David and MoQers,
I agree that the writing of history should be an intellectual academic
activity. That is why I keep trying to get you off the propaganda and onto
some serious history. You seem to have latched onto some crippled
historians. I suggest that you take a broader look. There is plenty of
material on the internet on both points of view. A close reading of all of
the material should enable one to extract the meaning of what was actually
happening. I was surprised to find it but if you read the longer article
that I posted you will find the name of the fellow who actually inserted
your idea into the history books. Remember that before Pirsig's MoQ will
work reliably for us we have to have our facts straight. I am also
surprised that you would say those things about yourself that were in your
recent message. That is the only interpretation that I can put on it.
World War II would eventually cost the United States more than a million
casualties. It consumed the nation's energies and resources to an extent
never experienced before or since. When Truman became President in April
1945, US casualties were averaging more than 900 a day. In the Pacific, the
toll from each successive battle rose higher.
The Japanese still had the means -- and the determination -- to make the
invading Allied forces pay a terrible price for the final victory. Since
the summer of 1944, the Japanese armed forces had been drawing units back
to Japan in anticipation of a final stand there.
The Japanese were prepared to absorb massive casualties. According to Gen.
Korechika Anami, the War Minister, the military could commit 2.3 million
troops. Commanders were authorized to call up four million civil servants
to augment the troops. The Japanese Cabinet extended the draft to cover
most civilians (men from ages fifteen to sixty and women from seventeen to
forty-five).
The defending force would have upwards of 10,000 aircraft, most of them
kamikaze. Suicide boats and human torpedoes would defend the beaches. The
Japanese Army planned to attack the Allied landing force with a
three-to-one advantage in manpower. If that failed, the militia and the
people of Japan were expected to carry on the fight. Civilians were being
taught to strap explosives to their bodies and throw themselves under
advancing tanks.
The (US) plan called for an invasion in two stages. Operation Olympic, a
land invasion of Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese main islands, was to
begin November 1, 1945. Operation Coronet, planned for March 1, 1946, would
be an invasion of Honshu, the largest island. The Joint Chiefs expected the
two-stage invasion to involve some five million troops, most of them
American. The invasion was to be preceded by a massive aerial bombardment,
reaching maximum intensity before troops went ashore on Honshu.
Casualty estimates varied. Military planners figured the invasion of Kyushu
alone would take between 31,000 and 50,000 US casualties in the first
thirty days and that the combined US losses from Operations Coronet and
Olympic would exceed 500,000. President Truman believed that, unless he
used the atomic bomb, an invasion was necessary and that the casualties
would be enormous.
(Use of the bomb to end the war eventually saved Japanese casualties, too.
The incendiary bombs from B-29s were taking a terrible toll. The attack on
Tokyo in March killed more people than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki
bombs.)
The Japanese refusal to surrender led to 48,000 American casualties in the
battle for Okinawa between April and June. Kamikaze attacks in that battle
sank twenty-eight US ships and did severe damage to hundreds more. The
Japanese force on Okinawa was only a fraction the size of the one waiting
in the home islands.
See if any of this makes any sense to you. I think your problem is that
you have no grasp of the scope of what was going on then. Russia did
belatedly declare war on Japan like a hyena lurking about for whatever
pickings it could get but it did not do any actual fighting. Russia was not
a major concern at that time. I think that you revisionists just need to
simplify things so that they are easy to grasp. Ken
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