Yes, it did. Sure, there was war-weariness and there had been sacrifice, but US industry and production were intact. We could continue to keep churning out weapons and food for years to come. We still had the vast majority of North American resources to draw upon. The weakest point might have been the will to fight, but in speaking with people who were alive at the time while the US was growing tired of war the desire to bring Japan to its knees was still strong.
Years longer yet - the wealthy were still wealthy (indeed, some of them, such as the Ford family, were profiting from making planes and tanks), and the less than wealthy were actually doing better than they had been a few years prior during the Great Depression. The US still had plenty of money.
What massive sacrifices? Sure, there was going to be a blood bath with the front-line soldiers, but the US had already tolerated that in Europe and island hopping the Pacific. Back home, while there was a tiny bit of rationing (a ridiculously small amount when compared to many European countries) just about everyone had a job, even the women-folk, and the economy was better than it had been in 1933 or '34.
Yes, the invasion would have been bloody, but there was no way at that point Japan was going to win if the US wanted to invade - Japan simply no longer had the resources. It lacked raw materials, oil/fuel, food… all it had left was people and with out adequate food they were only going to be able resist for a few months at most.
Except the “folks back home” did really know how dire things were in Japan and they didn’t know a comeback wasn’t possible (actually it was, if the Japanese were willing to bide there time and work their asses off).
There is not and never has been a mechanism for depriving a naturally born citizen of the US his or her citizenship.
There were lands appropriated and redistributed - some of my spouse’s family had their financial backs broken during that war, their lands were taken and given to the former slaves and the family reduced to grinding poverty for generations. What makes you think that never happened to anyone?
And you seriously underestimate the depths of racial bigotry if you think that average poor white person of the time was ever going to make common cause with black people.
[quote=“Qin_Shi_Huangdi, post:55, topic:781874”]
Sure, you might have had to crack a few heads open but given what actually happened in reality its hard to see it being worse.
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How about unending, multi-generation feuding and skirmishing? Take a look at other places where endless battling goes on between opposing forces. Take a look at multi-decade civil wars in Africa, or the deadly feuding that goes on in the Middle East to this day.
that’s a postwar survey of the bomb damage. You can see the two major rivers in central Tokyo going top to bottom. To the left of the left hand one you can see railroad tracks crossing at 90% about two thirds of the way down. The Imperial Palace is in the area below and to the to the left of that crossing ie southwest of it, near as I can tell the grounds would include areas marked undamaged and damaged in the May raids.
And in fact the Meiji era palace itself was burned down during the last big fire raid on Tokyo, May 25-26, 1945, the raid in the picture at the top of the page, by incendiaries that landed there, or blowing embers, though it wasn’t the target. Clearly the Palace was at serious risk in all the Tokyo fire raids given its central location and the pretty large ‘circular error probable’ of the bombing.
The attempt to hit the grounds with ‘Pumpkin’ bomb that July was intentional but not authorized, an individual pilot’s decision after the primary target was weathered in. He got in trouble, according to same book wiki page refers to in noting that attack.
Re: US will or resources to invade Japan. I think doubting that, on any real evidence, must be some anachronism in projecting the current situation or attitudes to the past. It wasn’t something anyone was looking forward to, obviously, but there was a massive war machine with all the necessary resources waiting to do it. A significant portion of longer serving personnel in the huge ground and air force in Europe were shifted to units that were going to be demobilized, because there wasn’t room, logistical capability, or need to funnel the whole Continental ground war effort in Europe into an amphibious campaign v Japan on top of the 1/4 or so of the Army and whole USMC already deployed v Japan. But a lot of ground and air units in Europe were slated to go to the Pacific, and the forces in the Pacific were still building up between May and August. There was no sign of economic exhaustion in the US war effort either.
A Japanese strategy to make the invasion of Kyushu so costly that the US would rethink the idea of pushing the war to the bitter end on Honshu in pursuit of unconditional surrender: not entirely implausible, but not that likely to succeed either, just IMO. And the IJA’s performance in Manchuria in August 1945 v the Soviets was relatively uninspired, traditional fight to the death in some cases against hopeless odds, but other units kind of moved out of the way of the Soviets or were slow to reach the front. And 12% of the IJA force in Okinawa surrendered, much higher than in previous campaigns. I think it’s just as plausible to speculate on a more widespread collapse in IJA morale in the face of a hopeless situation on paper, as a collapse in US morale in the fact of costly but virtually certain victory if it persevered. Anyway I don’t see why the US, attitudes military and civilian then, would have backed away from the invasion of Kyushu. Maybe that experience would have caused a change in course, or not.
