TWR is correct. The Japs still had two million men on the fields and the entire civilian population had been previously indoctrinated to resist an American invasion. Look how the civilians acted in Guam and Siapan , they committed suicide before being captured
They still had 1.5 Million fighting in China at the end of the war that would have also been recalled to defend the home Islands in the event a land invasion was imminent.
Perhaps most importantly they had a host of “wonder weapons” including jet and rocket powered aircraft and their own version of anti ship cruise missiles to be flown by Kamikazis that would have just wreaked hell on the invasion fleet.
We had no effective defense against any of those.
The civilian population was training to fight to the death with bamboo sticks if it came to it.
People today cannot fathom the fanatical commitment they had to defend Japanese soil and that they were absolutely willing to die to the last man, woman, and child to defend their Emperor who was in their eyes a god.
After their aggressiveness and horrendous war crimes there was no way the civilized world would tolerate or accept anything less than a total and complete surrender.
In the end, they conceded everything and would grant an otherwise unconditional surrender as long as the Emperor could remain as a figurehead.
If we’d had any more nukes we probably would not have even conceded that. Churchill rightly wanted to see the Emperor and Tojo both tried and executed for war crimes for what they’d done massacring British colonials.
Well the Japanese certainly would have considered him a war criminal for the firebombing of Tokyo even though it was a completely legitimate military target.
Remember several of the Tokyo Raiders were tried in Japan for war crimes even though their targets were legitimate by any military standard.
Do you mean Doolittle?
Yep, it was Tokyo they raided.
As I recall my history, eight airmen where captured by the Japs. All sentenced to death. Hirohito commuted the death penalty for five airmen and the other three were shot through the head. The raiders used magnesium firebombs. Because there were no zoning regulations, middle class homes ( made of wood) where situated in industrial areas such as Kawasaki. Many homes with families were killed. One fire bomb scored a direct hit on the Okasaki Hospital with multiple casualties. Bill Burch gunner stated the following:“We sighted several small fishing craft about 5 miles offshore so I machined gunned them with my .30 caliber in the nose`” only one of many such shootings. The Japs also inflicted horrible reprisals on the Chinese, 250,000 were killed as a result of this raid.
That is correct, which is why Mac Arthur was left out of the loop and Eisenhower solemnly protested the use of them, namely on the merits that they were ready to surrender, searching a face saving avenue to do so, as he told SOW Stimson.
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I don’t think you’re right on the Doolittle raid.
Eight men were captured, four died in captivity, one executed for war crimes. Four eventually were repatriated.
As for the bombs I’m almost positive they were each carrying just four 500lbs or eight 250lbs HE bombs. That’s why the damage was so minimal even though they hit some prime industrial targets right on.
During the later raids there was a mix of HE and Incendiaries dropped by the B29’s but it was the “firebombing” of Tokyo later in the war that generated the tremendous civilian casualties. Japanese relied extremely heavily on wood for their construction, particularly bamboo and of course being extremely densely packed together once they started burning whole cities went up like a box of matches having a runaway.
Few people realize that about 5x as many Japanese civilians died as a result of the conventional bombing as died from the 2 Nukes.
Exactly, much of what the US did in WW2 you’d never see again today. Following WW2 the Nuremberg Charter made sure of it, but prior to…
At the start of World War II in 1939, following an appeal by Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, the major European powers, including Britain and Germany, agreed not to bomb civilian targets outside combat zones: Britain agreeing provided that the other powers also refrained. (see the policy on strategic bombing at the start of the World War II). However, this was not honored as belligerents of both sides in the war adopted a policy of indiscriminate bombing of enemy cities. Throughout World War II, cities like Chongqing, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasakiwere struck by aerial bombardment, causing untold numbers of destruction of buildings and the deaths of tens of thousand civilians.[19]
No it’s a complete fabrication. The largest force they’d put together in years was the attack force sent to the Marianas in June of 44.
Their greatest losses during the Marianas campaign was the loss of the bulk of what was left of the Japanese Naval Air forces.
The Army Airforce however was still very strong as was their surface fleet not to mention all of the air and land forces they planned to recall from China in the event the Allies proceeded with a land invasion.
On August 10, 1945, troops of the 17th Japanese Front (in Korea) and the Fifth Air Army were placed under the command of the Kwantung Army. At this point, the Japanese Kwantung Army numbered nearly 750,000 officers and men. It had 1,155 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1,800 warplanes, and 30 warships and gunboats. The entire Japanese force deployed in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Korea numbered over one million officers and men.
That’s just the forces that confronted the Russians in August of 1945.
On the day of surrender, the Imperial Japanese Forces totaled 6,983,000 troops, an aggregate of 154 army ground force divisions, 136 brigades,2 and some 20-odd major naval units.3 Army and Navy forces stationed within the home islands numbered 3,532,000; air force units were then integral parts of the Army and Navy. The balance of the Japanese forces were spread in a great arc from Manchuria to the Solomons, and across the islands of the Central and Southwest Pacific.4
In the over-all picture, enormous military risks were involved in landing initially with “token” United States forces. The Japanese mainland was still potentially a colossal armed camp, and there was an obvious military gamble in landing with only two and a half divisions, then confronted by fifty-nine Japanese divisions, thirty-six brigades, and forty-five-odd regiments plus naval and air forces. The terrific psychological tension was dissolved by the relatively simple formula of preserving the existing Japanese Government, and utilizing its normal agencies to effect the complicated processes of disarmament and demobilization.
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1%20Sup/ch5.htm
As usual neither of you has a clue what you’re talking about.
My sources : firebombs P 107 “Fly Boys” (2)Execution “Fly Boy” P 121 (3) Hospital an school bombing Merrill"Target Tokyo" P 102
The way I see it, The Japs targeted military areas at Pear Harbor. Yes there were civilians killed,but only a handful. Doolittle´s raid targeted a big city with multiple civilian causalities.
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General Dwight Eisenhower voiced his opposition at Potsdam. “The Japanese were already defeated,” he told Secretary of War Henry Stimson, “and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Admiral William Leahy, President Harry Truman’s chief of staff, said that the "Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…
These were the men prosecuting the war in real time, not apologists 75 years hence.
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Are you sure that’s not the later Tokyo raids?
US News and World Report
MOST AMERICANS CLING TO the myth that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, by forcing Japan’s surrender without a U.S. invasion, saved the lives of a half million or more American boys. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.
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Ike had never seen the theater and obviously he was completely wrong.
Somebody forgot to tell the Japanese.
It is impossible to second guess President Truman’s decision to nuke the Japs. He had hands on experts, physiological experts and a public tired of war. It is regretful that the A bomb was used, but it did save thousands of American lives.
He was also looking at the results of Invading Saipan.
33,000 Japanse troops fought to the death, 7,000 civilians committed suicide and another 20,000 civilian “combat deaths”.
The Japanese were short of many resources but until the bombs were dropped their will to fight on was never broken.
You don’t have to second guess, documentation abounds. There’s a reason why the general in charge of the pacific was kept out of the loop.
“When I (Gen. Eisenhower) asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. “
And the US will never get away with such a wretched act again.
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