The Only Correct Decision, Part IIDropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only justified, but the best possible decision given the circumstances.
This is the second part of a three-part series of historical essays breaking down the decision and impact of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. You can find Part I and Part III here. The AlternativesThere were multiple potential alternatives to the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, all of which were intended to drive the Japanese to eventual surrender on Allied terms. Some were more viable and heavily considered than others, but none were as optimal a choice – for either the Allies or the Japanese public – as the actual historical outcome of the atomic bombings. There were two major alternative options presented to Truman, as well as two other choices that revisionist historians focus on but were never really considered, for reasons we shall explore. InvasionThe most likely alternative to the atomic bombings was to follow the European playbook and engage in a full-scale ground invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. As we have seen, this strategy was already well underway in the Pacific theater, as the Allies fought tooth-and-nail through the islands of the Central and South Pacific, facing increasingly heavy casualties as they approached the Home Islands of the Japanese Empire. Based on all the evidence gathered through the hard-fought campaigns of 1943 and 1944, Allied military planners saw no alternative to forcing Japanese capitulation besides a series of massive amphibious invasions in both southern and central Japan. Truman was presented with two primary plans under the codename Downfall, one of which would pave the way for the other. The first invasion plan, codenamed Olympic, was meant to invade and occupy the majority of the southernmost main island of the Japanese homeland, Kyushu. If successful, this would allow the Allies to build up a massive aerial force with which to assault the remainder of Japan, all based on land and much harder to destroy or disrupt than carrier-based aircraft. From airstrips in Kyushu, the whole of the Japanese Home Islands would be reachable without needing refueling, extra gas tanks, or powerful naval support. Land-based escort fighters could then support the bombing raids, providing further cover for the B-29s that would ravage the Japanese motherland and help soften the ground for the second invasion. The bases built on Kyushu would also allow staging for that second invasion, codenamed Coronet and targeted directly at the heart of the Empire: Tokyo. Even with these dual hammer blows against the Japanese heartland, US planners did not foresee an end to fighting; they firmly believed – with good reason – that the Japanese military would have to be defeated in detail across the remainder of the Japanese islands, as well as the Asian mainland regions where they still held territory and had significant troop strength. Olympic was the first planned invasion and the only one specifically approved by President Truman; Coronet would have to wait until later. Even then, this single operation was a massive undertaking, one that would be almost exclusively American in planning and execution. X-Day, the tentative opening of the invasion, was scheduled for November 1, 1945 (Coronet, if approved, would not be launched until March of 1946). Its naval support was primarily provided by aircraft carriers, both American and British. The US Third and Fifth Fleets would bring sixteen fleet carriers and six light carriers, while the UK would make available six fleet and four light carriers from their Pacific Fleet. Altogether, these carriers would marshal nearly 2,000 aircraft in support of the invasion. The land component was even more staggering in its planned scale. The American Sixth Army was the primary force meant to take the southern third of Kyushu, which planners believed would suffice to beat back most Japanese resistance and accomplish the planned objectives of the mission. Its total manpower would include more than 766,000 troops, 252,150 of whom would be first-line combat soldiers. The invasion would have 134,000 vehicles and nearly 1.5 million tons of materiel in support, plus 1,300 amphibious assault ships and almost 2,800 aircraft from 40 air groups. The invasion would include tanks, transport vehicles, light, medium, and heavy bombers, fighter aircraft, paratroopers, construction battalions, and artillery. Coronet, if it was to be approved, would be even larger, with over a million troops, about 200,000 vehicles, 3,300 of which were aircraft, and over 2.5 million tons of materiel. Both of these operations would dwarf the D-Day invasions at Normandy – the largest amphibious invasion in world history – which had 150,000 front-line combat troops, only 73,000 of which were American. Several headwinds faced the invasion forces. First, the timeline was a challenge. Americans at home were becoming weary of war, after nearly four years of brutal combat across much of the world. Not only had their sons, brothers, and fathers been sent abroad to fight against our totalitarian enemies, the men and women on the home front had seen their lives drastically upended to support the war effort. Factories were shifted to focus almost exclusively on war