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August 15, 2022

In a 1945 summary, a U.S. Army Air Forces unit on Okinawa described August as “an eventful month in world history.”  That understatement holds up 77 years later.

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Events had accelerated in the spring and summer of 1945.  Germany surrendered on May 8 but Russia already was shipping massive amounts of men and materiel eastward.  Moscow and Tokyo had a non-aggression treaty that Soviet premier Joseph Stalin cancelled on August 9.  That night a massive Russian assault into Japanese-held Manchuria opened the Far East end game, briefly overlapping impending Japan’s surrender to the Allies.

American forces began deploying from Europe and the continental United States, anticipating the two-phase Operation Downfall invasion of Japan’s home islands.  The first assault, on the southern island of Kyushu, was slated for November.  The second, on the main island of Honshu, was due in March 1946.

Meanwhile, the atomic age had dawned with a 20-kiloton flash in the New Mexico desert on July 16.  The three-year Manhattan Project yielded awe-inspiring results, and Tokyo’s refusal of the Allies’ Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender ensured that the atoms would be loosed.  B-29 Superfortresses from the Mariana Islands 1,500 miles southeast of Japan were prepared to conduct “special missions” beyond conventional methods.  An A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima on August 6 and, lacking any reply from Tokyo, a second weapon leveled Nagasaki three days later.

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Even then, Japan’s war cabinet remained evenly divided between surrender and continued war.  Finally, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito exerted unprecedented personal involvement in government affairs.  His decision “to bear the unbearable” was met with fierce resistance in the palace guard but the plotters were quickly overcome.  In his announcement Hirohito credited the A-bombs with his decision, citing “a most cruel new weapon.”

For three decades a bitter feud was fought in an information vacuum with academics and others arguing whether the bombs were necessary.  The mantra “Tokyo was about to surrender” gained some public traction despite clear evidence to the contrary.  Then from the 1970s to the 1990s declassified documents showed that President Harry Truman and his advisers were reading Tokyo’s mail via decoded messages.  Hirohito’s intervention was the only way to break the logjam.

Speculation as to the cost of invading Japan continues today.  General Douglas MacArthur, the vainglorious Army supremo who would command Operation Downfall, discounted intelligence (understated, as it proved) showing the Japanese heavily reinforcing Kyushu’s defenses.  His personal goal was leading the greatest military operation of all time.  But that summer the U.S. government ordered an additional half million Purple Heart medals for expected killed and wounded in Downfall — enough to last into the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s.

However, the U.S. Navy had second thoughts.  The Pacific Fleet’s Admiral Chester Nimitz knew all too well the cost of the three-month Okinawa campaign, especially facing Kamikazes that had sunk dozens of ships and damaged hundreds since the Philippines operation from October 1944.

Nimitz’s superior in Washington, Admiral Ernest King, shared reservations about Operation Downfall.  Neither admiral doubted it would succeed, but at what cost?

The only viable option was continuing blockade.  At some point Japan would face massive starvation — there were already food riots that spring — with consequences likely exceeding military conquest.  Aside from deaths in Japan itself, postwar analysis estimated 100,000 deaths on the Asian mainland, per month, almost entirely from war-related disease and starvation.  As it was, Japan inflicted about 20 million deaths upon Asia-Pacific nations.