Best strategy to avoid nuking Japan

[Readie]

I totally agree with you Tom and well said.
Which is why the revisionists make me sick trying to rewrite history so as to make the vanquished the seemingly innocent party.

 

[davebender]

With a more competent U.S. Army commander Japan will be throwing in the towel long before August 1945.

 

[Junglerot]

Dave -

What do you have against "Dugout" Doug? The defense of the Philippines was horrific but he learned from his mistakes and I always thought his campaign in the SW Pacific and the liberation of the Philippines were well conducted. He was a prima donna that made Montgomery and Patton look like they were suffering from low self-esteem issues but I don't see how he delayed VJ Day.

 

[davebender]

What is your standard for "well conducted"?

Gen MacArthur largely destroyed the city of Manila while defeating IJN defenders.

Gen MacArthur never defeated IJA defenders on Luzon commanded by Gen Yamashita. IJA forces marched into captivity after Japanese government ordered them to surrender.

 

[Junglerot]

Achieving strategic objectives quickly with low casualties. Allied forces captured Manila, Manila Bay, Subic Bay and Clark Airfield. IJA forces retreated into the hills where they were contained by PI and US forces. For all the strategic effect these troops had, they might as well been in a US POW camp. The Battle of Manila was a tragedy that resulted in high civilian casualties and the destruction of cultural and historical landmarks, but I'm not sure what you think MacArthur was supposed to do with 16,000 hostile Japanese in the city. He did eliminate them with low allied military casualties.

 

[nuuumannn]

The elephant in the room was of course the the USSR. The dropping of the bombs was not entirely to achieve a military objective.

Yes, and we all know how that went. Stalin was given plenty of opportunity after the war to witness test evaluation material in an attempt to frighten him into not acting rashly over Berlin, but it just convinced him more that he must have one and he had set his go-to guy, sexual predator Beria onto the task...

A little off-topic, I know

 

[GrauGeist]

Gen MacArthur largely destroyed the city of Manila while defeating IJN defenders.

In all honesty, this isn't the first time a city has been destroyed while dislodging defenders.

We can start with Carthage and work our way up the extremely long list until we get to the 20th century and the Phillipine campaign...

 

[Junglerot]

I'd like to get back on point a little bit. Not that the liberation of the Philippines isn't a fascinating subject, if for no other reason than my old man liberated them and he even had a bit of ribbon to prove it.

First of all I don't think the atomic bombs were universally seen as war enders. The Tokyo fire bombings were as destructive as either atomic bombings. Other major cities had been destroyed nearly as thoroughly. The Japanese economy was nonexistent. I recommend Lizzie Collingham's "The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food." Her chapter on Japan is revealing. In the summer of 1945 malnutrition was rampant and mass starvation was imminent. The mining of the Inland Sea and the naval blockade were continuing. If all of this failed to get the Japanese to surrender, how could we expect the destruction of two more cities to change their minds. So it wasn't a choice between atomic bombs and other strategies, it was a policy of using every available weapon. My understanding is that there were plans being developed to use atomic bombs tactically as part of Operation Coronet.

I'm not sure how much validity this trope that the effectiveness of submarine operations against Japan is underappreciated has. Certainly since the publication of Clay Blair's "Silent Victory" in 1975, sub ops have been well recognized. Naval historians have given sub ops a lotta attention. I've even got a book just on surface actions by US subs lying around somewhere.

 

[tyrodtom]

I think there wouls be a great deal of difference in the effect it would have on the enemy's moral, when suddenly you can do the same damage with one bomb and one aircraft, what formally took hundreds of aircraft and thousands of bombs.

Some of the hard core military might have looked forward to going out in a final blaze of glory in a banzai charge. It probably didn't help their moral very much when they realized they might just end up a pile of ashes and have zero chance to hurt the enemy with their sacrifice,

 

[dobbie]

Dropping the nukes on Japan was probably as much a political as a military decision. With the expected number of casualties projected in the invasion of the mainland and Truman not using everything in the arsenal to end it, I think Harry would have been in a lot of trouble with the American people.

