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New book on Opperation Downfall the Invasion of Japan

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Aardvark154

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Given the perennial discussion here on TERB most recently in the "Is it terrorism?" thread regarding the decision to use the atomic bomb.

There presumably might be some interest in the recently published Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945 - 1947 Naval Institute Press 2009. The best price I’ve thus far seen is from Amazon and Amazon.ca .

The author D. M. Giangreco, was for over two decades Editor of Military Review journal of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and has published extensively on the Second World War.

The academic buzz is that it is by far the most through study and truly breaks new ground.
 
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Aardvark154 said:
Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945 - 1947Naval Institute Press 2009.
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I didn't read the book but I heard over the years that there were two schools of thoughts on how to force Japan to surrender without using the A-bomb.

1) On is an invasion of the home island with its huge casualties on both sides. The Japanese were renowned for fighting to the death.

2) The other is that Japan would have been forced to surrender in time because it is an island nation and it was surrounded by the Allied forces.
 
Rockslinger said:
I didn't read the book but I heard over the years that there were two schools of thoughts on how to force Japan to surrender without using the A-bomb.

1) On is an invasion of the home island with its huge casualties on both sides. The Japanese were renowned for fighting to the death.

2) The other is that Japan would have been forced to surrender in time because it is an island nation and it was surrounded by the Allied forces.
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In either case were the cost and casualties going to be worth the prize?

I am not judging whether the use of the nuclear devices was correct. That is a decsion we can beat to death 60 years after the fact . The decision was made at the time and with the information at hand.
 
Aardy, what is the scoop on what PoV the author takes?

The general opinion so far has always been that fighting in Japan would have been a bugger - if only because they never conceded defeat and just holed up and kept shooting.

OTOH, they were sorely fucked by late 45, even without the A-Bomb. Now that Adolf was kaput, EVERYONE was planning a visit to Japan. So the Japanese would have been horribly shit-kicked and basically blown back into the stone age, even without nukes. The USN and RN were routinely patrolling off the Japanese shore and the USAAF and USN were routinely bombing anything that moved. The Japanese had no oil and they had no homeland resources.

Uncle Joe Stalin had pocketed Manchuria and North Korea and the next stop on his Far East tour was Hokkaido. The Ivans already had the neighbouring island of Sakhalin as a staging post.

Maybe that's why the US dropped the big one (twice). Otherwise, the West would be sharing Tokyo with the commies, like it shared Berlin.
 
[QUOTE=oagre;2871843]Aardy, what is the scoop on what PoV the author takes?

The general opinion so far has always been that fighting in Japan would have been a bugger - if only because they never conceded defeat and just holed up and kept shooting.

OTOH, they were sorely fucked by late 45, even without the A-Bomb. Now that Adolf was kaput, EVERYONE was planning a visit to Japan. So the Japanese would have been horribly shit-kicked and basically blown back into the stone age, even without nukes.[/QUOTE]Christmas is coming. . . .

It is a remarkably complex book, however D. M. Giangreco, points out that Japan was in a far, far better position than the Allies thought. And had the Allies succeded it would probably have taken two years. And what mood would particularly the U.S. have been by then.

The following lecture delivered while he was working on this book gives a taste of it. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm
 
Imagine if Truman had never used the A bomb and later it was revealed that the US gov't had such a miracle weapon and didn't use it to win the war.
 
It would be interesting to see someone as well briefed as the author argue the other side of the case. It would need a thorough knowledge of topographical conditions on Kyushu to even begin.

It is my guess that the Japanese would be fighting a 2 Front war, as the Russians would invade the north.

Then there is the thorny question of whether Japanese morale would hold up through an invasion of their homeland by a vastly superior force.

Few people appreciate how costly fighting in WW2 actually was. As the author notes, the western allies had done relatively little intense ground fighting. The NW Europe campaign had lasted under a year and featured long periods of calm to counterbalance the hard warfare during Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. On the Eastern Front, where you had continuous large-scale violence, both German and Russian losses were immense.

It would have been more than understandable for the US high command to wish to avoid this type of blood-letting in Japan.
 
james t kirk said:
Imagine if Truman had never used the A bomb and later it was revealed that the US gov't had such a miracle weapon and didn't use it to win the war.
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I've said the same before. It is my belief that President Truman would have been Impeached and Convicted.

I took a seminar on this topic as an Undergraduate with a Professor who at the time was considered one of the leading scholars in this area. I don't claim to be an expert, but even this number of years later, hopefully something rubbed off.
 
james t kirk said:
Imagine if Truman had never used the A bomb and later it was revealed that the US gov't had such a miracle weapon and didn't use it to win the war.
Click to expand...
Edward S. Miller, the author of War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 writes of Hell to Pay:

"Truman unleashed the atomic bomb to avoid the appalling casualties of invading Japan. Revisionists condemn the morality of the war-ending 'miracle of deliverance' by belittling the butcher's bill. Tapping little-known American and Japanese records of 1945, D. M. Giangreco lays bare the gruesome bloodbath had Operation Downfall been launched. Case closed."

As I say read the book, see if you agree.

I'm not making a dime off of it, and have no connection with the author.
 
I'm certainly not faulting Truman. I am sure that he wrestled with his conscience for the rest of his life. In the end, I'm sure that he saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides

Fact is, more people died in conventional bombing raids against Tokyo than died in Nagasaki or Hiroshima. The incredible display of the fire power of the A bomb convinced the Japanese that their struggle was futile. Thank Christ for that.
 
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