[Strategerist]

The "1 Million US Dead" actually has no actual source. It's completely false. It's a nice round number so once someone used it everyone else started using it. No one in the US military ever gave such an estimate.

First off, it was the result of the usual idiot error of people who think "casualties" equals "dead"...and then it apparently resulted from someone changing 500,000 casaulties to 1,000,000 casualties for no apparent reason.

The highest actual estimate was 500,000 US Casualties which would have meant about 150,000 US troops killed in an invasion of Japan.

[KC_Conspirator]

And by the way, try not to be rude on FR.

[brazzaville]

Since Harry Truman ordered the two bombs dropped we will never know how many casualties we would have taken in an invasion of Japan. The casualties we absorbed in taking Iwo and Okinawa give us a hint at how bad it could have been but that isn't the point of my responses to you.

The actual number of bomber crew losses we would have sustained had we not taken Iwo is less important than the fact that many lives and aircraft were saved and American boots were on Japanese soil. Whether we lost a million dead or 150,000 in an invasion of the home islands wouldn't change the fact that the clown at Smithsonian thought those losses were preferable to using the bomb.

Michael Frazier