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Considering that the Japanese where ready for full scale war against a US invasion, even using old people and children against the invaders... I can't alse eve

Considering that the Japanese where ready for full scale war against a US invasion, even using old people and children against the invaders... I can't alse even imagine the scale of bloodshed that an amphibian landing in the style of Normandy would cost in dead soldiers for a territory the size of japan. It was also a great bluff for the Americans, because after they used where able to produce 4 bombs. They tested on in the desert, droped 2 in japan they got only one left after that they where saving to clean the beaches for a possible invasion.

ble 5y ago
What evidence is there, other than propaganda on both sides, that the Japanese were ready to use old people and children in a military defense?
- brimble 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_use_of_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_use... Also, Germany did something very similar near the end of the war, as they got desperate for manpower and fighting moved into their own territory. [EDIT] Oh, and see farther down the page for, "Civilian losses, suicides, and atrocities". The lived experience of Okinawa (one of only a couple "home" territories for Japan that the US invaded before the bombs) was surely part of why so many expected an invasion of Japan to be a bitter, horrifying bloodbath.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    If anything, when a country signals their willingness to use their children and grandparents as canon fodder -- it shows how close to collapse they really are (and that they know they are very close to collapse).
  - ble 5y ago
    Read a little further down and the description has a different character: the Imperial Japanese Army showed, at best, an indifference to the lives of Japanese and indigenous civilians in Okinawa. Worse than the indifference, they propagandized civilians to believe that the Americans would rape, murder, and torture them and encouraged them to commit suicide or to launch suicide attacks and otherwise tried to maneuver civilians into harm's way. At the time it probably did look like civilians were being turned into defensive soldiers- in the fullness of time, I think it looks more like a desperate and cruel army brutalizing a civilian population, sometimes pushing them into harm's way. I'd also presume that the treatment of the civilian population was worse for indigenous Okinawans-- maybe even today Okinawans can find themselves treated as 'not real Japanese'. It's been a while since I read 'Embracing Defeat' but I recall its summary of the state of Japan towards the end of the war and a lecturer saying, in effect, that nobody had to invade Japan to cause the deaths of millions, the supply chain (Asian mainland colonies collapsing) / labor (men at all near military age gone to war and many of them dead or captured) / agricultural situation was so dire that the U.S. could have set a blockade and millions of Japanese would have died with 0 fighting. The counter-argument to the necessity of the bombs is basically that the U.S. knew Japan could not effectively resist and though the U.S. might not have had a way of guessing, the highest levels of Japanese government were already in the process of discussing when and how to surrender right around the time the bombs were dropped. IIRC about the emperor's message of surrender, the bombs may have made it easier for the emperor to preserve face when surrendering, as such weapons make it easier to justify a surrender as a positive action.
    - major505 5y ago
      They saw a city disappear from the map in a matter of seconds and did not surrendered. After the second bomb, some officials tried to kidnap the Emperor, in his way to the radio where he would do the surrender spech so they could continue the war.
  - major505 5y ago
    I think there was even a american soldier that was hited by a crossbow.
- major505 5y ago
  Even today, when doing constructions, sometimes japaneses works find weapons bunkers, that where to be used for the population in the last stand against western invaders. That would be very prudish for Japan standarts in wwii. The things they pulled in China and Indoshina would compete with the worst things that where made in the European Concentration camps. Theo only reason they did not put Japan in a trial in the style of Nuremberg, was was the location of Japan, closer to the Soviet Union and later China. If not for that, Emperor Hirohito and many of his followers would find themselfs in the end of a very short rope.
rmason 5y ago
My late father who lived to 101 always felt Truman was the greatest president of his lifetime because he authorized use of those two atomic bombs. See my father knew he would have been part of that invasion of the Japanese mainland. At the end of his life nothing angered him more than people trying to say that decision was a mistake. I told him that these advocates weren't alive at the time and thus couldn't understand his point of view. They focus on what horrible destruction it caused and not the price Americans would pay if it had not been used. If there had been a ground invasion of Japan far more people would have died, both Japanese and Americans.

ble 5y ago

What evidence is there, other than propaganda on both sides, that the Japanese were ready to use old people and children in a military defense?

brimble 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_use_of_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_use... Also, Germany did something very similar near the end of the war, as they got desperate for manpower and fighting moved into their own territory. [EDIT] Oh, and see farther down the page for, "Civilian losses, suicides, and atrocities". The lived experience of Okinawa (one of only a couple "home" territories for Japan that the US invaded before the bombs) was surely part of why so many expected an invasion of Japan to be a bitter, horrifying bloodbath.
- vanusa 5y ago
  If anything, when a country signals their willingness to use their children and grandparents as canon fodder -- it shows how close to collapse they really are (and that they know they are very close to collapse).
- ble 5y ago
  Read a little further down and the description has a different character: the Imperial Japanese Army showed, at best, an indifference to the lives of Japanese and indigenous civilians in Okinawa. Worse than the indifference, they propagandized civilians to believe that the Americans would rape, murder, and torture them and encouraged them to commit suicide or to launch suicide attacks and otherwise tried to maneuver civilians into harm's way. At the time it probably did look like civilians were being turned into defensive soldiers- in the fullness of time, I think it looks more like a desperate and cruel army brutalizing a civilian population, sometimes pushing them into harm's way. I'd also presume that the treatment of the civilian population was worse for indigenous Okinawans-- maybe even today Okinawans can find themselves treated as 'not real Japanese'. It's been a while since I read 'Embracing Defeat' but I recall its summary of the state of Japan towards the end of the war and a lecturer saying, in effect, that nobody had to invade Japan to cause the deaths of millions, the supply chain (Asian mainland colonies collapsing) / labor (men at all near military age gone to war and many of them dead or captured) / agricultural situation was so dire that the U.S. could have set a blockade and millions of Japanese would have died with 0 fighting. The counter-argument to the necessity of the bombs is basically that the U.S. knew Japan could not effectively resist and though the U.S. might not have had a way of guessing, the highest levels of Japanese government were already in the process of discussing when and how to surrender right around the time the bombs were dropped. IIRC about the emperor's message of surrender, the bombs may have made it easier for the emperor to preserve face when surrendering, as such weapons make it easier to justify a surrender as a positive action.
  - major505 5y ago
    They saw a city disappear from the map in a matter of seconds and did not surrendered. After the second bomb, some officials tried to kidnap the Emperor, in his way to the radio where he would do the surrender spech so they could continue the war.
- major505 5y ago
  I think there was even a american soldier that was hited by a crossbow.
major505 5y ago
Even today, when doing constructions, sometimes japaneses works find weapons bunkers, that where to be used for the population in the last stand against western invaders. That would be very prudish for Japan standarts in wwii. The things they pulled in China and Indoshina would compete with the worst things that where made in the European Concentration camps. Theo only reason they did not put Japan in a trial in the style of Nuremberg, was was the location of Japan, closer to the Soviet Union and later China. If not for that, Emperor Hirohito and many of his followers would find themselfs in the end of a very short rope.

rmason 5y ago

My late father who lived to 101 always felt Truman was the greatest president of his lifetime because he authorized use of those two atomic bombs. See my father knew he would have been part of that invasion of the Japanese mainland. At the end of his life nothing angered him more than people trying to say that decision was a mistake. I told him that these advocates weren't alive at the time and thus couldn't understand his point of view. They focus on what horrible destruction it caused and not the price Americans would pay if it had not been used. If there had been a ground invasion of Japan far more people would have died, both Japanese and Americans.