[pt17]

You REALLY should study history a little more, especially the accounts of those who were THERE (on both sides).

[AzJP]

I really got into Gordon Prange's works, especially his notes from interviews with Japanese when he (Prange) was in post-war Japan on McArthur's staff. Prange's works were the first suggestion I saw that much of internal Japan was becoming convinced that the entire empire would die where they stood. Even the fundamentalists that refused to have the royal family admit defeat were seeing no hope for a future.
I still think we could have blockaded Japan into inertness.
And that idea came from one of those interviews, a Japanese who thought America would do that and strangle the empire. If I remember correctly, he preferred suicide over begging for imported food, particularly chinese rice.
But, IMHO.