production, food and goods were rationed, and the American government became a powerful force in the daily lives of citizens, restricting the liberties that Americans had come to view as their birthright. After the defeat of the Nazis, the average American sought a rapid end to the conflict, something that multiple invasions would likely not suffice to do. That would cause serious problems domestically, which the Japanese were banking on. The invasion forces would also have internal issues in terms of morale, skill, and available soldiers. The units committed to Olympic had already been heavily bloodied during the Pacific campaign, sapping their strength and diminishing their morale. Altogether, they had suffered nearly 75,000 casualties over the course of the combat against Japan, including more than 17,500 battle deaths. These casualties were incurred in the course of absolutely frantic fighting that took not only a physical, but a severe mental toll on the troops involved. Another problem related to the partial demobilization that the United States began after the victory in Europe. Troops that had significant service time were getting relieved and sent back to the States for a much-needed recovery process, whether they had served in Europe or Asia. This was important and necessary, but also left the Pacific with either troops redeployed from Germany or relatively green soldiers with little combat experience. The difference in the nature of the combat against Japan necessitated retraining, as did the incorporation of new troops into existing combat units. General Dwight Eisenhower believed that these troops would need about six months of training to become combat effective. X-Day for Olympic was less than six months after V-E Day, leaving less time for training than necessary. All of this militated in favor of enhanced casualties as compared to even the Okinawa invasion. Additionally, the invasion planners operated under four key assumptions: that the Japanese would do everything possible to defeat an American invasion, including operationalizing a “fanatically hostile population”; that the Olympic invasion would only face six divisions on Kyushu, three in the north and three in the south; that the Japanese Army could reinforce those forces to no more than ten divisions; and that there would be fewer than 2,500 aircraft in the Japanese arsenal with which to defend against Olympic. As would come to pass, many of these assumptions were found to be significantly flawed. An old adage of military planning is that the enemy gets a vote; in this case, that vote would be quite significant. The Japanese were not going to take this invasion lying down and they were very well-prepared to wreak havoc on the invaders. The Imperial Japanese Army was ready for Olympic. Their war plan, codenamed Ketsu-Go (Decisive Operation) was meant to inflict maximum casualties on the American invaders, sapping morale and hopefully achieving a compromise peace. And this was eminently possible. Japanese military planners staked everything on the defense of Kyushu, sending massive numbers of men, tons of materiel, and an enormous number of aircraft to the island. The Japanese, despite not having broken Allied codes, positioned their defenders on Kyushu almost perfectly. They chose the exact US landing spots to dig in and fight back, both by luck and careful understanding of the terrain and potential American objectives. The fortifications built on Kyushu rivaled those of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, boding ill for a quick US campaign to overwhelm the defenders. There were networks of underground tunnels, hidden airstrips to be used for kamikaze attacks, and entrenched positions that would be extremely difficult to uproot without close-quarters combat. And this was what existed at the end of the war in August 1945; the defenders would have had 76 further days with which to enhance their already formidable defenses. The Japanese troop strength on Kyushu was also much higher than American military planners anticipated. Olympic would likely have faced upwards of 900,000 Japanese defenders, at least 280,000 of which were well-trained combat troops. The sizable increase in Japanese troops on Kyushu stunned American planners, so much so that many, including the commanding General Douglas MacArthur, believed the information gleaned from ULTRA intercepts was false. Additionally, the Japanese totally mobilized the civilian population of Kyushu to serve in combat and adjacent roles. The Japanese military promulgated an operational directive that read “The inhabitants will dedicate their lives along with the Army to the defense of the nation,” a recipe for mass death and a total repudiation of the traditional distinction between combatants and noncombatants. This would have made Kyushu into a charnel house of killing, forcing the Allies to treat each and every Japanese person they encountered as potentially hostile. This sort of combat would have been entirely different than that of the European theater, taking a far greater toll on both sides and sapping Allied morale. Ground troops were only part of the Japanese resistance strategy; they also were planning to rely heavily on suicide tactics, from aerial attacks and suicide torpedoes to fast-boats equipped with large explosive charges and frogmen who