20. The Horrific Costs of Invading Japan
The resources committed to invading Japan dwarfed those of D-Day in France. They included 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts, tactical air support from the Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth Air Forces, and 14 divisions for the initial landing. Casualties would have been horrific, depending on the degree of Japanese civilian resistance – and Japanese authorities were busy training even women and children to fight the invaders with spears and pointy sticks. Worst case scenarios envisioned over a million Allied and tens of millions of Japanese casualties.
Planners were unaware of the highly secretive Manhattan Project. When the US successfully tested an atomic bomb in July 1945, its game-changing potential was not fully understood. Viewed simply as “really big bombs”, planners had nebulous ideas of using atomic weapons during the November invasion in support of the amphibious landings. However, their use instead against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, shocked the Japanese government to its senses, ended the war, and eliminated the need to invade Japan.