Because it would have taken years and years to starve out the IJA. They would have taken the rice from babies to feed themselves first.
The US did not want and could not have continued to keep 12 million people in uniform indefinitely. People back home were tired of the war and wanted it finished.
The question about sealift capacity has been answered several times in this thread.
Besieging a country isn’t like besieging a castle. Even if Japan was incapable of meeting its own needs without the lebensraum on the mainland, it would at least be able to stretch any stockpiles further since those stockpiles are only being depleted by the difference between consumption and production, and not by gross consumption alone.
It’s cool. Sorry to be that abrupt.
However, Alperovitz is engaging is serious revisionism to make those fundamentally dishonest claims. He would have had to have scouted high and low and fudged to get numbers like that, and blatantly ignored mountains of evidence to make that argument.
The simply fact, as unsatisfying for revisionists as it is, is that the Allies simply wanted the war to end as soon as possible. Truman, et al simply viewed the atomic bomb as one more weapon to us. That’s it. They had already rained fire on Japanese cities destroying hundreds of thousands of civilians in order to destroy the country.
Truman was much more concerned about the potential number of US casualties and he wasn’t cherry picking his numbers.
One of my favorite quotes about the atomic bomb revisionism:
That’s a given. There were another seven or so which would be ready by November 1st and some were considering using them in a tactical role.
They were actually facing quite a serious shortage. By the summer of '45, the average caloric intake was less than required for normal living. Workers in certain industries, such as coal miners, as well as the military took higher priority, so many civilians would be facing starvation if the war continued much longer. Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japanese waterways and harbors was devastating in the final six months of the war. Not only was Japan dependent on foreign sources for basic foodstuff, it was also dependent on water transport for rice and other foods grown in Hokkaido.
However, an authoritarian government which would allow hundreds and thousands of civilians die in firebombings would have allowed millions to die of starvation.
It would involve a staggering body count, even by WW2 standards. The fighting on the beaches would be brutal in the initial stages. It’s unlikely that the US would be thrown back, overwhelming firepower and numbers would likely prevent that, and the Japanese were very limited in heavy equipment and ammunition. IIRC there was no plan to drop any more atomic bombs on cities, the bombs would be used to assist the invasion - no one was really that concerned about radiation at the time, and there was no special moral value attached to atomic bombs.
Once the landings finished, the full assault would not take place until 1946. The continued blockade of Japan would likely lead to mass starvation and exposure deaths over the winter, since Japan was already low on food and fuel. In the meantime, Soviet Forces would take more (all?) of Manchuria and Korea, and possibly move into China. Allied forces were too overwhelming for there to be any kind of turnaround once troops were in Japan, but there would be resistance by whatever was left in Japan.
The aftermath of the war would be very different - Japan would probably still get US aid in rebuilding, but would be a much weaker country because her population would be much less. The US would probably have taken more casualties than in the entire rest of the war, which would put a different spin on things. The Soviets would probably lay claim to more territory since they would occupy more. Things in China might have ended up differently - with idle armies in the area, there might have been more assistance to either side in the Chinese civil war. Nuclear weapons would probably be viewed differently - IMO there’s a big risk in this scenario that they get seen as more of a big tactical bomb since there would be a lot more dropped, and get used more in other conflicts.
All you need to do is look at the Siege of Leningrad (not to mention the Berlin Blockade) to conclude three things:
It’s virtually impossible to completely cut off supplies from a city, much less an island nation that stretches farther than California north to south
The Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. The Berlin Blockade went on for almost 11 months. A Japanese blockade would not have ended the war in any reasonable timeline.
As many as 1.5 million people starved in Leningrad. Imagine what would have happened in Japan.
Sounds good, TokyoBayer.
As to what could possibly be gained by blocking transmission of the Emperor’s speech and prolonging the war - there were fanatical Japanese military and political leaders who thought there was great shame in surrendering, and much glory to be had if most or all Japanese perished in defense of their homeland, including the civilian population. Apparently enough of these “leaders” concluded that it wasn’t quite so glorious if everyone died in atomic bombings.
We’re talking about depraved, sick minds here.
Everything else seems to have been covered but to expound on this: the US had asked the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan at Yalta in February 1945. Stalin had agreed to declare war on Japan within three months of the conclusion of the war with Germany; Germany had surrendered May 9th (Moscow time), the invasion of Manchuria began August 9th, three months later to the day. Soviet interests in the area had already been hammered out:
This was all with the expectation at the time that the war with Japan would culminate with an Allied (meaning British, Australian, New Zealand, etc – not Soviet), but almost entirely American invasion of Japan.
The Battle of Kursk alone cost Germany 55,000 casualties, versus almost 180,000 Soviet casualties. That’s out of armies of ~1 million and 2 million. Given that something like 10 million combatants would have been involved in an invasion the home islands half a million Purple Hearts is probably an underestimate.
Both of them had outside help (Berlin airlift, road of life). No one was coming to save Japan. It would have to be invaded eventually if they didn’t surrender, but it seems softening them up first would be a good idea. Wasn’t one of the fears that every civilian would come at the Americans with whatever they could pick up, any IED they could cook up? Hard to do if they’re emaciated and dying in the streets.
One thing I didn’t consider is that would kill thousands of Allied POWs.
And the agreement to [del]divide Korea[/del] disarm the Japanese by the Soviets in the north and US in the south, separated at the 38th parallel was made at Potsdam.
As per earlier posts, the militants – all of which were military leaders, none of the civilian leaders agreed – believed they could cause enough casualties for the US to accept better terms to end the war. The Emperor was able to persuade the leadership to accept the (almost) unconditional terms in which he was saved but they were not. Oh well, all’s fair in love and war and if the military leaders get executed, them’s the breaks.
Well, yes.
Not really necessary. Remember, this was a conventional war with regular battle lines and Allied troops who would not be under nearly the same restrictions against civilians if necessary. Also, they were already sufficiently softened up and would not have been attacking tanks with bamboo spears.
The Japanese already were planning on killing the 100,000 Allied POWs when the end came. It needs to be noted that there were only 56 Chinese POWs released at the end of the war.