How Silent Fall the Cherry Blossoms

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Geon

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Here is my new TL/story. Thanks to all on the Operation PX thread who commented and any ideas you have please put there or comment here. Let me know what you all think.


HOW SILENT FALL THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS



An alternate history by Geon


Date: November 5, 1944
Location: 40 miles due west of Los Angeles
Time: 6:05 p.m. PST

In the waning light of sunset three submarines, each bearing the insignia of the IJN surfaced in the rough waters off the coast of California. Within moments hatches opened and a small cadre of well-trained men emerged to begin preparations for one of the most audacious and deadly submarine operations of World War II.

Even a casual observer would have been stunned by the size of these three vessels. Each one was at least 400 feet long. There would not be a sub to equal them in sheer size until the coming of the so-called “boomer” nuclear missile submarines. Their engines gave them a range of 37,500 nautical miles which meant that they could easily circle the globe. And they were armed with 8 torpedo tubes. But their main claim to fame was the odd humpback shape just forward of their bridge. This “humpback” was an aircraft hanger. Each of these submarines, dubbed the I-400s was a submersible aircraft carrier capable of carrying 3 Seiran seaplanes. Each plane was capable of carrying either an 800 kilogram bomb or a torpedo. Today each aircraft had a single bomb slung on their undercarriage.

The bombs had been loaded in Tokyo by special technicians before the submarines had left on their mission. All of the technicians and mechanics who would ready the aircraft for flight had been warned not to touch them other then ensuring they were properly secured before the planes took off.

The crews worked quickly to prepare each plane for launch. They had drilled for weeks in Tokyo to the point where they could in less then 30 minutes have each plane fueled and ready on the catapult launch ramp located forward of the hangers to be launched. Time was of the essence. There was no telling how long it would be before the Americans’ coastal radar systems or patrolling destroyers detected them.

Within twenty five minutes all nine planes were ready for flight. Semaphores flashed between the submarines which were spaced approximately 3 miles apart alerting them to prepare for launch. Ordinarily staying this close in enemy waters was suicide but for the attack plan to work all nine planes had to be launched as quickly as possible. On each sub three pilots emerged and rendered final salutes to the officers on deck and to the air crews as they boarded their planes. Each one wore the traditional hachimaki head scarf and had taken a ceremonial toast of sake before beginning this flight. Although officially the captains of the various subs would remain on station to recover the planes if possible for the next two hours in reality it was known by one and all that all nine pilots were starting their final fights. None of them expected to return and had prepared accordingly.

At 6:35 p.m. the nine planes began their take offs from the catapults of the three subs. By 6:50 all nine planes were airborne and bound for their target: Los Angeles.
 
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Geon

Donor
Operation PX

Yes,

I am assuming that one POD is no earthquake and minimal interference by Allied bombing.

Geon
 

Geon

Donor
Continued

Location: Los Angeles
Time: 7:25 p.m.

The coastal defense radar picked up the planes 25 miles out. However, there was considerable confusion on whether or not to sound an alert or not. The army air force was still smarting from the debacle known as The Battle of Los Angeles.

On the night of February 24-25, 1942 a false alarm had set off an air raid alert. Interceptor squadrons were readied but never launched and antiaircraft artillery had fired at seeming “enemy planes”, over the city. No planes were ever proven to have flown over that night even though the army insisted for months thereafter that enemy planes had been seen. Nevertheless the false alert had cost 8 lives (5 from antiaircraft fire and 3 from heart attacks during the raid). The army did not want a repeat of that debacle and demanded proof before it ordered an alert.

That proof came as coastal spotters and other civil defense spotters in town heard the sound of engines overhead and 2 separate reports confirmed what appeared to be the silhouettes of enemy planes.

Within minutes air raid sirens sounded throughout the city. Antiaircraft batteries began to open up as searchlights scanned the sky and found at least three of the nine planes that were now flying directly over Los Angeles. This time it was not a false alarm.

As interceptors scrambled to shoot down the planes the pilots looked down on a city that was not fully blacked out. Ensuring total blackouts in major American cities had been the bane of civil defense since the start of the war and with the threat of air attack seemingly diminished over the years many cities had gotten careless in their blackout procedures, including Los Angeles.

As searchlights lit up the night the pilots knew they had reached their targets. They had been told to release their bombs once they were over Los Angeles and then immediately turn around and return to their launch point if possible. As air interceptor planes scrambled the nine planes dropped nine unusual bombs over the city.
 
