... I suspect that very little is taught about our nation's history because if you ask I suspect that very few of the young folks today could tell you what D day was. I usually put together a rant in August of each year when some people get together and sing songs and light candles to remember the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan yet the same people fail to show up in December to remember Pear....
My oldest is learning about WWII in school but at best, kids get maybe a year of US history in high school and if the go to college, maybe another semester. Its not enough time to get much more than an sampling of US history much less read about other time periods or countries.
Amazon.com: **** to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 eBook: D. M. Giangreco: Books. In the last few years there are only two books that I have had to put down because of the enormity of what I was reading. The book in the link is one and the other is a biography of Mao. I finished the linked book and one day I will have to finish the book on Mao. Reading history, especially WWII is something I have been doing since fourth grade. The book in the link is not the first book I have read about the Invasion of Japan that thankfully never happened but this book was a real eye opener.
The invasion would have been a blood bath the likes of which has never been seen before. For sure one of if not two of my grandfathers would have been in the invasion and I doubt they would have lived. I would still be alive because my parents were already born but our lives would have been completely different.
What the US did not know:
- There were far more suicide boats than planned.
- The Japanese had about three months worth of aviation gas while the US thought they had none.
- There were either 25,000 or 50,000 planes in reserve to use that gas including suicide planes.
- The Japanese were going to target transport ships to inflict maximum casualties. That one is kinda obvious.
- The Japanese knew exactly which beaches would be landed on first and when. This stuff is not rocket science and was easy to figure out.
- Defense systems were well advanced and would have been ready for the initial US landings.
- Supplies had been moved forward and safely stored in the battle areas.
- Far more combat units were in place than known. Worse, divisions of combat experience soldiers had moved from Manchuria into Japan without US intelligence noticing.
- The Japanese had figured out that land blocks radar. Because of geography, US air attacks would be masked by mountains making early warning very difficult.
- The Japanese had also noticed the wood framed planes do not show up on radar very well and they planned to exploit this with suicide attacks.
- Worst of all, the Japanese though they could win the war even if it meant loosing 20% of their population which meant 20 million people. It is unclear if that 20 million figure includes just civilians or include military personal.
One really has to wonder if 20 million dead is an accurate figure. Japan is a very small place made more compact by heavy forests and mountains that limit places were people can live. Those heavy forests and mountain are great for defensive military operations but cause massive casualties to the attacker. Given that the population was concentrated in the easy to access geography that is where US forces would HAVE to go, where the Japanese would defend, and the civilians casualties would have been huge. Furthermore, the Japanese did not consider civilians non combatants. They were training their kids to be attack the allied forces on suicide missions. The slaughter would have been huge.
The Japanese population was already starting to starve when the atomic bombs were dropped. The Japanese surrender allowed food that was being stockpiled for the invasion to be moved to Japan to prevent mass starvation. Some argue that the US should not drop the bombs because an atomic bomb is somehow more immoral than a conventional bomb and that we should have starved out the Japanese. What they are arguing for is the starvation of millions of civilians. Is that MORE moral than just a quick killing? The fact is that the Japanese would NOT be starved into submission for years, if ever, and the effort would have starved millions of civilians.
On the US side, we were having a massive demobilization in the middle of a war. Hundreds of thousands of service members had earned enough points to be discharged and where. There was public pressure to get these service members home, especially after Germany was beaten. The problem was that the US had a shortage of ground combat units and would be attacking Japan with less than what the US thought they needed. The reality was that the US needed for more units/men than they knew about because of the Japanese preparations. Then there is the weather impact on ground operations that was going to slow down advances and thus raise casualties.
One of the more interesting parts of the book was the preparations to provide blood supplies to the invasion. Just before the invasion there was going to be a big push to increase the blood supplies via blood drives all of the country. Ships had been outfitted with cooling systems to hold the blood near Japan. The big question was would there be a large enough blood supply to support the casualties and a loss of any one of these ships would have been a disaster...
I have read and I guess it is true, that until recently, the US was still using Purple Hearts that had been made in WWII in anticipation of the casualties from an invasion of Japan.
If we had invaded Japan, the blood bath would have been unreal to both sides. The bombs really did save millions of lives.
Later,
Dan