Re: A-bomb production rates, from a General Groves memo:
“The production rate of 3 bombs per month in August was expected to rise to 5 bombs per month in November, and 7 bombs per month in December. In 1946, it could rise much higher.”
Operation Olympic was schedule for Nov. 1, 1945. I’m counting at least 8, maybe 10, more a-bomb attacks by then. Kyoto had been taken off the attack list temporarily. It would have been bombed.
The only question regarding a-bombs and the invasion would be if one or two would be withheld for battlefield testing purposes. I think the US planners were smart enough to know that these bombs in limited numbers wouldn’t do a whole lot of good for tactics, but still the urge to find out what would happen was high.
But by November 1st the Soviets would have Hokkaido, all of Korea, etc. Maybe even landed on Honshu. The Japanese would not have kept all their troops in the South while that was going on.
The US first stage invasion was to only control the main plain area. None of this dumb mountain assault stuff. Use it to build air bases, etc., for the next landing further north. That would be March 1946. The Russians would have effectively ended the war by then.
The civilians who committed suicide on Saipan were, as Gray Ghost noted ethnic Japanese. They were settlers on the island which Japan acquired from Germany after WWI. The Okinawans were mostly not ethnic Japanese and were treated worse than what ethnic Japanese would have been treated in many cases.
However, in either case, the civilians were not slaughtered so that the IJA could have their food – the IJA simply took that – it was that they retreated with the military until everyone was finally cornered and then committed suicide or did a final banzai charge.
An invasion of the main islands would have been different. It would have been impossible to push everyone into smaller and smaller areas and then let them wipe themselves out, and that didn’t make military sense anyway.
The final invasion plan was to land near Tokyo and defeat the army there. Kyushu was set as a target so that the Americans could have land based fighters for the attack on Tokyo.
Had the IJA simply retreated back into the mountains and refused to surrender, it would have become a much longer, much bloodier war.
It’s also unclear on how much the civilians would actually have helped and how much they would taken a more noble strategy.
In Okinawa, the civilians could have been utilized more effectively, but there was an impossibly huge divide between “civilians” and “military” and the later ignored efforts of the former to help. There are accounts of civilian men who attempted to join and were rebuffed because they were civilians. It’s fascinating to read the bitter words, written decades later, of someone who wasn’t permitted to join (and die).
For the planned invasion, the IJA was taking more steps to formally incorporate civilians, but it’s impossible to speculate how successfully that could have been accomplished. Japanese society is nothing if not collections of groups, and the divide between the military and civilians was so great that it would have been impossible(?) to truly overcome. And civilians would just be in the way for most battles.
Yes. the Chamorro were not forced into suicide.
And of course even early in the war they never had a problem slaughtering enemy civilians, either.
By August of '45, things were very bad for the Japanese and would have gotten worse. As it was, the average caloric intake for civilians was significantly less than sustainable levels.
Japan had relied on Formosa and Okinawa for sugar production. Imports from there went down to zero by spring of '45.
Unique upon industrialized nations, Japan was dependent upon ocean transportation for internal movement of food, including rice and other grains grown in Hokkaido, and Kyushu. This ocean transportation was rapidly becoming completely demolished.
As a result of the US bombing surveys conducted in Germany after its surrender. the US was starting to target more trains and other forms as transportation as well.
The Japanese population would have started to starve to death.
That claim has been made I have not been able to verify the original report and pretty much everything online refers back to a page on the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust denial group.
When I first read this, I read “subjects” as in British subjects and American citizens. :smack:
Negotiations with the regime were impossible. Full stop.
I’ll dig up some posts I’ve done in the past which explains the step us, but basically the military was independent of the civilian cabinet and nominally reported directly to the Emperor.
It was required that the Minister of War (Army) and the Minister of Navy were active duty officers. If either resigned, the government fell and if the military failed to cooperate then a new government could not be formed.
Tojo was already out of the picture by the end of 1944. The fall of Saipan got him the boot. He was replaced by another PM who was forced to resign when Okinawa fell and the retired Admiral Suzuki was brought on specifically to end the war.
The Minister of War (Army) was actually the most powerful person in terms of real power. Tojo had both that post as well as PM. General Anami was the Minister of War at the end of the war.
The hardliners believed in fighting to the bitter end and would only consider terms completely unacceptable to the US and our Allies. It would allow the same system of government, do nothing to the military and allow her to try her own war criminals, and prevent foreign troops in Japan, as well as preserving the kokutai a word which defies translation but has been called the “national policy.” It was the system which allowed the mess to begin and it would have been completely unacceptable to allow that to continue.
