Anyone interested in reading more on Japan’s condition in 1945, the decision to drop the bombs, and the invasion plans should read Richard Frank’s Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.
So, tehre are two points here: Firstly, obviously the US were willing to do something other than invade because - that’s what they did. They invested huge amounts of money and resource in a project with no guarantees of success which came with its own substantial risks in order to have a way not to invade. That speaks to a degree of reluctance. If, for whatever reason, that way wasn’t available then a) they would continue to plan and organise for an invasion and b) the same impulse that said it was worth rolling the dice on developing the bomb would prompt a search for alternatives.
The second part is: just because an option was inconceivable to a battle scarred US doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there. The Mongols couldn’t conceive of not massacring every last inhabitant of the cities they sacked, but that doesn’t mean that leaving a regiment to hang around for three days solely to murder the last few bastards who crawled out from the rubble was the moral choice. It just means they refused to consider an option that was in fact open to them, viz. not doing that.
Because, conceivably, that was the more moral option.
Again, I’m not saying that there definitely was a more moral option in terms of harm reduction over whatever time period, I’m saying that the moral calculus does not in fact come out quite as neatly and simply as: if not the bomb then horrific invasion so it’s all good.
If it left them in China or any of the places they had invaded, it was not, and one early idea floated was just a cessation of hostilities.
Actually, further on US reluctance to invade Japan, this cite from the US National WWII Museum is interesting:
The Navy, led by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, had worked for decades on a war with Japan. This analysis forged a fundamental principle that an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands was folly because it would produce politically unacceptable casualties. But the Army led by General of the Army George C. Marshall believed the critical element was time. A protracted war would squander public support. Therefore, the Army advocated an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands as the swiftest path to concluding the war.
The JCS reached a highly unstable compromise merging these two strategies in April 1945. The ongoing Navy-preferred strategy of blockade (and air and sea bombardment) would continue at greater intensity until November 1945. It then would be joined by the army vision: a two-phase initial invasion of Japan (Operation DOWNFALL) aimed first at southern Kyushu about 1 November (Operations OLYMPIC) and second at the Tokyo region about 1 March 1946 (Operation CORONET).
In June 1945, President Harry S. Truman reviewed the DOWNFALL plan during the costly campaign on Okinawa that he saw as a preview of the invasion of Japan. Truman was asked to approve both phases of DOWNFALL, but he gave reluctant assent only to OLYMPIC.
Then, in a story concealed by secrecy for four decades, communications intelligence rocked the American leadership. Far from attacking Kyushu with overwhelming superiority, suddenly it appeared the Japanese would outnumber the assault force for OLYMPIC.
As one senior intelligence officer phrased it, the assault would be going in at a ratio of one to one with the Japanese, and “this is no recipe for victory”—it was a recipe for a bloodbath.
King had advised his JCS colleagues in April that he only assented to issuing a preparatory order for OLYMPIC to ready the invasion option by November. But he pointedly added they would come back in August or September to reexamine whether an invasion was necessary. He also knew the senior Naval officer in the Pacific, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, at the end of May had privately informed King that he could no longer support any invasion of Japan based on the Okinawa experience. So, with the horrible intelligence picture for OLYMPIC in hand, King initiated a convulsive confrontation with the Army on August 9, 1945, the day Nagasaki was bombed, to cancel OLYMPIC. Only the Japanese surrender five days later halted this clash. The secrecy surrounding communications intelligence would prevent public understanding for decades that the planned November 1945 invasion of Japan was shaping up as unthinkable.
(Bolding is mine)
Some of this is no doubt good old fashioned inter-service rivalry, but I think it’s clear that leadership was less gung-ho - with obvious reason! - than we might think. Not to the point of not pursuing unconditional surrender, but the fact that one or both parties in a conflict won’t consider an option doesn’t mean that we have to exclude it from any moral judgement.