would self-detonate upon contact with American troopships. The Japanese believed they could launch upwards of 300 to 400 kamikaze planes every hour, targeting the transports that would deliver American soldiers to the beaches of Kyushu. The tightly-packed transports, combined with the favorable topography of Kyushu as compared to Okinawa, would have made these suicide attacks far more effective and deadly, even with more poorly-trained pilots. Unlike in previous battles, the Japanese planned to use all available aircraft in suicide missions, another factor playing to their advantage. By all estimates, kamikaze attacks would likely have sunk or damaged about a third of the invasion fleet, causing approximately 13,000 fatalities among American servicemen before they reached shore, more than died from all combat on the day of the Normandy landings. The Japanese military leadership, both on the ground in Kyushu and at the Tokyo headquarters, was confident that they could succeed in bloodying the Americans enough to achieve a favorable peace, something attested to by the historical record. Major General Joichiro Sanada, a key frontline commander, remarked in June 1945 that: “The morale of all front-line forces, from army and division commanders on down, is excellent. In view of their advantages of ample equipment, naval strategy, and favorable terrain, I believe that the first wave of enemy troops could surely be pushed back into the sea.” The Japanese repeated this belief after the war’s conclusion as well. Major General Masakazu Amano, Chief of the Operations Section stated:
The chief of Japanese military intelligence concurred, explaining their strategy thusly: “If we could defeat the enemy in Kyushu or inflict tremendous losses, forcing him to realize the strong fighting spirit of the Japanese Army and people, it would be possible, we hoped, to bring about the termination of hostilities on comparably favorable terms.” This attitude went straight to the top of the Japanese military and political hierarchy, militating against any sort of surrender before the decisive battle was met. But could Japan have actually inflicted enough death and destruction on the Americans to force a war-weary nation to give up the push for unconditional surrender? By all historical and contemporary evidence, the answer is likely yes. Casualty estimates varied widely, both during and after the war, but all would have been devastating. Truman was either stonewalled entirely or deliberately given estimates on the very low end of the range by his military advisors, most of whom saw him as a neophyte who would have to be managed in a way his predecessor Roosevelt did not. Even so, he was told that between 31,000 and 41,000 Americans would become casualties in the first month of the Olympic campaign, about the same as the first thirty days of the Normandy invasion. The actual estimates hidden from Truman’s view were far worse, ranging from 49,000 in the thirty days after X-Day on the low end to more than 200,000 casualties over the course of the campaign to pacify Kyushu. These contemporary estimates were made with the understanding that Japanese strength on Kyushu was less than what actually existed in reality, as US planners did not understand the scope of Japanese defenses. If one includes postwar analyses of potential casualties, the numbers rise further. Several estimates suggest that the overall pacification of Japan, if done primarily via invasion, would have potentially killed upwards of 100,000 Americans in addition to another 400,000 wounded. Some historians and analysts believe that the US would have suffered more than one million casualties in the invasion campaign, more than double the number of Americans killed and about equal to the total casualties they suffered during the entire war. For comparison purposes, the multinational Operation Overlord, which began with D-Day in Normandy and continued for several months, resulted in 209,000 Allied casualties, many of which were suffered by British and other Commonwealth forces. And the Japanese death toll would have absolutely dwarfed that potentially faced by the Americans. If the resistance offered during the 1943, 1944, and early 1945 campaigns was anything to go by, nearly the entire Japanese garrison on Kyushu would have had to have been killed to achieve victory. That alone approaches nearly one million deaths, before any civilian fatalities are taken into account. Given the civilian population of Kyushu – about four million or so in summer 1945 – even a ten percent fatality rate (a fairly low estimate given the Japanese military directives to mobilize civilians) would have led to more than 350,000 deaths. These figures are only for Kyushu; as we have seen, most military planners on both sides saw secondary invasions of Honshu, centered around Tokyo, as necessary to conclude the war. The death toll of that combat would be an extinction-level event for the Japanese people, easily killing millions. Suffice it to say, a strategy of invasion would have been apocalyptic in terms of total casualties and deaths on all sides of the fighting. The destruction would have eclipsed that of the atomic bombings by an order of magnitude, if not more. Still, there was at least one other strongly-considered option to force Japanese capitulation: blockade and bombardment.