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Geon

Donor
Ouch.:eek:

Biological, chemical, incendiary, or radiological?

I'll give you one hint, it's not incendiary. The IJN wouldn't deliberately throw away 9 valuable Seiran seaplanes just to drop a few incendiaries. They wanted something a bit more...devestating.:eek:

No, that does not mean a big mushroom cloud!

Geon
 
I'll give you one hint, it's not incendiary. The IJN wouldn't deliberately throw away 9 valuable Seiran seaplanes just to drop a few incendiaries. They wanted something a bit more...devestating.:eek:

No, that does not mean a big mushroom cloud!

Geon

Biological or chemical, then?
 

Geon

Donor
Next part

The nine bombs plummeted toward the ground below impacting without any sound except that of a loud shattering sound. People near the impact sites later would compare the sound to several plates shattering. This was not surprising as the bombs were made of porcelain and designed to shatter upon impact. Little actual physical damage was done. (One bomb fell through a garage roof and ended up smashing the 1938 Ford that was parked inside.) The true damage would come later.

Meantime the interceptors of the IV Interceptor division had caught up with the retreating Seiran sea planes. The battle that followed was one-sided and resulted in the loss of all 9 of the planes. None would return to their submarine carriers.

That did not matter their primary goal had been accomplished and the payload delivered on target.
 
Good start. It chills my blood thinking about what the situation in LA will be like once it becomes obvious what those bombs were carrying. How many will die in the crush to get out?
 
Oh. . . DEAR GOD! ! !

Unit 731! Those FOOLS! ! !


You have just given the U. S. the PERFECT provocation for using Atomic weaponry! ! ! And maybe liberating Korea and starving the Home Islands to DEATH! ! ! There are going to be Nurenberg trials THIS time, you FOOLS! ! !
 
Unit 731! Those FOOLS! ! !


You have just given the U. S. the PERFECT provocation for using Atomic weaponry! ! ! And maybe liberating Korea and starving the Home Islands to DEATH! ! ! There are going to be Nurenberg trials THIS time, you FOOLS! ! !

Yeah, it's not a smart move. It's interesting to note that in OTL, Militarist Japan only used gas (for example) on the Chinese, and not on the Dutch, Americans, or British. Even the crazies in the Militarists were smart enough to know it was harder to get away with that.
Desperation makes people do crazy things, though...

Also, there are going to be trials "THIS time"? You're aware that there were war crimes trials in Tokyo in OTL, correct?
 

Pangur

Donor
Unit 731! Those FOOLS! ! !


You have just given the U. S. the PERFECT provocation for using Atomic weaponry! ! ! And maybe liberating Korea and starving the Home Islands to DEATH! ! ! There are going to be Nurenberg trials THIS time, you FOOLS! ! !

Oh sweet God you are quite right. If Pearl Harbor pissed the US off this will make that look like a little tiff. Forget the nukes, the US will go straight for gas
 
What I Meant. . .

Was REAL War Crimes trials, like Nurenberg or even larger

From Wikipedia

Such as:


It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians (i.e. Soviet citizens); the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as (forced) prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not the Soviet Union) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; (by comparison) the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.[31]



and:Mass killings [edit]


Japanese soldiers shooting blindfolded Sikh prisoners. The photograph was found among Japanese records when British troops entered Singapore.
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This democide [i.e., death by government] was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[36] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937–45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 million in the course of the war.[37] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[38]
In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre of February 1945 resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hand of the Japanese during the occupation.[39][40] In the Sook Ching massacre of February 1942, Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore, said during an interview with National Geographic that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties[41] while according to Major General Kawamura Saburo, there were 5,000 casualties in total.[42] There were other massacres of civilians, e.g. the Kalagong massacre. In wartime Southeast Asia, the Overseas Chinese and European diaspora were special targets of Japanese abuse; in the former case, motivated by an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the historic expanse and influence of Chinese culture that did not exist with the Southeast Asian indigenes, and the latter, motivated by a racist Pan-Asianism and desire to show former colonial subjects the impotence of their Western masters.[43]
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All." Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:


Decapitated heads of Nanking Massacre victims
Laha massacre[44]
Banka Island massacre[45]
Parit Sulong
Palawan Massacre
SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
Wake Island massacre – see Battle of Wake Island
Bataan Death March
Shinyo Maru Incident



and THIS monstrous shit:

Human experimentation and biological warfare [edit]


Shiro Ishii, commander of Unit 731
Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Unit 731 was established by order of Hirohito himself. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection and amputations without anesthesia and testing of biological weapons. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed to affect results.[46]
To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.[47]
According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.[48] Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.[49] According to other sources, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 400,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological warfare.[50] Top officers of Unit 731 were not prosecuted for war crimes after the war, in exchange for turning over the results of their research to the Allies. They were also reportedly given responsible positions in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, medical schools and health ministry.[51][52]
One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 11 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.[53]) The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.[54][55]
On March 11, 1948, 30 people, including several doctors and one female nurse, were brought to trial by the Allied war crimes tribunal. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those convicted in relation to the university vivisection were free after 1958.[56] In addition, many participants who were responsible for these vivisections were never charged by the Americans or their allies in exchange for the information on the experiments.[citation needed]
In 2006, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was ordered—as part of his training—to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in the Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945.[57] The surgery included amputations.[58] Ken Yuasa, a former military doctor in China, has also admitted to similar incidents in which he was compelled to participate.[59]


And THIS EVIL STUFF:

Use of chemical weapons [edit]
See also: Changde chemical weapon attack
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937 but in the spring of 1938, however the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from summer 1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.[60]
According to Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito signed orders specifying the use of chemical weapons in China.[61] For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite Article 23 of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)[18] and article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare[62] A resolution adopted by the League of Nations on 14 May condemned the use of poison gas by Japan.
Another example is the Battle of Yichang in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the IJA 11th Army by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese forces. The area was crowded with Chinese civilians unable to evacuate. Some 3,000 Chinese soldiers were in the area and 1,600 were affected. The Japanese report stated that "the effect of gas seems considerable".[63]
In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered in the Australian National Archives documents showing that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on Kai Islands (Indonesia).[64]



And lets not forget this:


Torture of prisoners of war [edit]


An Australian POW, Sgt. Leonard Siffleet, captured in New Guinea, about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a guntō, 1943.
Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of torture on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly.[65] Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:
The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato race [i.e., Japanese] was superior.[66]



And just found out about THIS! ! ! It curdles the blood. . . :

Cannibalism [edit]
Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. However, according to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".[67] This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an Indian POW, Havildar Changdi Ram, testified that: "[on November 12, 1944] the Kempeitai beheaded [an Allied] pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters... They cut it [into] small pieces and fried it."[68]
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified in New Guinea and stated:
the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.[69]
Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana (立花芳夫,Tachibana Yoshio), who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944, on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. As military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.[70]


And This is as bad or worse as the Nazis:

Forced labour [edit]
Main article: Slavery in Japan


Australian and Dutch prisoners of war at Tarsau in Thailand, 1943
The Japanese military's use of forced labour, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilised by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[71] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.[72]
The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[73] About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of 5 August 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war".[74] The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. However, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.


And This. . . Is just VILE:

Comfort women [edit]
Main article: Comfort women
The terms "comfort women" (慰安婦 ianfu?) or "military comfort women" (従軍慰安婦 jûgun-ianfu?) are euphemisms for women in Japanese military brothels in occupied countries, who were recruited by deception, abducted, and forced into sexual slavery.
In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kôa-in and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese news media on 12 January 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On 17 January Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On 6 July and 4 August, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognised that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women" and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".[75]
The controversy was re-ignited on 1 March 2007, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned suggestions that a U.S. House of Representatives committee would call on the Japanese Government to "apologise for and acknowledge" the role of the Japanese Imperial military in wartime sex slavery. However, Abe denied that it applied to comfort stations. "There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it."[76] Abe's comments provoked negative reactions overseas. For example, a New York Times editorial on March 6 said:[77]
These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army's involvement is documented in the government's own defense files. A senior Tokyo official more or less apologized for this horrific crime in 1993... Yesterday, he grudgingly acknowledged the 1993 quasi apology, but only as part of a pre-emptive declaration that his government would reject the call, now pending in the United States Congress, for an official apology. America isn't the only country interested in seeing Japan belatedly accept full responsibility. Korea, China, and the Philippines are also infuriated by years of Japanese equivocations over the issue.
The same day, veteran soldier Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."[78]
On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.[79]
On May 12, 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.[80]
In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers.[81]
A Dutch-Indonesian "comfort woman", Jan Ruff-O'Hearn (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff-O'Hearn said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 19.[82]
Only one Japanese woman published her testimony. In 1971 a former "comfort woman", forced to work for showa soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.[83]
There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. While some Japanese sources claim that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, including Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women,[84] mostly from Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands,[85] and Australia[86] were forced to engage in sexual activity.[87]
On 26 June 2007, the U.S. House of representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war".[88] On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution, while Shinzo Abe said this decision was "regrettable".[89]