 

[bobbysocks]

i dont know if you could really get away without use of nukes or some extremely devistating strategy. i just watched a program about the invasion of okinawa. the tenacity of the japanese forces there...they way they were dug in...how they fought pretty much sealed the deal. the battle was horrendous for us forces and showed that the japanese were not about to surrender. the delay in taking hte island cost the us navy direly in lost ships. this was assumed to be a preview of an invasion of mainland japan. the landing probably would have been unopposed as it was on oki. the japanese forces would have picked their battle ground very carefully and made the allied forces pay dearly for every inch. even after dropping 2 nukes there was a large faction in the japanese military that wanted to still fight on. there was a failed coup iirc that was going to stop the emperor from making his broadcast of surrender. there is no way you are not going to have a very costly invasion...even with air supremacy and naval bombardment.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Dropping the nukes on Japan was probably as much a political as a military decision. With the expected number of casualties projected in the invasion of the mainland and Truman not using everything in the arsenal to end it, I think Harry would have been in a lot of trouble with the American people.

I think you're spot on there - my dad was discharged earlier in the war but was still on re-call. He and his brother served together and his brother got called up just after V-E day. He was waiting on his notice when the war ended. I think the American people wanted the war to end quickly and looked at the atomic bomb as a godsend.

 

[gumbyk]

Any invaders to thier homeland would be met with extreme determination and sacrifice.

That's pretty much the opposite of how the occupation force was received though. There was some apprehension from the Japanese civilians, until they met (most of) the forces.

 

[stona]

That's pretty much the opposite of how the occupation force was received though. There was some apprehension from the Japanese civilians, until they met (most of) the forces.

But that was after the Japanese surrender. Early footage shows the Japanese population turning their backs to the occupying forces which, though easily misinterpreted by westerners, was a sign of respect.

American records and the memoirs of the men who were involved in the decision making make it evident that there were military alternatives to either the use of atomic weapons or an invasion of the Japanese home islands. The decision to use the bombs was not purely military but had a lot to do with the US achieving their post war geopolitical objectives in the region. As I suggested earlier, the imminent arrival of the USSR in the area concentrated American minds rather sharply.

No matter which course had been taken hundreds of thousands (at least) of Japanese would have died. A blockade had the potential to starve millions and don't imagine for one second that it wouldn't have been done.
There was also the possibility of very large numbers of Americans and their allies dying in an invasion.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Shinpachi]

That's pretty much the opposite of how the occupation force was received though. There was some apprehension from the Japanese civilians, until they met (most of) the forces.

Those Japanese impression of Americans above all interested and motivated me to learn English spontaneously.
I don't think there was any chance to avoid atomic bombs as Japanese would have used it first if they had been so wise as to develop it by themselves.
Japanese surrender came from a honest feeling of awe to American scientists.

 

[bob44]

Another thing to consider, as far as a blockade and starving the Japanese to surrender, time. You cannot keep a huge army/navy just sitting around hoping for a surrender. Also the people back home were getting sick of the war. A surrender needed to happen now.

 

[gumbyk]

What about involving the Chinese?
Equipping and training them to take a leading role in a blockade

 

[GrauGeist]

What about involving the Chinese?
Equipping and training them to take a leading role in a blockade

How much time are you willing to invest in this project? The idea is to bring the war to a quick and decisive conclusion.

Also, which Chinese forces? The Nationalists or the Communists?

 

[glennasher]

I think the blockade on Japan was a raging success. Nothing at all could get to Japan on water, and that was from late '44 onwards. The firebombings rendered most cities unliveable, and the carriers were offshore whenever they chose to be offshore.

But I don't think the war could have ended any quicker without the nukes. Terrible as it is to say it, it was necessary to use them. If a "demonstration" drop had failed, it would have no doubt prolonged the war, giving the Japanese a false hope that would have killed millions of them, AND Allied troops. While hardly "kind", it was perhaps kinder than an invasion.

 

[Shinpachi]

This thread looks interesting to me because I think if we can find a good answer we may be able to let North Koreans open their doors without using our military power now. Their style is a copy of pre-war Japanese.