Would a blockade have taken away their war making capabilities? Wouldn’t they still have been able.to run their armaments factories? And send kamikaze pilots to attack the ships blockading the islands?
Yes.
It would have cut them off entirely from their fuel supply. You can't make war without fuel.
You'll find an excellent overview of that issue in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Over-Leyte-Philippine-Destruction/dp/0451473612
Incidentally, much of the information on the Japanese planning for the defensive Battle of Leyte (including great stuff on the Japanese thinking of fighting to get better surrender terms and also on the ineffectiveness of the US blockade based on the Philippines) was either unearthed or first analyzed in the 40 years since the posted article was published.
Oh, we could have continued to bomb them at will, they had no ability to resist. We could also have blockaded with subs or from outside the range of most of their aircraft.
But the total number of Japanese who died would have been much higher, and the Soviets would have gotten a much larger foothold in asia
Who was going to finance the million men to enforce the year long blockade? We did, after all have a very long supply line. It costs lots to deploy and army and navy that size.
Would our “allies” the Russians stay put?
Does not sound practical.
The Japanese had thousands of suicide boats ready to blow up U.S. ships in Japanese coastal waters.
I always asked World War II veterans, including vets who fought against the Japanese, if they approved Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. I got the same response 100% of the time, yes. One Marine Corps WWII combat veteran told me in 1980 “If not for the atom bomb we would still be fighting the Japanese today.”