Where does this idea that the Japanese were on the verge of collapse come from? I don’t have a cite, but I remember reading years ago that the US was projecting horrific casualities based on how the Japanese fought for Okanawa. Casualties both from our own forces and from the military/civilian population of Japan as a whole. If memory serves, it was well over a million projected deaths at a minimum.
From what I remember of history, the Japanese were planning another of their famous fights to the death. For an example of what the Americans were thinking the Japanese would do, look at Okanawa. Then extrapolate THAT to what it would mean to set foot on the main island of Japan.
What I would like to know is, where does this notion that the Japanese were on their last leg come from? Or that they were on the verge of collapse? I know that as an offensive military force they were done…but on the defensive they seemed to be continuing the fight. Is there anything to back it up this notion or is it head in the clouds wishful thinking or revisionist history? I’m willing to look and see that the history I learned is totally wrong if someone wants to post some real facts about the imminent collapse of the Japanese Empire.
Also, where does the notion come from that the Americans dropped the bomb just for the fun of trying out a new toy come from? That the administration KNEW that the Japanese were about to collapse, but wanted to test the bomb out first just for the fun of it? Again, I’m willing to look and find out that everything I was taught or read about WWII was totally wrong. My understanding was that the Americans figured they could win, but that the butchers bill would be astronomical both to our own forces (which we were understandably most worried about) and to the Japanese as well (both civilian and military). In addition, there was the factor of the Russians coming into the war to boot, and splitting Japan the way the were doing Europe, especially Germany (I recall that the Russians did capture several of the Japanese islands and still held them the last I checked).
Yep. Russia invaded Manchuria and still occupies a set of islands in northern Japan, which start with a “k” I believe but for the life of me I can’t remember the name.
When I was trying out different combinations of words to use in a Google search I came across this scary article on WW2 Japan and “No Surrender”. The link takes you to page four of five, which talks about Bushido.
Sorry for interrupting the debate again with a late correction, but 58 should be Cerium, not Cesium (55). Cerium is Ce, Cesium is Cs. If you’ve already sent your gift, make up for it with extra Praseodymium next year.
Also, I believe the islands are the Kuril islands.
Its a personal quirk of mine, one held in common with many lilly-livered liburuhls, that “visceral reactions” that result in hundreds of thousands of dead folks are, generally speaking, a bad thing.
Just one of those things.
And again, the case is posited only in terms of the potential damage and death that would be incurred due to fanatic Japanese resistance to invasion. A point I entirely admit, since it is entirely irrelevant to my position.
I have read a number of books and articles about this sort of thing. Hirohito was an uninformed figurehead, Hirohito was the prime mover of the entire imperialist Japanese foreign policy, that sort of thing.
But I submit that invading an enemy that is effectively incapable of aggressive action is pointless, and, hence, needlessly cruel and inhuman. I submit that this is the case with Japan. What might we have lost had we simply waited? Japan was entirely incapable of rearming in any meaningful way compared to the utterly overwhelming industrial and military might of America.
One is entirely justified in committing violence in self-defence. Of course. No argument. But the moment your assailant is rendered defenseless, no such justification is possible. It becomes simple savagery.
I suppose that the Allies should have stopped at Germany’s borders as well?
And speaking of Germany . . . it sounds like elucidator would have preferred a negotiated settlement with the enemy (in this case, Japan), leaving their country intact but making sure that it would never rearm, and it would give up contested territories, etc., etc. You may have forgotten how well that all worked out at Versailles, but you can be damn sure that Truman, MacArthur, and Nimitz hadn’t. Indeed, IIRC, it was the memory of Versailles that motivated these leaders to consistently press for unconditional surrender.
If you could go back for a private audience with Truman, elucidator, how would you persuade him to go against what for him was one of the foremost lessons of recent history?
Despite what you see in movies and TV, heavy drinking wasn’t at all that common. At least not in the squadron I was in. I had an occasional beer and there were a few heavy drinkers but no more than in any group that size I think. The CO and Operations Officer saw to it that those on the loading list for the next day didn’t drink. Trying to fly in formation at 12000 ft. without oxygen and a bad hangover is a danger to everyone and was verboten.
I don’t know about fighter pilots but I would assume that the same thing was true. Throwing up into an oxygen mask would be damned unpleasant.
There wasn’t much difference between the two airplanes. The A-26 was a more modern design with a wing having a better lift-drag ratio. It was a little faster and somewhat more maneuverable.
Our POWs would’ve been left out to dry. Not that it matters, because the Japanese made sure to keep great care of their captured enemy soldiers.
