Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

(D. M. Giangreco )

Planning for a bloodbath

'to [General George] Marshall, atom bombs were too precious a resource to waste in an apparently futile strategic campaign' against Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, and Niitaka.... Marshall's plans called for most--and if he could convince [Sec/War Henry] Stimson and [President] Truman, all--of the bomb production through December 1945 to be dropped on Japanese defense concentrations along or near the beaches' on Kyushu Island. (p.xx)

'Selective Service inductions [draft calls] were nearly doubled in March 1945 to 100,000 men per month in preparation for the grim losses expected from the upcoming series of operations on the Japanese Home Islands.' (p.3)

'both the Soviet army's intent and capabilities are regularly blown well out of proportion by breathless individuals who have not bothered to closely read the works of the principal Western scholar [David Glantz] to have intimately examined this subject.' (p.27)

By June 1945, Japanese troops concentrations on Kyushu had reached 'thirteen-plus' divisions. (p.47)

'The battle casualty figure of 500,000 became "the operative one at the working level" among strategic planners during the spring of 1945.' (p.53) Note that casualties includes wounded and missing in addition to deaths, a distinction often missed by civilians who confuse the word with fatalities.

May 1945: former president Herbert Hoover prepared a document for Truman that suggested a range of '500,000 to 1,000,000 lives' (i.e., deaths) for the invasion. (p.55-56)

June 1945: Secretary of War Henry Stimson: 'The [Japanese] terrain, much of which I have visited several times, has left the impression on my memory of being one which would be susceptible to a last ditch defense such as has been made on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and which of course is very much larger than either of those two areas.... We shall in my opinion have to go through a more bitter finish fight than in Germany [and] we shall incur the losses incident to such a war.' (p.58)

June 1945: Admiral Leahy offered a much smaller figure of 63,000 casualties. This anomalous figure was seized upon 50 years later by Martin Hewitt of NASM and others seeking to show that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been the victims of a vengeful Harry Truman. However, Leahy was using upon a lowball figure for the initial invasion of Kyushu, and multiplying that by 35 percent. In the same meeting, Gen Marshall gave a troop commitment of 766,700, so that Leahy's calculation ought to have been 268,000 casualities. (p.59)

'Japanese plans in mid-July 1945 called for the Imperial Army and Navy air arms to convert all obsolescent and obsolete aircraft into kamikazes. This amounted to 10,440 aircraft....' In the battle for the Philippines, a top kamikaze pilot had 300 hours of flight time; by the time of the Okinawa invasion this had dropped to 150 hours. For defending the homeland, 'while thirty to fifty flying hours was desirable, a bare-bones fifteen would have to do.' (p.78) (To put this in perspective, I needed 48 hours to solo and 89 hours to become a certificated pilot, and I was assured that this wasn't a field record.)

'IGHQ [Imperial General Headquarters] correctly inferred that southern Kyushu would likely be the next target ... and 916,828 military personnel were either in position or in various stages of deployment on the island at the time of the surrender.' (p.93)

July 21, 1945: The 'Shockley-Wright report' for Stimson concluded that to conquer the home islands 'we shall probably have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese. That might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including 400,000 and [to?] 800,000 killed.' (p.99)

Following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, the Americans concluded: 'Strategic use of atom bombs against cities had certainly been worth a try, but the [Japanese] militarists appeared to be completely unmoved, and to Marshall atom bombs were too precious an asset to waste in a continued strategic, rather than tactical, campaign.' On Aug 13, he inquired about the production of nukes. 'Marshall desired to retain all future bombs, perhaps as many as eight completed by November, for tactical use on Kyushu.' (p.111) 'Marshall also moved ahead that morning on another weapon, which was "readily available and which assuredly can greatly decrease the costs in American lives"--poison gas.' (p.112)