Blockade and BombardmentThe other primary alternative to the atomic bombing strategy was a massive conventional war against Japan from the air and the sea. This strategy had been part of US military planning for a potential war against Japan since well before the start of the Second World War. War Plan Orange, initially developed in 1906 and revised over the decades leading up to Pearl Harbor, was heavily reliant on naval blockade and, after airpower was shown to be effective in World War I, aerial bombardment. The basic outline of this strategy was already in place by 1923, when the draft war plan stated that the overall campaign would be “directed towards the isolation of Japan through control of all waters surrounding Japan, through the equivalent of blockade operations, and through the capture and occupation of all outlying Japanese islands, intensified by an air war over Japanese territory.” Up through June 1945, as we have seen, the US military followed this plan almost to a T. They took the outlying islands, established naval dominance in the seas surrounding the Japanese homeland, and were well on the way to gaining total supremacy in the skies over the Home Islands. This strategy was one that had been based partially on the highly effective British blockade of Germany during the First World War. Unlike prior historic blockades, which, under agreed maritime law, targeted specific ports of an enemy power and only interdicted explicitly military contraband, the British totally redefined the concept in its total war against the German Empire. It launched the blockade very early in the conflict, seeing it as a key factor in any potential victory against the continental power based in Berlin. It did not use a strategy of close blockade, shutting off port access directly, but one of distant blockade, targeting and stopping ships far away from German-controlled shores. It therefore interdicted commerce heading not only to German ports directly, but also to those neutral ports that were likely to transship materiel to Germany. It did not only seize and disrupt commerce in weapons and materiel, but interdicted all commerce, from direct military assets to fuel, raw materials, and even food. London dictated that all German imports had potential military value, a not-unreasonable assumption in an age of total warfare, when civilians were universally viewed as legitimate targets. This strategy was incredibly successful in starving the German military machine of all potential external aid. It forced German soldiers into privation and reduced their caloric intake significantly, dampening morale and the ability to execute the massive offensive pushes that were necessary to break the deadlock on the Western Front. Germany had to scramble to find alternative sources of food, fuel, and the raw materials needed to create weapons and combat vehicles. But it also had a profound impact on noncombatants. German civilians in cities and the countryside, particularly the weaker members of society – the elderly, young, and infirm – were deprioritized in favor of the army, leading to mass starvation and large-scale death. Over half a million German civilians died due to the blockade, after being forced by circumstance to eat cats, dogs, shoe leather, roots, and tree bark. The privation was also a key factor in the eventual German revolution that effectively ended the war, as the restive populace was heavily incentivized to overthrow the Kaiser and his military government. American war planners saw this success as a model to be emulated, as it would save the potentially massive US casualties caused by an invasion and would not be an unprecedented alteration of the traditional laws of war. The blockade and bombardment strategy was unanimously supported by Allied military and political leaders, even those who argued against invasion or atomic bombing. Of course, it would be devastating to the civilian population of Japan, but American decisionmakers were far less concerned with that outcome than modern political and military leaders are. To parties engaged in a total war, civilians were inseparable from the broader war machine in which they played a key role, producing materiel, growing food, and otherwise supporting the war effort. This was not a policy inaugurated by the Allies, but by the Germans, Japanese, and Italians, all of whom deliberately assaulted civilians of the nations they invaded without cause. Japan was particularly atrocious on this front, killing perhaps more than ten million Chinese civilians during the course of the conflict – not to mention those of other conquered nations – and subjugating the local populations into something nigh-indistinguishable from slavery. Of the approximately 600,000 enslaved Asian civilians, upwards of 290,000 died. The Japanese routinely tortured, maimed, and murdered prisoners of war; the death rate for Allied POWs in Japanese custody was a shocking 35 percent, compared to a mere 0.9 percent for those held by the Nazis. One former American prisoner of the Japanese wrote of the conditions he and his fellows faced, saying it “was like being caught in a twentieth century version of the Black Plague.” The Japanese high command issued orders to execute each and every Allied prisoner if there was even a chance at their liberation, endangering the lives