Except there is exactly zero evidence for this. No one from Truman on down ever recorded any opinion anything like this. Again operation Downfall was not a vague speculative plan. It was a very detailed plan that was largely implemented (X day was was less than the three months away when the bombs were dropped). All the evidence suggests that if Japan had not surrendered then the invasion would have gone ahead on November 1st 1945
I think we crossposted but see above for evidence that:
Downfall was not fully but only partially approved
There was considerable disquiet in the Navy about the viability of invasion and a plan to re-open the question of whether Downfall/Olympic should go ahead.
My dad was in the Navy at Okinawa when the bombs were dropped. His battleship had just survived a kamikazi attack and been repaired in haste for the invasion. My uncle’s were crossing thru the Panama Canal from Europe to Japan and were in Training for the invasion on ship. The plan was be executed, not being debated. The navy was doing what it was ordered to do, prepare for imminete invasion.
My entire family that lived through this was preparing to face death. To them the bomb was a blessing and a sign from God that our side was righteous.
Holy fucking shit this is huge.
The US National Museum of WWII, instituted by Congress, is making up blatant lies about the Navy’s senior leadership during the final months and weeks of WWII and publishing them for all to see.
You gotta do something man. I’m from out the country, they won’t listen to me but I think you should write to them and straighten them out. Maybe contact the families of King and Nimitz and get them to weigh in. This is an abomination.
…or, possibly, it is both true that there was considerable hesitation and debate at the very highest levels, and that until a decision had been reached the operative plans stayed in force.
It is both. They followed orders they may not have totally agreed with until ordered otherwise. Orders from the top, the very top being the POTUS.
You don’t delay a plan of this magnitude, he who hesitates is lost. In fact the plan could have changed up until the actual plan date, if Japan agreed to our terms. Continuing with the plan and the Russian assault could have changed Japan’s mind.
Hmm, not invading and not using the bomb if available and not demanding that Japan give up all its conquered territory sounds an awful lot like Trump’s attitude to Russia viz a viz Ukraine. Doesn’t get more moral than that. /s
Which battleship? I’m interested.
There wouldn’t have been much of an Allied army any more after all that fallout took its toll.
Except starving and bombing them into submission would have been many many times worse than the Bombs.
Interesting personal note, thank you!
The Allies never considered letting Japan keep conquered territory. The debate was between the Army vs the Navy and Airforce. The Army planned to invade, The Navy wanted to blockade and have the Air Force keep fire bombing. The plan to invade was going forward, but it could have been delayed.
He was on the USS Maryland and was stationed in turret #2 loading the 16” guns. His ship was hit by kamikazis twice and took a torpedo to the front bow during his service. The last kamikazi took out turret #1 and almost sank the ship.
I have a picture of the US fleet at Okinawa the day Japan surrendered. The fleet celebrated by allowing all of the ships to fire all of their guns all night long into the sea.
Overy’s new book is an important addition to the debate that complicates many of the arguments made in this thread. One of his arguments is the Japanese government was making serious efforts to end the war before the atomic bombs, in part because they knew their own population was sick of the war and they feared it might respond the way the German and Russian population did in World War I, that is, with protest movements that toppled the tsar and the Kaiser. They were also afraid of the USSR before the atomic bombs were dropped. They knew they had lost the war long before the bombs were dropped, and Tokyo may have been more of a factor than the atomic bombs. He also suggests the US was unlikely to have invaded in any event, as it could, and had long planned, to destroy Japan with air power and blockades, both of which were much more effective against Japan than against Germany. Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan eBook : Overy, Richard: Amazon.ca: Books
That’s an interesting hypothesis, but doesn’t it go against 80 years of serious historians saying otherwise?
Of some serious historians, not all. There are entire books that are collections of the debates and arguments on the dropping of the bomb, and Overy looks at some of the Japanese evidence that has not much been used.
I agree. That’s why I’m asking why we should take a short review for an answer.
Perhaps consider it as an invitation to read an interesting book rather than an intervention in the debate. Overy makes some interesting arguments and avoids the easy moralizing that has characterized much of the debate.
Someone should have told my father, who in the spring of 1945 was pulled from his 3 year assignment as a staff sergeant and, as a 29-year old with a wife, two children, and bad knees, was put back into combat training.
I don’t believe the Army did that as a feint.