Whether Japan would have surrendered prior to invasion without the use of the atomic bombs is a question that can never be answered. Whatever the predicted Allied losses, the potential Japanese military and civilian casualties would have been staggering. The draft had been extended to include men from age 15 to 60 and women from 17 to 45, adding millions of civilians ready to defend their homeland to the death, with sharpened sticks if necessary.Įxperience throughout the Pacific war had shown that Japanese combat casualties had run from five to 20 times those suffered by the Allies, particularly in the battles of the Philippines and Okinawa. Some 8,000 military aircraft were available that could be used for devastating Kamikaze (suicide) attacks on U.S. To repel invaders, Japan had a veteran army of some two million ready, an army that had already shown its ferocity and fanaticism in combat. Estimates of Allied casualties ranged from 250,000 to a million with much greater losses to the Japanese. A plan for the invasion of Japan had been drawn up Operation Olympic was scheduled for November 1945. The AAF controlled the skies over Japan and the AAF's B-29 bombing attacks crippled its war industry. Navy submarines and aerial mining by the Army Air Forces severely restricted Japanese shipping.
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