of nearly 150,000 people. Treating the Japanese as they had treated and would continue to treat others, including American citizens, POWs, and subjects, was entirely acceptable by the standards of the day. And the American ability to enforce a blockade was far greater than that of their British predecessors. They controlled the seas around Japan to a far greater degree than the British did vis a vis Germany, having largely defeated the bulk of the Japanese navy. Japanese merchant shipping, as we have seen, was decimated and almost entirely confined to internal ports, sometimes completely unable even to transit Japanese territorial waters. While the British blockade was primarily enforced in the North Sea, English Channel, and the Atlantic, the American blockade would combine the comprehensive nature of the British with the historic strategy of the close blockade, making it nearly impossible for external shipping to reach Japanese waters. Ports were systematically destroyed from the air and the sea, rendering them unfit for acceptance of large cargoes, even if they were to somehow elude the blockade. Ports were not the only targets for attack, both from air and sea. Strategic and saturation bombing was the norm, as all the evidence thus far has shown. Japanese cities were devastated, its already-lackluster internal transportation systems were degraded, and industrial and agricultural production was reduced to a fraction of its peak. The main Japanese island, Honshu, relied heavily on imports for its survival, both of food and other materiel. A ramped-up bombardment campaign would have made the parlous situation of German civilians in 1918 look positively rosy in comparison. And the Allies were in an excellent position to make that happen. After supporting the successful invasion of Okinawa, the American carrier fleet was freed up for operations against the Japanese mainland. The new airfields that campaign unlocked were ready to be used to bolster that naval attack with massive sorties of the devastating B-29 Superfortress bomber. Given the brutality of Japanese fighting over the prior three years, the Americans were itching to return the favor. Combat sorties would have been increased dramatically. In the year leading up to the war’s end in August 1945, airwings based in the Mariana Islands dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on the Japanese mainland; US planners estimated that amount would have been matched in less than three months under the new system. This would have laid waste to Japan and rendered tens of millions homeless and destitute. The Japanese military, being the foundation of the imperial state, would have been prioritized – just as the Germans did in the Great War. That would have put civilians in an even worse place. By the end of the war, before this campaign was able to take full effect, more than fifteen million were rendered homeless and about one-fifth of all Japanese housing stock was destroyed. Almost 750,000 Japanese civilians became casualties of this effort, with more than 200,000 dead – not including those killed by the atomic bombs. This was accomplished in a mere five months. A full bombardment campaign, continued until the Japanese government was forced to surrender, would have likely taken close to an additional year. The blockade would have caused even greater devastation. By the war’s end, Japan was facing mass famine. In 1945, the average Japanese civilian was subsisting on fewer than 1,700 calories a day, a recipe for malnutrition, starvation, and death. Rice crop failures in 1945, partially due to the pressures of war, would have reduced that daily caloric intake to a completely unsustainable 1,325 calories; and that was the most optimistic case presented by the Imperial Japanese government. It is estimated that between twenty and twenty-five percent of Japanese urban dwellers – the majority of Japanese citizens – were suffering from severe nutritional deficiencies, significantly increasing the rates of diseases like tuberculosis and beriberi. After Japan’s capitulation, Allied occupation forces faced the daunting task of delivering food to the now-defeated population, but struggled to deal with the scale of the problem. Food substitutes like roots, stems, leaves, insects, food production byproducts, acorns, and seaweeds were commonplace. Even then, rations fell to 800 calories per person per day. Contemporary estimates show that starvation death was a distinct possibility for more than ten million Japanese civilians, and this was after the war ended and the Allies were attempting to surge food aid into the country. That outcome did not occur, thankfully, but several hundred thousand did indeed perish from lack of sustenance and the concomitant diseases it brought. A strategy of blockade and bombardment would likely have led, eventually, to a Japanese surrender. But how much of Japan would be left standing? How many Japanese civilians would have died from exposure, firebombing, or simple hunger? It is undeniable that the toll would have far exceeded that of the atomic bombings. But what of the other purported alternatives – ones that, in reality, were never seriously considered by Allied leaders – that revisionist historians promote as ending the war earlier and with less death and destruction? We turn to those next.