And for the encore. . . This. :

Looting [edit]
Many historians state that the Japanese government and individual military personnel engaged in widespread looting during the period of 1895 to 1945.[90][91] The stolen property included private land, as well as many different kinds of valuable goods looted from banks, depositories, temples, churches, mosques, museums, other commercial premises and private homes.
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in their 2003 book Gold Warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold—report that secret repositories of loot from across Southeast Asia, were created by the Japanese military in the Philippines during 1942–45. They allege that the theft was organised on a massive scale, either by yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama, or by officials at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, who wanted to ensure that as many of the proceeds as possible went to the government. The Seagraves also allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organisation called Kin no yuri (Golden Lily) for this purpose.



And after all that less than 6,000 went to trial at ALL. I am NOT racist, but that is a travesty of justice. And it was done because of fear of Communism
. . . This time the Black Dragon Society and its acolytes are going to HANG!
 
Oh sweet God you are quite right. If Pearl Harbor pissed the US off this will make that look like a little tiff. Forget the nukes, the US will go straight for gas

Why? Nukes are all-round better weapons than gas is, particularly for bomber delivery (which of course is how the US would deliver either). The biggest change might be that they go ahead and nuke Kyoto, and that US attitudes towards Japan after the war are harsher, leading to for example the removal of Hirohito and more thorough war crimes trials.
 
Try telling the information just printed to the anti nuclear activists who raided a nuclear power plant including the nun.The crimes just cited were justification for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.BTW I understand the people from unit 731 were released to help for the Korean War.This is probably a rumor.
 
Why? Nukes are all-round better weapons than gas is, particularly for bomber delivery (which of course is how the US would deliver either). The biggest change might be that they go ahead and nuke Kyoto, and that US attitudes towards Japan after the war are harsher, leading to for example the removal of Hirohito and more thorough war crimes trials.

truth is life

Look at the date. This is Nov 44 when this attack occurs. Do you think that the US will wait for the development of nuclear weapons, which the vast majority of the government don't even know of the existence of the Manhattan Project and with the exception of a few scientist who 'may be confident' that the a bomb will work?

As soon as they realise what has happened there will be immediate and widespread calls for retaliation. The US has a sizeable capacity to bomb Japan, although I think chiefly via Chinese bases at this point. [Think the B-29 only really started operating against Japan early in 45]. It also has a very large chemistry industry. Plus under those circumstances I'm quietly confident that Winston would offer supplies from Britain if needed. [Oh shit, I just thought about British anthrax stocks!:eek::eek:]

Basically I can see the war in the Pacific ending a couple of months earlier but with much larger Japanese losses. If the USAAF combines gas attacks with widespread fire-bombing then the carpet bombing attacks will be even more devastating. If they add anthrax or something like that as well.

Steve
 
You want to go really Vlad Tepes, unleash rice blights and the Black Death. There won't be a need for the atomic bomb because Japan will be too depopulated to sustain the war, especially once the hunger starts weakening immune systems.

I wonder if the Russians will want to get in while the getting's good, even if the Nazis aren't yet defeated in Europe. They probably wouldn't want the U.S. to get all of Korea, after all. There might be butterflies in Europe as a result.

The gas might be more useful in battlefield situations because it can kill immediately, while bio-weapons take time. That "Iggy" guy who was dismembered alive over the course of days in "Flags Of Our Fathers" might come home alive this time because they'll flood the bunkers with gas. No Japanese soldiers popping up to snag him.
 

Geon

Donor
Gas and Next Posting

I will be posting again later today or Monday.

One interesting note to add to this discussion; in Operation Downfall there was a plan to use gas to bombard the coastal areas of Kyushu during the invasion. This incident however means as many of you have suggested that all bets are off!

Geon
 
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