Just wanted to get everyone's thought's on the in's and out's of an allied invasion of mainland Japan minus the bomb. What nations would take part? What would be the strategy? What would be high priority targets? How would the battle play out? What would be the outcome? Just some food for thought!

Cool, here is one I know a little about.
My father in law was sceduled to be on the first wave of an attack on the mainland. He told me that it was expected to have so many losses that he and his unit would have died as soon as it began. He said that they were in the preparation stages for the actual attack when the bombs were dropped. The bombs in effect saved his life. As it was he was still part of the first occupying group in Tokyo. He took some great pictures which I have recently been priveliged to see. I believe part of his assignment was guarding the Imperial Palace as well.

I don't have the answers to your questions off the top of my head but I can recommend an excellent book on the subject. Downfall:The end of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B Frank.

Downfall

It's an great overview of all the various options open to the Allies to bring about the final defeat of Japan.

Just a little tidbit, I heard that the USA had on order a huge amount of purple hearts, thinking ahead to casualties from invasion of Japan. Now the story I heard was that the USA is still using those same purple hearts today, all the wounded between now and then still doesn't add up to what they thought the invasion would have cost. Now is that just a myth or tall tale?

I've heard the same story about the Purple Hearts, but no verification.

My dad was brought back from Europe, sent by train to Washington State and was told to get ready to invade Japan. Among those assigned, there was an overwhelming feeling of resignation, that eventually your luck would run out. It's hard to imagine the sense of almost being reborn to find-out you wouldn't have to toss the dice yet again. It would have been a bloodbath, that's for sure.

Barry

Hi, Just my personal opinion here, but I really don't think the actual invasion would have been necessary. Contemplated and planned for, yes, but absolutely necessary without the advent of the bomb, no. I've read here and there that the leaders of Japan were pretty much ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped and that it was just a matter of applying more pressure to convince them to do so. Thus the excuse to use the bombs. And also to the effect of impressing Stalin as well.

Politics is a dirty business.

Take care, Larry

Without the bomb, an invasion would have happened. Japan would not have surrendered in any reasonable amount of time ... The US (Allies) simply would/could not let things stalemate ...

Suggested reading:
Codename Downfall, by Allen & Polmar.
The Invasion of Japan - An Alternative to the Bomb, by Skates.
The Burning Mountain, a novel by Coppel

John

Without the bomb, the invasion would have been as talked about as the D-Day invasion. Japan still had a strong contingent of soldiers protecting the mainland. Watched a documentary on this the other day and i think the estimates were in the 200,000 but was in the process of being doubled until the bomb came along.

Interesting point about the purple hearts....first time i heard about it but i would believe it.

If the invasion took place, the island would have been flanked by russia, china and the allies.

I hate to go against the grain here....and this is just my opinion but I think the invasion of Japan WOULD have happened and most likely would have been 90 to 95% American forces. My theory is that the Navy and Army Air Corps. would have continued with the fire bombing tactics for some time. Remember, at this time Allied fighters and bombers were meeting very little resistance in the sky over Japan.

Most of my thoughts come from the fact that the advance into Germany in 45' and even the D-Day invasion were predicted to have resulted in mass allied casualities. When I say "mass" I'm talking about hundreds of thousands and do not mean to imply that those allied soldiers who lost their lives in these campaigns were "insignificant" or anything.

I've read reports and seen propoganda footage of Japanese civi's "ready for defense" with swords, pikes, bamboo poles etc. With a starving population carrying this kind of weaponry, along with the fact that many of Japans leaders were falling on their swords which would mean a darn near leaderless defense, as well as little to no means to cordinate effective defenses since masive fire bombings would have put a huge dent in communications and transportation............................
I believe the nuclear bombs actually saved more Japanese and American lives than they took.

My 2 1/2 cents worth
Hermon

In my opinion I think that it would have been a battle that history would never forget. It would rank right up there next to Waterloo and the Crusades in its importance. I have read in several books and heard on several documentaries that Truman reportedly was given U.S. casualty estimates of one million! I think that we would have seen a fairly large Chinese envolvement as Japan was one of thier most hated enemies. I do think that the Russians would have played a very small role if any. Too much to do at home and in thier newly aquired eastern territories. I think we would have also seen an incredible increase in the fire bombing raids. How sucessful these would have been in acheiving the overall objective I'm not certain. Just some thoughts!

Here's another question. Do you think that a strict naval blokade of mainland Japan could have cut off essentials to the point that Japan would have no other choice but surrender?