Soviet Military InvolvementOne of the key narratives that the vast majority of revisionist historians attach themselves to is that the decisive factor in Japanese surrender was not the atomic bombs, but the entrance of the Soviet Union into the Pacific war. They argue that, even without the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet military might was well on the way to scaring Tokyo into submission. Concurrently, they claim that the real reason for the supposedly unnecessary atomic bombings was to fire the first shots in what would become the Cold War and cow the USSR, a force that served, in the revisionist telling, as the primary reason for the victory over the Nazis. There are myriad problems with this narrative. First, it was initially disseminated by the Soviets themselves and wholeheartedly embraced by their fellow travelers in the West. The idea that the USSR was some all-powerful force for good during World War II was one of the earliest revisionist narratives and was heavily promoted via Soviet propaganda. In reality, the USSR was an extremely inefficient fighting force that relied on mass human wave attacks, sacrificing scores of soldiers to accomplish objectives that would have been more easily achieved by better planning and strategy. The Red Army was supplied by the industrial powerhouse of the United States, yet this key aspect was conveniently left out of the telling. Another inconvenient fact often removed from the revisionist narrative is that the war in Europe began as a joint Nazi-Soviet project, where the two totalitarian powers combined to invade and conquer an independent Poland. The Soviets preferred to shift the focus away from these facts and towards their purported decisiveness in the Pacific. But that is itself a great exaggeration. The USSR did not declare war on Japan until August 8, 1945 – two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This declaration, issued three months after the German capitulation, was a long time in the making. It was pushed for by the Anglosphere allies as early as 1943, but Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stalled and sought to exact an extremely high price for their entry into the war. In October 1944, Stalin finally agreed to enter the conflict a few months after the defeat of the Nazis, assuring the Allies that the USSR would provide strategic air and naval bases for US and British forces in Russia’s far east, allowing direct strikes at northern Japan. In exchange, he sought massive infusions of military materiel, annexation of sizable parts of the Japanese Empire that were won by Japan in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, and territorial concessions in what was internationally recognized as Chinese lands. These demands, with very minor modifications, were begrudgingly accepted by Roosevelt and Churchill. Unsurprisingly, the proposed use of Soviet territory as a base never materialized and Stalin’s territorial appetite only grew with the eating. This became clear fairly quickly. In a late May 1945 cable from the very pro-Soviet (to put it mildly) American diplomat Harry Hopkins, it was made clear that Stalin was also interested in joining in the postwar occupation of the Japanese Home Islands. Still, most American decisionmakers, including Truman, were willing to look the other way to ensure Soviet engagement in mainland Asia against the significant Japanese forces still holding position therein. Even as the USSR began to consolidate its hold over Eastern Europe, often committing atrocities against locals and proving the true intentions of communist domination, the Truman administration sought cooperation and comity. They did not act like the next enemy was located in Moscow, but in Tokyo. As Stalin pushed for more concessions from China as an additional precondition for joining the war effort, the US tried to mediate in an effort to bring the Red Army in without betraying their longtime ally. The USSR only rushed into the war on August 8, temporarily dropping their Chinese territorial demands, because they feared a quick Japanese surrender after Hiroshima. The Soviet assault on Japanese forces was quick and deadly. The Red Army was far more experienced than the Japanese defenders and had much more effective military weaponry and technology. It also outnumbered the Japanese defenders significantly. Despite the Japanese army in Manchuria having a fearsome reputation in the early days of the war, it was denuded of this strength by mid-1945. The best troops in this region were redeployed to the Home Islands to combat the predicted American invasion, leaving the garrison with ill-equipped and poorly-trained soldiers that meaningfully underplayed their on-paper strength. Within a day, the Soviet advance had rapidly captured huge swathes of Manchuria and were poised to do the same on Sakhalin Island off the Russian coast. In Tokyo, however, the Soviet intervention was largely taken in stride. When told of the Soviet advance in Manchuria, the belligerent