Side effect of the A-bombs besides Godzilla.
If the Japanese had retreated to the main islands, would the Allies still have planned for invasion?
Surely you’ve heard of Red China?
lol nice one **flytrap **even Grammarly didn’t catch that…
Of course!
The other two members of George H.W. Bush’s crew died in the crash that forced him to bail out. While accounts differ slightly it appears to be the case that one man bailed out with Bush but his parachute failed to open, and the other went down with the aircraft. It is definitely the case neither survived to become POWs. There were cases of cannibalism involving men captures in that battle, but not from among Bush’s crew.
The fog of war.
Some of the Doolittle Raiders were beheaded. I’m sure there were all sorts of rumors.
Here is a link on cannibalism among Japanese forces.
I don’t buy this at all.
First off, how many Americans had ever been to Japan in the 1930’s to have fond memories of the “unique people, culture, and architecture of Japan?”
From 1942 to 1946 the United Stated interred 120,000 Japanese, the majority of the US citizens, with nary a protest of dissent (in one of the most embarrassing moments in American history (IMO).
How do you extrapolate any of this to think that the US would have halted an invasion due to American fondness for Japan?
Americans were terrified that American Japanese would work for the enemy. I believe that part of the reason for that fear was the Nihau Incident.
I know what the rational was. But it was unfounded, and could have been shown to be proven unfounded at the time with out longstanding racial prejudice. Normally I’m against presentism, but I make an exception in this case.
I agree, it was an attempt to explain the situation.
carnivorousplant, copy that. As much as I hate that it happened, I understand that it was a close call at the time. I was unaware of the incident you mentioned. Thanks for pointing that out.
Heck, just fly a single high-altitude bomber over a random city every other day, have it drop a single bomb. Most of the time, it just explodes to scatter leaflets over the city calling for surrender. Even ten sorties or so, a city gets nuked. The message would be pretty clear - we can destroy you if we choose; we’d rather not, if you surrender. Do that a few times and the disruption caused by panic at the sight of a single bomber should be helpful in itself.
The discussion seems to have drifted pretty completely away from this question and back to the perennial ‘A-bomb v other’ debate about ending the war with Japan around a year after that.
The situation of August 1944 was pretty different than August 1945
-no A-bomb
-only very limited bombing of Japan by B-29’s based in China
-but the seizure of the Marianas in June was a very big deal, caused the fall of the Tojo cabinet in July, first major public recognition that the war was going poorly for Japan. And the B-29’s started bombing from there in November, in eventually much larger numbers, much more easily supplied with fuel, munitions and replacement a/c and crews from the US.
-losses of merchant ships to submarines becoming critical but Japan far from totally cut off from its new South East Asian possessions and little problem yet with sea communication to China via Korea then railroad.
-there had not been large land battles where the US suffered heavy casualties to suicidal resistance by Japanese land forces. Tarawa was something of a shock in that regard but only fairly recently, Nov 1943. The remnants of Japanese garrisons had generally retreated into jungles or been lifted out by sea in previous defeats in the Solomons/New Guinea. Campaigns like Iwo Jima and Okinawa were yet to come. Regular, organized suicide a/c attacks were also from late 1944 though some individual airmen crashed into ships before that.
The US was not seriously ‘war weary’ at all in mid 1944. The large land, sea and air forces it had built up were only then going into combat on a much larger scale than 1942-43, the Army in Europe in particular but generally. Looking forward to some morale-breaking difficulty in totally defeating Japan would not have factored in much, to the extent it even did in 1945, which I think is often overstated by projecting back later anti-war sentiments.
Japan had very little to gain militarily by retreating. In some cases a strategic retreat on one front can strengthen another. But what the Marianas campaign proved was the vulnerability of Japan’s island barriers to the east due to US naval superiority. The creeping disaster of the convoy war likewise. Freeing up the IJA from limited fighting in China or occupying mainly pacified areas of China and the new conquests, wasn’t going to help with that. Whereas the various territories supplied lots of war materials and general goods like food.
So the question is if Japan could have made any offer besides unconditional surrender that the Allies would have accepted in August 1944. I think not. The perceived lesson of the first world war (where the non-US Entente powers were really war weary, to where major social upheaval in the face of any reversal in fortune while invading Germany was still entirely possible) was not to accept such partial solutions. There wasn’t nearly enough pain to the US at that point to rethink that, and a huge new military just reaching full stride.
I’ve read that Churchill was eager to send the Royal Navy to the Pacific, but then Churchill was always eager to fight.
Very interesting. I wish had been able to come up with a quarter of the points you did.
Allow me to add another point regarding American will to fight. The pre-war Japanese perception that Americans were soft and unwarlike directly contributed to their decision to go to war to secure resources. The Japanese knew American economic and industrial potential was high, but their comforting assumption that Americans wouldn’t fight a hard war led them to gamble they could force the Americans to back down if they could quickly consolidate an advantageous position (which they in fact managed to do).
When the Americans did not back down, the Japanese told themselves that Japanese valor would extract such a heavy price their enemies would be worn down and give up. That also proved to be hopeful nonsense.
The Americans were aware of their enemies’ opinions of their will to fight. It would not have been a good idea to give the Japanese any grounds to hope that the long-awaited American failure of will was imminent. Stopping or pulling back would have instead persuaded the militarists in Japan that they’d been right all along – hit hard enough and America would quit.
If that is true, why would Japan eliminate the source of ~80% of their critical war material by bombing Pearl Harbor? Was the giant thought to be a heavy sleeper?
I’m sure this was tongue in cheek, but the reason was the US embargo against Japan was cutting deeply, and the Japanese felt that, if they could knock the US out for a couple of years and they could run wild, they could basically get rid of the European colonial empires (to be replaced by a Japanese one of course), where they would have plenty of access to oil fields in Malaysia and South East Asia, as well as access to other critical war supplies. This hinged on the calculation that the US, if handed a fait accompli, would eventually accept this…perhaps with some reparations to salve our wounded pride or whatever.
It wasn’t the best calculation, but it’s one that seems to still have traction with many people even today.
It should be noted that the Japanese believed they could negotiate an end to the war, using the USSR as an intermediary, as late as July 1945.
(emphasis added)
The Soviets, having territorial ambitions in eastern Asia, weren’t the impartial mediators the Japanese might have hoped for. They refused to give the Japanese any answer until the Potsdam Declaration on July 26 eliminated any further chance of negotiations. The Japanese didn’t get the hint.
By then the Japanese cabinet had split into pro-surrender and pro-fight factions, and even after two bombs and the Soviet declaration of war, they couldn’t come to an agreement until the Emperor personally intervened.