That's a tuff one. Without firebombings the Japanese could have held out for a long long time.



I agree, but it's my belief that by this stage of the war most Americans as well as our Generals had well gotten over the shock of Pearl Harbor and were not willing to just jump into a massive slaughter house without dumping millions of pounds of ordinance first. The war at this point was well in hand and I don't think the American public would have taken lightly the thoughts of throwing 1 million of her sons into a firestorm.



Everything I've ever read on the subject stated that more Japanese were killed in firebombings than in the Nuclear attacks.

Interesting debate Hellbent. Glad you brought it up.

Hermon

Very True!




Also a good point. I am sure there would have been months of intensive bombardment that would have made Hamburg and Dresden seem like a firecracker went off.




Agreed! I was curious to see if anyone thought that the raids would backfire by causing the general population to go into a fanatical frenzy of "kill or be killed" leading to an unprecidented amount of resistance. (eg. old and sick/dying using massive kamikaze and bonsai charges. Young school children manning pillboxes etc..)



Moderator edit: I just added the close quotes in so they show up separtely

As Japan was a closed society and had been living on a diet of propaganda that had concealed just how badly the war had been going it seems pretty likely that there would have been no collapse without either invasion or nuclear weapons.

You need only look at the behaviour of Japanese civilians on Saipan to see that surrender wasn't really regarded as an option, even at that late stage. The field armies might have been crumbling but there were still large numbers of soldiers and militarized civilians in the home islands. They might not have had much military potential, but they would still have fought.

My father was just old enough to go overseas at the end of the war in Europe, but he got to occupy Germany instead of going to the Far East.

That's probably true. The bombing of German and English cities did nothing to break the spirit of their populations, and in hindsight carpet bombing is no longer seen as an effective strategy. If anything, the Japanese were far more fanatical than the English or Germans, and would have fought hard. The cultural acceptance of suicide in Japan would have just made the resistance even more fanatical.

It's possible that after a breakout from the landing beaches, the invaders would have had a relatively easier time as Japan's organizational structure broke down. But the invaders would have had such a tough time on the beaches and in the first miles inland, that Normandy would have looked like Dieppe.

The Bomb certainly saved lives on all sides (though naturally, I doubt the US was worried about Japanese casualties).

A couple points on the side of invasion:

The A-bomb was so secret none of the field commanders knew about it. It wasn't in the mix of options. Heck, Truman didn't even know about it till Roosevelt died!

The Bushido code made it unthinkable to the Japanese to surrender. Most historians and scholars are convinced the military and civilian population would've fought to the end.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were picked as targets for the bomb because there were no other targets left after LeMay's firebombing strategy. Still, the Japanese didn't surrender.

We had to drop TWO A-bombs to convince Hirohito we were serious.

The Russians tied down Japanese divisions on the Asian mainland, but they had no means of amphibious assault so couldn't have actively participated in any invasion. It would have been an American show.

The Allied demand for unconditional surrender made a long, drawn out blockage strategy unlikely, despite the loss projections. I believe there was a "let's get this over with" mentality in the military, and the prospect of an undetermined timeframe would have seemed unacceptable. However, what the U.S. discovered on the Japanese mainland in the way of hidden assets and other unnerving finds were indications that an invasion would have been even more devastating to the assault force than they had calculated.

Mercifully for both the Japanese and the U.S., Hirohito, in this case, did the right thing.

Anybody got another take on this?

Barry

I think that the belief that Japan was "ready to surrender" is revisionist history. While it is true that their ability to provide raw materials into war production was just about at a standstill, that's a long way from having an entire nation ready to accept surrender. Especially when, as had been said, the overall population had no clear idea just how bad their overall strategic situation really was.

I read a study during Command and General Staff College which discussed one additional factor in the decision to use the bomb. The massive destruction caused by the two bombs was unprecedented, and their use actually allowed Japan a way to save face in their surrender. It provided them with a way to avoid the "disgrace" associated with what to their code was shameful in a way not the same in our way of thinking. Since it was a quantum leap in destructive power it altered the rules and gave them the ability to accept the defeat as something that had been forced on them, NOT something they had chosen. Even if the overtures which were being made to the Soviet Union (don't forget, the Soviet Union was NOT at war with Japan until AFTER we dropped the first bomb) had lead anywhere, the conditions MacArthur was able to impose on Japan would not have been the same without their having to be forced into surrendering.

Without the bomb I don't think Japan would have reached that point and an invasion would have been inevitable.