and extremely influential Army Minister Korechika Anami coolly stated to an aide that “The inevitable has come.” If anything, the Soviet invasion of Japanese holdings in mainland Asia was an incentive for an even more intransigent military to seize total control of the levers of power in Tokyo and rule with martial law, making an organized surrender far less likely and potentially creating the need to defeat the Japanese forces one-by-one in a long, drawn-out conflict. It would also bypass the civilian ministers who were more open to a potential surrender. Those ministers were indeed worried by the Soviet intervention, but their influence paled in comparison to that of the military. In the end, the Emperor would decide. As we shall see, he was influenced far more by the atomic bombings than the Russian attack. The Soviets did not drop their intention to share in the postwar occupation of Japan. In fact, they ramped up their push for this outcome. Within two days of joining the war that they had avoided for nearly four years, Moscow demanded that there should be two supreme military commanders for the Allies, one American and one Russian, a completely unacceptable ask for the Americans who almost singlehandedly won the Pacific war. They invaded the Korean Peninsula, pushing all the way to the 38th Parallel which demarcated the Soviet and US occupation zones. They took the majority of Sakhalin Island, mopping up Japanese resistance until early September. They invaded the Kuril Islands, Japanese territory that would serve as a springboard for a planned invasion of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost Home Island. The seizure of Hokkaido would have presented an enormous military and political opportunity for the Soviets, allowing them to guarantee a full place in the occupation of Japan. From there, advances on Honshu, the main Japanese island, would come next. Even after their demands for a joint occupation were rebuffed by the Americans and the Japanese government agreed to unconditional surrender, the Soviet military continued to make plans for further incursions into Japan. They sought to receive Japanese surrender on Hokkaido themselves, arguing that the Soviet public demanded it as recompense for the Japanese occupation of some Russian lands more than two decades earlier. This was a total nonstarter for the Americans, as it would reify Soviet claims to a joint occupation. Still, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, the USSR’s theater commander, moved forward with preparations for an invasion of Hokkaido. He sent messages to Moscow asking for permission to prepare the invasion, which were met with approval. His target date for the landing was August 22, a full week after the Japanese agreed to submit and four days after the Soviet demand for occupation was denied. The only factors stopping this from coming to fruition were continued Japanese fighting on Sakhalin – the launch point for the invasion – and Stalin’s last-minute reversal of his order to move forward with the plan. Otherwise, it is highly likely that the Red Army would have set foot on the Japanese Home Islands. In only a month of fighting, the Soviet-caused death toll for both Japanese combatants and civilians was astounding. Estimates vary as to combatants killed by the Soviet advance, but most historians agree that it was somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 Japanese troops, reservists, and local auxiliaries. The noncombatant death toll was far higher. Of about 2.7 million Japanese nationals captured, including soldiers, more than 375,000 died. A full two-thirds of this total were civilians, numbering at least 250,000. This exceeds the death tolls from the atomic bombings by a sizable margin. Had the Soviets invaded Hokkaido, another four million civilians would have been endangered. Had the fatality rate present in Manchuria been repeated in Hokkaido, over 400,000 civilians would have been killed. And that is to say nothing of the civilian population of northern Honshu, which was far more populous than the rugged Hokkaido. Avoiding the Soviet occupation and, realistically, long-term partition of Japan was a huge boon to Japan’s population and future. Instead of being consigned to the same fate as Korea, which has been split since 1945, Japan was able to move into the postwar era as a unified polity with exclusively American influence. It did not, as North Korea did, face the ravages of totalitarian communism. A partitioned Japan would have seen far more civilian death and deprivation and potentially an internal civil war between communist and capitalist forces. Given the incredible historical rise of Japan from the ashes of total war to become a well-respected, prosperous, and peaceful member of the international community, an alternate history of partition and communism would have been disastrous. So not only did the Soviet intervention not end the war, avoiding greater involvement from Moscow was a net benefit for the people of Japan.
