The expected friendly casualties are well documented and with every civilian a combatant the bloodletting would have harden the sides and made a peace difficult when we prevailed.