History thread [split] from "New Rule - Promoting Terrorism"

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Gen. Anami declared "100,000,000 dead in defense of Japan!"

Yeah, we're big on slogans, too.

The submarine blockade had essentially ended Japan's capacity to conduct a war.  By July, 1945 carrier-based aircraft attacked Kure on the Inland Sea.  The handful of ships there were essentially immobile because of a lack of fuel caused by the previously mentioned sub campaign and an equally effective mining operation.  The Japs were helpless.  Had they not surrendered Anami might have gotten his wish.... through famine and frostbite in the coming winter. 

So Hiroshima and Nagasaki were little more than state-sanctioned mass murders....... just like Dresden.

Japan had 5,000,000 tons of crude oil stored away for defense of the Home Islands. They had a bout 10,000 suicide craft, over and above conventional vehicles.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There was no need to launch it at all.  That's the point.  Japan was finished.

By that point we were far more concerned about Stalin's promise - which we now regarded as a threat - made at Yalta to enter the Pacific War 90 days after Germany surrendered.  Stalin was punctual about doing so attacking the Japanese in Manchuria on August 8, 1945 exactly 90 days after VE day.  Not so coincidentally that was the same day as Nagasaki and a mere two days after Hiroshima.

And he was always going to attack Japan, he wanted the losses from the Russo-Japanese war back. Marshal Voroshilov told The Great Stalin that he could put an amphibious attack ashore on Hokkaido on August 25th. Stalin canceled this on August 24th. 

BTW, Gen. Marshal was to be given tactical control of ten atomic bombs for the invasions, four for Kyushu and six for the Kanto Plain/Tokyo area invasion. That would have been a round dozen atomic bombs used on Japan if they had continued to be hard headed.

[Anomalocaris]

Yeah, we're big on slogans, too.

The submarine blockade had essentially ended Japan's capacity to conduct a war.  By July, 1945 carrier-based aircraft attacked Kure on the Inland Sea.  The handful of ships there were essentially immobile because of a lack of fuel caused by the previously mentioned sub campaign and an equally effective mining operation.  The Japs were helpless.  Had they not surrendered Anami might have gotten his wish.... through famine and frostbite in the coming winter. 

So Hiroshima and Nagasaki were little more than state-sanctioned mass murders....... just like Dresden.

No, operation Olympic was scheduled before the on-set of winter.   It would have landed 700,000 allied troops in Hokkaido, against 700,000 defending Japanese troops and 12,000 stockpiled kamikaze aircraft.   At no other time in pacific war had the US attempted to launch amphibious assault against a defended Japanese position without a 3 to 1 numerical superiority.

Operation Olympic would likely, bluntly put, fail and incur 300,000+ casualties.

The Japanese defensive strategy was to inflict such a reverse on the first allied landing in the Japanese homeland that the allies would nagotiate rather than keep suffering that magnitude of casualty. The ratio of forces involved suggest they would pull off the first part - inflict a devasting reverse - on the first allied landing on the Japanese home islands.

In so far as attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was calculated to avert friendly casualties comparable to enemy casualties resulting from the effort at a time of declared war between two states, it is not the equivalent of most conception of terrorism.

War can not be waged if one would accept more military casualties for ones own side in order to avert fewer civilian casualty on the enemy side.   By nature there would almost always be far more enemy civilians than friendly military personnel.

Correction, Kyūshū, not Hokkaido.

[Anomalocaris]

Report the post where it split. That's how you get us to talk about and split it.

#54?

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We already knew what would happen with firebombing, the March, 1945, raid killed more people than either atomic bomb.

As for the civilians, you had to be a preteen or an elderly person to be a civilian in Japan at the time. The lawfully appointed government of Japan deemed all able-bodied Japanese to be part of the military.

Gen. Anami declared "100,000,000 dead in defense of Japan!" There were only ~70,000,000 Japanese at the time, so the rest would have to made up by the Allies. Anami would start that process by ordering that every Allied POW, man, woman or child, would be killed when the first Allied boot touched the Home Islands.