Demonstration BombingThe other alternative that revisionists repeatedly push is the use of a demonstration bombing of an unpopulated area. This would involve notifying the Japanese of this novel weapon in advance, getting Japanese representatives to agree to watch the demonstration, and hoping that the destructive power of the atomic bomb would persuade the Imperial Japanese government to lay down its arms. It would avoid the civilian casualties caused by the dropping of these weapons on populated areas and, according to the revisionist narrative, end the war rapidly. This argument is completely ignorant of the historical reality and would never have been possible given the contemporary circumstances. There are very good reasons that this was never considered as an option by American decisionmakers, even those who were highly critical of using the bombs on cities. There are simply too many things that could go wrong to rely on demonstration bombing as a means of forcing Japanese capitulation. The selection of an unpopulated area could be fraught: What if it was too far from Japan? What if there were not enough structures in the area to showcase the immense power of the explosion? What if the observers were too close or too far from the explosion to properly understand its power? The notification to Tokyo about the demonstration could be ignored or put off as an attempt at deception. The plane dropping the bomb could have been intercepted and shot down, especially after notification. The Japanese could simply refuse to send an observer, or send an observer who was not influential enough with the military cadres or the Emperor, the keys to decision-making in Japan. The observer could come away unimpressed. The Japanese could move Allied POWs into the bombing zone or otherwise use the demonstration as a propaganda opportunity. On top of that, the bomb itself could have failed to detonate. After all, there had only been one test of the atomic bomb to that point, and it was in controlled circumstances where the US government had the ability to measure, record, and properly set up the bombing rig. Novel circumstances in an area that the Americans did not have deep experience with could interfere with the explosion and either reduce its scale or defeat it entirely. This would have disastrous consequences. Instead of moving the Japanese to immediate surrender, it could boost their morale and incentivize them to continue fighting. It could have made the peace camp look weak, making an organized surrender totally impossible. There were just too many potential issues for a demonstration to be practical. Additionally, there are timeline and materiel problems. Organizing and planning a demonstration, including getting Japanese buy-in, would have taken weeks, if not months. Each and every day that went by before a Japanese surrender allowed the Imperial Japanese Army to further dig in and prepare for an invasion. It allowed the Soviets to continue their military march towards occupying Hokkaido and potentially Honshu. It allowed for more strategic bombing and a tightening of the blockade, increasing the odds of Japanese civilian casualties. And it allowed the mass death faced by Asian noncombatants to continue apace. At the time of the first bombing on August 6, 1945, the United States only had two completed functional atomic bombs. One fell on Hiroshima, the other on Nagasaki. It would have taken weeks to build more such weapons – weeks the Allies did not have. Using half of the American atomic arsenal to carry out a demonstration that had a minimal probability of success would have been insane. The revisionists would do well to remember that the Japanese government did not capitulate immediately after the destruction of Hiroshima. It is exceedingly unlikely that they would have surrendered after a bombing that killed nobody and destroyed nothing, even if the bomb did explode as planned. All of the evidence of the Japanese government’s mindset that was presented earlier militated strongly against any surrender. Surely, a demonstration bombing would not have changed that. So how did the actual history play out? Why were the atomic bombs the best and only choice that Truman and his advisors had? And why were they justified? Click here for Part I of this essay, detailing the build-up to the atomic bombing. Click here for Part III of the series, explaining the atomic bomb decision process and aftermath. Rational Policy is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Rational Policy that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Wednesday, 13 August 2025
The Only Correct Decision, Part II
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