I’ve read it in several books, but most were library books, and decades ago, so I can’t cite them. I do have on hand American Prometheus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Oppenheimer, by Bird and Sherwin. They say:
“But Truman – and his closest adviser, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes – had decided that the advent of the atomic bomb gave them yet another option. As Byrnes later explained, ‘. . . it was ever present in my mind that it was important that we should have an end to the war before the Russians came in.’”
That will come as a mild surprise to the 100,000 Soviet army troops who invaded Sakhalin Island on Aug 11, 1945.
That aside, they didn’t need landing craft to help defeat Japan. They could (and did) attack in Manchuria, which still contained some 700,000 Japanese troops. And they could have loaned troops to the US landing efforts, or supplied troops after the beachheads had been established.
There were a number of discussions about how the war would be ended, and someone may have suggested at sometime waiting for the blockage to take effect, but this consideration was never made at the highest levels, let alone be rejected because of the inhumanity.
The Joint Chiefs had made plans for the invasion of Japan, and were going full steam ahead. There was no reason to allow the Japanese to continue to build up further defenses. If you read my cite above on the strength of the IJA in Kyushu, a key factor was the Japanese were busy increasing their preparations of defense of the homelands, a fact well-known to the US because of the MAGIC intercepts of their secret transmissions.
It’s true that MacArthur would have been opposed to any delay in the invasion of Kyushu, but not because of any humanitarian reasons. He wanted the glory of it all.
Seriously, who would have been the person to say that burning up 100,000 men, women, children and babies is fine, but we can’t starve them? This story doesn’t make sense.
As I stated earlier, I don’t see any evidence that the atomic bomb project was specifically speeded up for this purpose. That you have a biography of Oppenheimer and that’s the best quote is pretty damning evidence that it didn’t happen.
The US had been “moving heaven and earth” to develop the bomb and use it to end the war. Period. How was it that they would have been able to move “more heaven and earth” to finish it faster than they would have otherwise? All because of a deadline that no one knew when it would occur?
More below when I reply to the suggestion of using Soviet troops in Japan.
Actually, a “mild surprise” would have been an understatement to the Red Army troops if they were told they were to use landing craft in their invasion of the Japanese held southern Sakhalin. They would have shot the generals who would have suggested lugging amphibious boats onto land when they had tanks instead.
It’s true that there was one landing.
I guess the other reason for the Soviet troops to be surprised would be that none of them would have expected one brigade and a battalion to be 100,000 strong.
If you didn’t have a chance to read your cite, you can refresh your memory. While Japan had taken the entire island twice, they had returned the northern section both times, the second time in 1925.
Several points.
First, the Soviet entry into the war in and of itself was a major contribution to the decision to surrender, as I posted earlier. There is a lively debate between scholars as to which of the two events, this or the atomic bombs, which was more decisive.
As they both happened within a space of a couple of days, it’s impossible to reach a conclusive decision, but there is not doubt that the Soviets played an important role
That said, my point was not that the Soviets didn’t help, but your statement that
which isn’t supported by history.
The US would have needed to invade the Kanto plains. The initial plan was to land first in Kyushu, Operation Olympic, in order to build airports to allow land-based fighter planes to help support the Kanto attack, Operation Coronet. The Japanese were anticipating the invasion of Kyushu and were heavily fortifying it for a “decisive battle” in which they could inflict such losses on the US that we would be easier on them for the surrender terms.
The war planning councils were in the middle of reevaluating their options because of the anticipated heavy casualties in Operation Olympic. Gen. MacArthur wanted to continue with the plans, probably because he was MacArthur. Admiral King was especially keen on finding alternative, and there was a meeting scheduled to discuss this when the war ended.
It should be noted that the Soviets had some landing craft, which the US had supplied, but not enough to land many troops, with “many” being more than a couple of divisions, at most. They would have had many problems, including the lack of experience and not having the battleships to provide heavy firepower for a contested landing on a large scale.
Unless the Soviets actually were a part of the either or both of the Kyushu or Kanto operations, any possible independent landing would not have had an affect on US casualties, the point we are discussing. (There is a debate if the Soviets could have invaded Hokkaido, but that was defended by a different army, and would not have been a decisive factor.)
As to your suggestion that the Soviets could have “loaned troops to the US landing efforts, or supplied troops after the beachheads had been established” you really need to respond first to the poster TonySinclair who is arguing that the US moved heaven and earth in order to keep the Russians out of Japan.
By the time these events were taking place, Stalin broken his promises regarding the future of East Europe and proved that he could not be trusted. The seeds of the Cold War were already planted, and the US and Britain were especially interested in keeping them out of Japan.
No. This would not have happened. Stalin would not have given hundreds of thousands of men with no strings and the US would not have accepted his conditions.
The US had no plans on involving the Soviets in these operations. This is well documented and any assertion to the contrary lacks a basis in reality.
Japan only built ~70,000 aircraft of all types in WWII, about half of which were unsuitable for kamikaze attacks (heavy bombers, transports, gliders, etc.) They built fewer than 9,000 aircraft in total in 1945. It’s just not plausible that they had 10,000 aircraft in reserve for kamikaze attacks in 1945, even if they planned to adapt every small aircraft variant they had for them.
Other posts have addressed some of your statements, so I’ll limit myself to one nitpick:
What sort of rose-colored World War II happened in your universe? According to Mathew White, self-styled “atrocitologist” (statistician interested in accuractely assessing large-scale death), WWII killed 65 million people. Not 20.
Another nitpick: If you’re referring to Korea, that’s East Asia. Nothing with the Japanese was happening down here in Southeast Asia until the actual outbreak of the war.
Apologies for that sounding more confrontational than intended…it seemed light-hearted when i thought of it. Suffice to say WWII=bad. Matthew White refers to it as “the Hemoclysm” (more or less, the cataclysmic shedding of blood).