Shirley, I understand but don't look too hard at it from professor's either, from what I read some top brass thought it was fairly accurate. But who knows?
I know, it’s a long piece but the hyperlinking thing didn’t work for whatever reason. Anyway, here’s a very good rendition by Frank Duncan (Quora contributor) of the problems faced by the U.S. versus Japan and ….the bombs. …………………….. Frank Duncan Extensive study about WWIIAuthor has 6.3K answers and 15.8M answer views6y Originally Answered: If the US did not have the atom bomb in 1945, how longer the WW2 would have gone? The determination of the Japanese to literally fight to the last man had been demonstrated on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and a hundred other smaller battles. It was anticipated that the invasion of Japan, Operation_Downfall, would involve up to a million US casualties and incidentally wipe out the Japanese population. Operation Downfall was the combination of Olympic , the invasion of Kyushu scheduled for November 1, 1945, and Coronet , the invasion of Honshu scheduled for March 1, 1946. The Japanese estimates were that 20 million Japanese would die. The West was fighting against an enemy where even the women and children were being trained and armed with sharpened bamboo poles to kill the Americans. These are the people who make Banzai charges into machine guns. These are the people who simply don’t surrender. They literally jump off of cliffs to their death before surrender. Look at the statistics that faced the Americans. On Tarawa, out of 3,600 troops, 17 surrendered. On Saipan, there were 32,000 troops, and there were 921 prisoners. On Peleliu, out of 10,900 Japanese soldiers, 19 were captured, along with 183 laborers. On Iwo Jima, there were 21,000 troops, and 216 surrendered. In the Phillipines, 56,263 Japanese soldiers were killed, but only 389 surrendered. On Okinawa, graves registration buried 110,701 dead and 7,401 were captured. Simply put, these are not an enemy you can scare. They didn’t scare. They looked Death in the face up close and personal, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, and didn’t blink. The US military knew that Japan was militarily defeated by 1943, and by1944 had no chance for winning the war. Now, even when obviously defeated, they would not surrender. They would commit suicide before surrendering. Their concept of surrender was such that it would dishonor themselves, their families and far worse, their ancestors. When they said, ”Death before dishonor,” they really meant it in a very literal sense. The Japanese mindset was so fundamentally different that we in the West simply could not understand why they wouldn't surrender when they were defeated. Around 2 million civilians were part of the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps that were trained for combat even if it was only with sharpened bamboo spears. Until the Japanese realized it was time to surrender, the war would continue. The Japanese had correctly identified the beaches where the Americans would have to invade their islands. Our photoreconnaissance clearly showed that they were not planning to surrender, but to fight to the bitter end. They had thousands of cannon and machine guns aimed at those beaches. The fire bombings of the cities had killed far more people than the atomic bombs did, but the atomic bombs had become a change in quantity that was a change in quality. Even at the very end, it was only the direct intervention of the Emperor who only barely prevailed over the military who wanted to fight on. Those objections to surrender were so strong that even though the Emperor of Japan had made it known the war was to end; a coup against their own god, called the Kyūjō_incident was planned. This was almost beyond belief because it was a rebellion against their own Arahitogami (living god). A coup was started, but by a series of fortuitous events, failed. The Imperial Rescript was read and the Japanese surrendered. We had bombed Japanese cities till there were almost none left, but they would not surrender. We dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, destroying the city, but they would not surrender. Finally, the second atomic bomb and the declaration of war by Russia made them come to their senses. Quite obviously the war would have continued until the Emperor directed the end of fighting. The Japanese military would have continued fighting until they were all dead. The fate of the civilian population was of no concern to the military. I estimate that the war would have continued with the invasions of Japan and it would have lasted another 12 months at a minimum perhaps as long as 2 years. There were a lot more soldiers on Kyushu than the Americans knew about and the fighting would have been much, much bloodier and much longer than imagined by our military. In fact, the ratio of forces between the American and japanese forces was such that there was a good question about whether the (original) invasion would have succeeded. Eventually, of course, the productivity of the US would have overwhelmed the best Japanese efforts and would have resulted in the utter destruction of the Japanese people. 4.3K views View upvotes
Yet, they would and they did surrender. My post was clearly an opinion, made clear in that it was prefaced with "I think..." Neither you nor I know what the true reasons for the decision were, nor will we. I'm not going to go searching for experts who agree with me because I don't have either the time or the inclination to do that. You're free to have another opinion. I'm not harmed by that. Yours is the more common opinion, I suppose, at least in this country. As for sacrificing lives, our government was willing to sacrifice lives in testing these bombs on our own soil, and elsewhere, so I have no illusions of the US government - then or now - holding lives as sacrosanct, and I won't even entertain the idea that telling the truth has ever been a matter of importance to those who govern rather than represent us.
Didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers Ken. Do note that I did not go “looking” for someone to agree with me but rather to get a more expert opinion as to how much longer the war with Japan might have lasted without the bomb. There were obviously other opinions but they didn’t go as in depth about the culture nor the Japanese mind set of the day. Opinions are just opinions and I’m smart enough to know that they do not have the ability to change history so going for something that simply agrees with me would be absurd. Now……. What I DID find fascinating comes from a statement made by my Iranian friend and meets well with the Japanese temperament back in the ‘40’s. He told me not long ago that even if the Iranian citizens disagreed with their government, every able bodied man and woman right down to their children would stand up and fight for their nation should the west go against them militarily. Moreover, he said they will never surrender even down to their last person. All that noted, the question of how quickly the Iranians would turn to their nuclear arsenal that is supposedly non-existent is a piece of speculation I really don’t want to imagine.