Operation Downfall: The planned invasion of Japan

[TheMightyFavog]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic

Projected US Casualties: 1.2 Million, with over a quarter of a Million Dead.

So many Purple Hearts were manufactured in anticipation for the massive amounts of casualties an invasion of Japan would bring, that medals from this production run are being issued to those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Keep in mind, that The USSR had turned its attention to Japan, having invaded Manchuria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria_%281945%29

The USSR had plans to invade the home Islands, as well, particularly Sakhalin and Hokkaido. I don't even want to think about the postwar political consequences of that.

[whistler162]

1. Come off it... don't you know the Japanese government

was going to surrender just like on Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa!:sarcasm:

Every year we hear the same hand ringing about the atomic bombs. They saved lives in the long run.

Maybe the Allies should have just continued the campaign of fire bombings, which killed more than the two atomic bombs.

[mmonk]

5. Actually, the emperor approached the Soviet Union at brokering

a surrender favorable to the Japanese but the Soviets were preparing to invade as per promises made to the US and Britian.

[Posteritatis]

2. The idea of North/South Japan a la Korea/Vietnam is ... unpleasant. (nt)

[LostInAnomie]

3. But... but... but... they were going to surrender!!!

I know, I'm sure glad my Grandfather didn't have to take part in an invasion.

[hunter]

4. The bomb in New Mexico worked.

After the Trinity test the ground invasion was off the table. We were going to flatten what was left of Japan with nukes and fire bombs.

The production reactors at Hanford were designed from the ground up to fight a world scale atomic war. Our plutonium production capacity was such that we could have dropped ten more atomic bombs on Japan by December. If Japan had not surrendered we would have.

There's no reason to speculate "what might have been," it's just a lame excuse, maybe an attempt to assuage a guilty conscience.

We got the bomb first, we used it, and Japan surrendered.

[hayu_lol]

6. There was no word for 'surrender' in the Japanese...

language. For those not alive and cognizant of the world situation at the time...save your weeping for something important.

The bombs, and nothing except the bombs or invasion, ended the war in the Pacific.

[lynne]

7. My father was in the navy at that time and was being trained -

- for Operation Downfall. They were aware of the projected casualties and he said he knew the odds were against him coming home.

Needless to say, there is no apology from me with regard to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Had Operation Downfall been necessary the odds are that I and my sibling and our combined children would have never been born. Yes, it was horrible. Yes, I hope the world learned something and that it never occurs again. However, it ultimately saved lives at the time. I'm thankful for that.