We were reading their diplomatic mail with Magic code intercepts and knew exactly what they were telling their ambassador to the USSR. As Japan and the Soviet Union were neutral up to Aug. 9th, they had diplomatic relations. Japan was hoping to enlist their aid in negotiations.
As it was, prior to the events of August 6th, the hinting that the status of the emperor could be negotiated actually helped strength the position of the war faction as they believed the US was losing the will to win.
Any further attempts at negotiations would have made it that much worse.
The US was planning on using nukes on invasion locations.
None of this is can be reasonably supported by the evidence.
The threat of a Soviet invasion was understood by the IJA to not be particularly troublesome for the end game.
The Russians could only land troops in regiment levels and lacked landing craft for heavy equipment such as tanks. The Japanese could have used their aircraft as kamikazes to severely impact any Soviet attempts at invasions. The Soviet navy lacked the firepower to really counter this tactic.
But even had the Russians landed in Hokkaido and then proceeded to Honshu, they were on the wrong end. The government was in Tokyo and would have retreated into the mountains of central Honshu.
I wasn’t aware of their claim. My guess is that it’s an attempt by them to tar the Allies with the same sin of using gas that the Nazi regime was (from their point of view) allegedly guilty of.
That said, there’s more than a few memos from General George Marshall indicating that the idea of using chemical weapons against the Japanese home islands was more than a passing fancy in the American high command. Especially against very hard to assault targets. I don’t remember if Frank’s, “Downfall,” gets into it, (though he addresses the issue in this PBS discussion forum) but Giangreco’s Hell to Pay, and several of Nina Tannenwald’s articles mention the “do we or don’t we” use chemical weapons against Japan debate.
IMHO, I don’t see how they could have avoided using them after what would have been hideous casualties during the first week of the invasion. Chemical weapons slow everything down, but I’m guessing everything would have been slow already by that point.
I mentioned Manila, and not the far more infamous Nanking, for a couple of reasons. First, to point out that Nanking wasn’t an aberration, a response to unusually high resistance from the Chinese, or solely due to anti-Chinese animus. Second, to show a more contemporaneous incident than Nanking which as you know happened eight years prior. And finally, that, even as the IJA and IJN Marines were ostensibly occupied with trying to defend Manila against overwhelming firepower, they still found the time to rape and murder at least 100,000 Filipinos in about a month.
Except for the Soviets occupying all of Korea, which they surely would have, this is uncertain as to Soviets taking Hokkaido, and much more speculative still to say they’d have reached central Honshu before US forces.
However it’s not at all out of the question the Soviets would have taken Hokkaido. The Soviet 1st Far Eastern Front had an active plan to gain a foothold on Hokkaido which is described in Glantz’ ‘The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: ‘August Storm’" at some length. And Soviet planning at that time was generally realistic and professional. The same ‘front’*and others’ plans in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuriles worked well enough.
The entire IJA ground force in Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, consisted of only 2 divisions and a separate brigade spread out around the coasts. Moreover in favor of the vulnerability of Hokkaido but in contradiction to your point about the Japanese moving forces away from the south in such an eventuality, Hokkaido was basically cut off from major land force reinforcement or resupply after US carrier strikes sank most of the Honshu-Hokkaido ferries in July. Nor was operating sizable merchant ships along the coasts any longer practical. They weren’t all sunk, as is obvious from the postwar careers of many Japanese emergency program merchant ships built in '44-'45. But they were mainly hidden and immobile by then. Even shifting air units to Hokkaido would be difficult due to lack of fuel there or a way to get it there, the stocks which remained.
And the Soviets would be launching these operations from with range of their land based a/c, within range of field artillery in case of attacks launched from Kunishir in the Kuriles. In the actual plan the main effort would have been transport of two divisions of the 87th Rifle Corps to the west Hokkaido port of Rumoi one division** at a time. The corp’s third division apparently would have crossed from Kunashir. The 5th Area Army as it turned out had no major units at Rumoi.
There would be some risk to the Soviets, but there were similar short range amphib operations along the Kuriles very nearby and Japanese air accomplished virtually nothing against them. The Soviets didn’t need the huge navy and ability to transport large forces the US needed to invade Kyushu because it was coming from a lot closer against an island with a much weaker defending force.