I’m sure if you were a POW in Japan you appreciated a quicker end to the war. Same thing compared to an invasion of the home islands, where the Japanese would have all our prisoners executed.
Actually I was thinking of when you got the news that the war was over, movie reels of new york city with all those sailors and girls ,and I imagine everywhere else.
Did you go into an imediate standdown, or did your squadron continue normal ops till you were de mobbed. And if you would not mind a personal question , did you find the next couple of years boring , after going through so many combat hours.
Really? No more Japanese fleet anchorage by the time of the first A-bomb dropping? No military bases of any kind?
Avoiding any civilian casualties may well have been impossible. Making first use of a terrible new weapon in such a way as to minimize those casualties sounds worth the risk, to my postwar sensibilities.
I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Blackeyes. Are you leading to some sort of moral equation, a certain number of Japanese civilians balanced against a given number of POW’s? A hundred to one? A thousand? Keep in mind, the POW’s were soldiers, the citizens of Hiroshima were not.
You seem to keep missing what other people have written. WWII was total war. Civilians were targets by all sides as they supported the war effort (they worked in factories, grew food, etc.). Further, the technology did not exist to pinpoint targets. Area bombing was the norm. Was any of this nice? Certainly not but it was the reality of the time.
Further, the citizens of Japan were being turned into soldiers in huge numbers in preparation for an American invasion. Old men, women and children with pointy sticks running at US troops. Would they be effective as a military force? Nope but US troops would have found themselves in the position of gunning them down. Those that didn’t directly attack were likely to commit suicide. If you look you can find old newsreel footage of women holding their children jumping from cliffs in Okinawa.
Blockade? That would just see you here today railing against the US for starving several million Japanese when we could have bombed them into submission instead (and mass starvation is what it would have been).
You also seem to forget that the Soviets already were a real concern back then. Yes they were technically our ally but that was only due to a common enemy. As it was the Soviets declared war on Japan and to this day hold the Kurile islands (someone was looking for that earlier). Had the US held off who knows how much the Soviets would have gone for…likely as much as they could have. Stalin had no compunction throwing masses of troops at an enemy and losing them and surely would have done so for Japan given the chance.
Few indeed are the men who are so prescient as to claim to know the workings of Stalin’s mind. You are either to be commended or ridiculed.
You also seem content to measure our behavior against a standard defined by such men as Stalin and Hitler. I’d prefer not, but just as you say, we were no worse. You are welcome to take whatever comfort you may find in that.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I lack your precognitive talents, and your certainty. But keep in mind that most historians will remind you that the assurances as regards thier Emperor, which was the only real sticking point, turned out to be pretty much the terms of surrender. There is good reason to believe, though not to be certain, that had the US offered those conditions that actually formed the post-war situation, the Japanese might very well have surrendered. To thier ears, the terms “unconditional surrender” meant trial and/or execution for Hirohito.
But again, your scenario insists on invasion. In return, I posit the same question: what could we have lost simply by waiting? The bombs wouldn’t “spoil”, they would have been just as good in six weeks, or six months for that matter. Considering the number of lives that might have been saved, wouldn’t it at least have been worthy of the attempt?
Removing the Japanese government from power was certainly a goal. The United States would not accept anything less then a total and unconditional surrender.
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Waited for what? There weren’t any signs that the Japanese were willing unconditionally surrender. Waiting would have helped the Japanese far more then the Allied forces. We had all those resources allocated towards the war and we weren’t going to stop just because they couldn’t mount an offense.
While they weren’t capable of mounting any meaningful offense they certainly weren’t defenseless.
It’s clear, elucidator, that it won’t be possible to reason you out of a position that you didn’t use reason to arrive at in the first place.
First, you said that the invasion would be a cakewalk. When it was demonstrated to you that this was patently not the case, you did a Rosanne Rosanna-Danna and said, “nevermind, I’m not talking about invasion, I’m saying invasion wasn’t necessary”. Now in the breath you say that you doubt that the Japanese people would have starved . . . and that we should have waited six months. Waited six months for what?!? If they could have held on without starving, what makes you think they would have surrendered?
And now your rhetoric has started putting out feelers down yet another avenue, namely that “all we had to do was let them keep their emperor and they would have surrendered”.
I addressed the issue of a negotiated end to hostilities in my earlier post, and why Truman et. al. never would have considered that route. Your seeming reluctance to answer me on that point confirms in my mind that you don’t know what Versailles was about and why it was so important in Allied leaders’ minds.
In short, you’re a historical ignoramus determined to project his present-day agenda onto issues of the past that he doesn’t understand very well in the first place.