Several things that were consequences about the use of the bomb can also be stated with a fair degee of certainty. The TOTAL loss of life to Japan was considerably less than would have been true if an invasion had occurred. Others may not be comfortable with the "arithmetic of war", but soldiers understand it and accept it.

Another thing the use of the bombs did was end the war before the Soviet Union could really DO anything against Japan. This allowed the US to avoid having to accomodate any significant occupation of Japan by the Soviets, unlike what occurred in Germany.

One other consequence is that the sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons was demonstrated in a way that no "test" could ever have provided. Like it or not it, gave the Soviet Union pause to think about just how to approach the post WW II world and gave us all indisputable evidence that we'd better never get to the place where these weapons are used again.

Tom

As to if the Japanese were ready to surrender or not one need only look at their official response to the Potsdam Declaration. The declaration was agreed upon by China, Great Britain, and the United States. It was issued on July 26th. Here is the complete text of the declaration.

Potsdam Declaration

Basically the declaration began by saying that these powers had agreed to give Japan the opportunity to surrender. It then goes on by listing why Japan should surrender, and what terms were being offered. Some powers, such as Australia, didn't like the fact Japan was even being given these terms.

The declaration ended with an ultimatium.

"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction. My italics.

The Japanese response to this declaration is summed up in a Japanese word, Mokusatu. I don't know many Japanese words. My vocabulary is limited to Saki, Sayonara, Origato, (and I've probably mispelled even those) and Mokusatu. As I understand it the word literary means to ignore, but it can have several meanings. The one most likely to be used in the context of July 1945 was to "ignore with contempt." In other words the Japanese government was telling the world that they thought so little of the Potsdam Declartion, a "thing of little importance" that they would show their total contempt for it by ignoring it, Mokusatu.

My their actions in declaring Mokusatu over the Potsdam Declaration Japan was saying, in effect, that they were NOT ready to surrender.

It wasn't until after not one but two atomic bombs were dropped, AND the declaration of war by the Soviet Union against them, that Japan finally decided to surrender.

History channel occasionaly shows Japans secret weapons and suicide weapon shows. They would not have surrendered and in fact were gearing up for causing mass casualties to us. The rationale being to make it so bloody that we would just sue for peace on better terms than they were under the impression of what they were going to get under the unconditional. I think only the revisinists still squawk about the bomb. It undoubtably saved well over a million lives in toto.

Very good discussion. As far as the russians, they had 1.15million men massed for operatiosn against Japan by August 8. The Japanese in Manchuria and North Korea were almost 1million strong. Also they went after Sakhalin and the Kuril island chain. Operations didn't end until after official surrender, they continued at least to Aug 20th, after russian troops had taken all their major objectives. They must have had some sort of amphibious capabilities to take the islands etc, so possibly could help with the invasion. And to say that the war ended before russia could "do much" against Japan isn't giving them very much credit.
I think the combination of the atmoic bombs, russia's entry into the war and the steamrolling of Manchuria and N.Korea by Soviet armor was really forcing the Japanese leadership into surrendering. There was now no hope of pulling any of the million men in Manchuria back for mainland defense. And the threat of a russian invasion would have to be a great worry to japenese high command.

Operation Oylimpic (invasion of Kyushu) and Coronet (mainland invasion, Honshu) were planned roughly planned for Nov 1, and Mar 1, 1946. The russians might have beaten the Americans into Japan with a landing in Hokkaido as they were well on their way to taking Sakhalin/Kuril islands before the surrender which would have put them right on the doorstep. I am not sure Stalin would have had as much reservations about casualties that the allied commanders did.

As far as the makeup of invasion forces, they would have been the 90-95% american as mentioned before. From what I can see there were plans to send just 3 commonweath (1each Brit/Cdn/aussie) divsions over for the "Coronet" invasion in early 1946.

Ryan brings an interesting "what if?" into this.

Hark back to our discussion about the Allies & Russia going at each other in Europe. Well let's assume that doesn't happen -- Europe ends as it did historically with our erstwise ally, Russia, becoming more erstwhile than ally & the friction is already started.

In real life, Russia then declared war on Japan to be sure it had a seat at that bargaining table, but the war was effectively over before they could do very much.

Now, if there are no A-bombs, the war in the Pacific is extended. Russia still wants that seat at the table, but now wants the head chair.

Is there a point in time where US(&Commonwealth) interests clash with Russian while the defeat of Japan is still a future event ?? Does this result in a US-Russia conflict ?

Seems to me the possibility is very great that the delayed defeat of Japan opens the door for a US-Russia conflict ...

Thoughts ?

John