Whether it really would have appealed to Stalin to enter into this though can be questioned. Likewise though it’s also a short hop amphibious move across Tsugaru Strait to Honshu from Hokkaido, that’s still a remote part of Honshu, in terms of value of the conquest. Then also ground transport and supply of major IJA reserves to northern Honshu was a lot more feasible. So Soviets arrive in Tokyo first is much more of a stretch than Soviets conquer sparsely populated and lightly defended Hokkaido.
*equivalent to a US Army Group: a collection of armies, each of which was a collection of corps, each of which was a collection of divisions.
**Soviet divisions were smaller than Japanese ones but much better equipped by then.
That’s incorrect. I recommend the book I mentioned, which details the naval units and transports that would have been used, from the 1st Far Eastern Front plan in Russian archives, not some internet made up ‘what if’ scenario. The Soviets had received a significant quantity of US landing craft and merchant ships (usable as military transports) in the Far East in anticipation of their promised war with Japan. That promise didn’t include invading Japan proper, and Stalin had basically agreed not to do that.
However, the basic feasibility of continuing to Hokkaido was not a lot different than the actual Soviet operations. Though politically a very different place, Hokkaido like the Kuriles, Sakhalin and Korea had been weakened defensively to put forces in more (pre August) directly threatened places, and it was also close enough to Soviet controlled territory (after the invasions of southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles) to cover short range amphibious operations with land based aircraft. The Soviets had little in the way of a navy and landing craft compared to the 1945 USN, but enough to invade thinly defended Hokkaido from the territories they held close by.
Which is relevant to their actual plan to invade Hokkaido how? Nor literally true anyway; a significant proportion of the landing craft in the Pacific Fleet were ersatz conversions by the Soviets of other types of boats, alongside US LCT-6, LCI and LCM(3) types they received under Lend Lease.
Again the capability was not comparable to the USN’s, but the requirement was pretty small given the short distance and weak defense. It’s not at all apparent why the 1st Far Eastern Front’s plan to gain a foothold in northern Hokkaido, or one on the same basic lines put into action later, was unrealistic or would necessarily have failed, though there is always risk in military operations.
The Russians cleared mine fields by marching criminal soldiers through them. I think they would have had no problem landing people in a dangerous situation.
I’ve written a rather extensive post about the difference between the two countries.
As far as the Emperor as a war criminal. Sure. In a perfect world he most certainly should have been tried and hanged for his role, but it was more important to obtain his cooperation.
Let’s imagine for a minute that it’s August 10, 1945. You are Truman, the leader of the free world and I’m General Anami, War Minister for Imperial Japan. You’ve just dropped two bombs on two of my cities.
If you are going to insist that Hirohito be tried as a war criminal, then you have to force a truly unconditional surrender.
Without assurances that the Emperor is going to be OK, Hirohito will not break the deadlock in the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. Martial law is imposed, and in a time honored tradition, I (Gen. Anami) become the military dictator of Japan while keeping the emperor in a gilded cage.
I release an Imperial Rescript in the emperor’s name, commanding all of the military and civilians* fight to the death rather than surrender.
It’s going to be one bloody fight. The IJA had changed tactics toward the end of the war, leading to horrific numbers of casualties among US forces in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
I’ve seen an estimate of the number of Japanese civilian deaths by starvation at 7 million if they didn’t surrender until spring, '46. How many more if the military kept retreating further and further into the mountains?
There were 5,400,000 Japanese soldiers and 1,800,000 Japanese sailors in uniform. Japan still occupied large chunks of China as well and Indochina, Malaysia, Singapore Hong Kong, DEI, etc., as well as Korea and Formosa.
Civilians in Japanese occupied lands were dying by the millions. Gray Ghost linked to the massacre in Manila, and it can only be assumed that the Japanese would react similarly in all of the occupied territories.
Famine and disease were killing between 500,000 to a million civilians per month in occupied countries.
The cost in civilian deaths could have been over 10 to 20 million had the Japanese not surrendered and choose to fight it out.
So, your call. As Truman, do you let one guy get off easier to save this slaughter, as well as reducing military casualties or do you make a stand on principle and revenge?
*Civilian attacks on Allied troops would not be expected to be effective. However it would mean that the Allies would not make many efforts to spare the civilians.
FDR did not ask Stalin to begin his own world conquest of Europe, or Asia. Lend/lease was intended to drive the Nazis out of Russian, and back to Germany.
Since Stalin had never relinquished control of Poland, Stalin’s first land grab in Europe, or any of the other countries Russian troops had rolled thru, it was obvious that Stalin intended to keep as much of Asia as his troops could conquer.