So if you making the Japanese out as victims here you need to do some research.

No, Japan has been using the figurative number of 100,000,000 to represent the population of japan and Taiwan, which japan considered part of japan, for propaganda purposes throughout the 1930s and the war.  Unlike in modern western counting system where units of large number increases with every factor of a thousand (thousand, million, billion, etc), counting systems under Chinese influence uses factors of ten thousand as units of large number.   Hence the natural units were 万 or, Man, which is ten thousand, and 億, Oku, which is ten thousand Man, or one hundred million.   One Oku is a grandiose and poetic figure, and sounds better than seven thousand Man.   Hence for rhetorical purposes the population of japan is given as one Oku. Or one hundred million, not seven thousand Man, or seventy million.  Towards the end the propaganda referred to “shattering One Oku jewels” to defend the japanese imperial system, shattered jewel being a Japanese cultural reference to the supreme self sacrifice of a noble person.  Allied personnel would hardly be considered “shattered jewels”.

In addition to further atomic bombing of japan, the US also intended to use chemical weapons on a grand scale during the invasion of japan.   Agent orange of Vietnam infamy was actually developed for thatnuse as well.  The purpose wasn’t to defoliate forests but agriculture crops. In order to create famine in japan in 1946.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cool. Thanks for resolving that bafflement for me.

Defoliants were to be used to kill the rice crops if a starvation blockade was to be used. The Summer rice crop had been a disaster without US interference. Losing the Fall/Winter crop would have meant widespread starvation. The first to die in that scenario would have been nursing babies, the sick and the elderly. The guys with the guns would get their food before anybody else.

[Minimalist]

At Yalta we had no idea if the a-bomb would work.  The point is that Stalin kept his promise.

Just because warmongers like MacArthur wanted a big land campaign in Japan was no reason to give it to him.  Japan would have been fucked flat if it had to go through a winter without food, fuel, and other raw materials coming in.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

At Yalta we had no idea if the a-bomb would work.  The point is that Stalin kept his promise.

Just because warmongers like MacArthur wanted a big land campaign in Japan was no reason to give it to him.  Japan would have been fucked flat if it had to go through a winter without food, fuel, and other raw materials coming in.

How many dead babies would justify that policy? It's called a "starvation blockade" for a reason. Check out Leningrad. There are reports of cannibalism there.

[Jackalope]

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Thread split from here https://atheistforums.org/thread-55432.html

[The Grand Nudger]

Any invasion of japan, regardless of the initial casualties..would have turned into something we should all be very familiar with today.  The difference being that those combatants would have been the equals of american forces from the very start...and we wouldn;t have been going..even on pretext, to save or liberate anyone.  My Lai would look like a humanitarian relief effort in comparison.  

My personal favorite, on the decision to nuke japan...and maybe one of you guys can remember who said it for me..is that it really wasn;t much of a decision at all. They had an idea of the cost of an assault. They understood that the japanese were ready for some desperate shit, they;d just had a bit of experience with that in the island hopping campaign, and they possessed a weapon that could sidestep all of that. Domestically, we might have lynched the president of the united states if we learned that he could have dropped the bombs and instead decided to send more american sons into the meat grinder on account of.... maybe... saving a few japanese lives? At that point in time I;m pretty sure we;d have accepted 500k (any number, really) dead japanese babies in trade for a single american soldier.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Japanese school girls were given wooden awls and told to stab the tall Americans in the genitals. One such attack would have ended a generation of Japanese females.

As for the fighting, we would have had material and arms superiority early on, as the Japanese plans were to stop the invasion at any price. Map with Division's assignments spend return home.

It is worth noting that the Allies planned to nuke "hardpoints" and send our troops in 30 minutes afterwards. "Atomic Veterans" writ large.

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Regarding "guerilla warfare." This was a major concern for the Allies and perhaps the principle reason Hirohito was retained (by ommission). The Voice of the Crane was the only thing that could stop Oriental "Werewolves" from waging decades of irregular warfare. It worked, and it was worth the pass he got for other thibgs.