nova2010
Banned
Let's assume that US atomic testing fails. So Operation Downfall
takes place. The results?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
takes place. The results?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
100,000s of dead GIs, millions of dead Japanese, absolute devastation of Kyushu at least. The initial landing would have been a battle of such magnitude and ferocity that it would have the kind of impact on the american national consciousness that the Somme and Paschendale did on the British.
Has the stock of purple hearts ordered for the invasion of Japan been used up yet? Last I heard it hadn't.
if anything too low of a number.Regardless of how starved and bombed Japan's homeland would have been at the time of the invasion, I have no doubt in my mind that if the Emperor had decreed that the Japanese people should fight to the very end, the majority would have. Japan had been holding back their assets in preparation for the invasion and had correctly guessed that the first landing would have been on Kyushu.
There was also a Typhoon that took place that year which would have coincided with the timing of the invasion, which would have really messed things up.
It would have been a bloodbath to say the least. One hundred thousand US dead is not an unreasonable number at all.
Has the stock of purple hearts ordered for the invasion of Japan been used up yet? Last I heard it hadn't.
There was also a Typhoon that took place that year which would have coincided with the timing of the invasion, which would have really messed things up.
if anything too low of a number.
thats going to be the worst guerilla war in history.
Downfall is realistically unlikely to happen. Japan was already bombed to rubble and risked an internal upheaval that would overthrow Hirohito if it kept on trucking with the war. It was a starving hell-hole of shattered cities, gutted armies, and facing a war that it very much knew was lost before it ever started.
However *if* Downfall happens, it'd be one of the bloodiest operations in human history, the biggest and bloodiest in US military history (ensuring as a cultural byproduct that the USA would focus WWII on the Pacific, not Europe) and for Japan a catastrophe never to be equaled. And while my father and I would not exist, my aunt and mom would, though my grandmother probably remarries and my mother's life would probably have been very different.
Why those changes in your family?
Operation Downfall was a bloodbath waiting to happen.