What if Harry Truman hadn't dropped the A-Bomb?

For starters, here are some historical facts:

Japan, shortly before WWII ended, had a large cache of nuclear material, delivered by German submarines shortly beforehand.

Japan had developed this nuclear material into several dirty bombs.

That, combined with biochemical weapons utilizing the bubonic plauge, made up a deadly force.

The Japanese set the day of an assault on the American west coast as August 17.

Now, to a changed history:

President Franklin Roosevelt, after leading us through 12 great years, dies. Truman takes office. He is prepared to drop the Bomb on Japan by August 6. A letter from Einstein (actually sent in this world but not recieved) gets to Truman in this one. Truman decides to take the advice of the world's smartest man and doesn't use the bomb. Instead, he has a traditional assault on Japan and thousands of American troops die. Japan has its nuclear attack on the west coast. Truman surrenders to the Japanese.

So, what do you think would happen after that? If fascism won WWII, would it become the dominate world power? Would America be the technologically superior nation with Japan's role also reversed? What would the world be like today?

How would Japan invade America? Especially in 1945? If America does invade expect tens of thousands of casualties if not more. I know you are new here Robert Sullivan and in future, try using the search function for popular things like this, as this has been talked about before.

Robert Sullivan said:

For starters, here are some historical facts:

Japan, shortly before WWII ended, had a large cache of nuclear material, delivered by German submarines shortly beforehand.

Japan had developed this nuclear material into several dirty bombs.

That, combined with biochemical weapons utilizing the bubonic plauge, made up a deadly force.

The Japanese set the day of an assault on the American west coast as August 17.

Now, to a changed history:

President Franklin Roosevelt, after leading us through 12 great years, dies. Truman takes office. He is prepared to drop the Bomb on Japan by August 6. A letter from Einstein (actually sent in this world but not recieved) gets to Truman in this one. Truman decides to take the advice of the world's smartest man and doesn't use the bomb. Instead, he has a traditional assault on Japan and thousands of American troops die. Japan has its nuclear attack on the west coast. Truman surrenders to the Japanese.

So, what do you think would happen after that? If fascism won WWII, would it become the dominate world power? Would America be the technologically superior nation with Japan's role also reversed? What would the world be like today?

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This makes no sense at all. Japan invading the United States in 1945? They have no navy and their army will be tied up against the the Soviet Union. How do they have nukes? What in the heck is going on???

FederationX said:

This makes no sense at all. Japan invading the United States in 1945? They have no navy and their army will be tied up against the the Soviet Union. How do they have nukes? What in the heck is going on???

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With all due respect, I must say that this was being planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, an entire History Channel documentary was made about this subject.

Robert Sullivan said:

With all due respect, I must say that this was being planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, an entire History Channel documentary was made about this subject.

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Doesn't mean much here. Japan had no realistic way of dropping bombs of any sort on US soil, particularly in 1945. They had no navy left, certainly not one able to survive long enough off the US coast to fire anything. They had only a small airforce left and no long range bombers. It would have been a suicide mission with a scant hope for success. Also the Japanese would have been creamed by American bio-chemical weapons a few days after they were dropped on the US.

Out of curiousity, how exactly did the Japanese nuclear program go? I was under the impression that it was using the same basic technique as the Nazi project (which wasn't as good as the Manhattan project), and while some stuff was shipped to Japan on and off, the Japanese military leaders didn't seem to be that enthusiastic on the whole project to begin with. Am I wrong here?

It's a little known fact that Japanese scientists (such as Shiro Ishii) and technology were as important to America's own bioweapons program after WWII as German physicists were to our nuclear and space programs. Thanks in part to their experiments on Chinese and American POWs, Japan had advanced much further in their bioweapons research than any other nation.

That having been said, 1945 is clearly too late a POD for this.

My best guess

Assuming that Japan manages some horrific attack on the west coast--dirty bombs, plague, and some gas from every sub they have left, they still loose the war. The US simply has too much firepower, too many people, and Britian is in as well. The question now becomes how bad is the nation devastated? The bombs get dropped, and some of the gas the US has ready gets sent to the Pacific.
I doubt the US would accept a surrender that allows the emperor to remain in these circumstances, so the war lasts longer, with gas, firbombs, spent nuclear material, and whatever else can be found raining down on Japan.
When was Germany's nerve gas discovered? That might get used as well.
How long would it take for Japan to surrender completely unconditionally--or would that happen?
After the war, the war crimes trials will be harsh.

I doubt Truman would surrender even if 1 million people (a rather high figure) on the West Coast die or are injured in some sort of submarine-borne chemio-bio-"dirty bomb" attack. The US was just about to crush Japan, and even if he did try to negotiate a peace, he'd be impeached.

Even if the Japanese attack is devastating enough to force the US to the bargaining table, the Japanese Empire has been gutted and Germany has already surrendered and been occupied by the Allied Powers. There is no way for "fascism" (calling Imperial Japan fascist is a stretch anyway) to win at this point.

This is as ASBatty as "Guns of the South."

Y'know, one problem I notice here, and I've seen it with other ludicrously suggested, hastily constructed ATLs, is the assumption of parity on the part of the involved nations/powers, particularly in wartime.

AS BL and Alasdair both allude, Japan ca. 1945 is already beaten. The only reason the war in the Pacific stretched as long as it did was because it took so long for the Allies to move from island to island, killing off the Japanese infantry. But Japan had no navy and no air force. They had no capability for large-scale troop movement, and so were unable to reinforce or resupply their units. They could not launch an offensive of any kind, let alone a 5,500+ mile raid from the Home Islands against the US West Coast.

The classic deus ex machina is a fine fallback for cheap novels and Hollywood blockbusters, but it simply doesn't work in real life.

If you want the US to surrender to Japan in World War II, the seeds must be sown somewhere in the 19th century. If you want an interesting read on Operation Downfall (the plan for the taking of the Home Islands, inc. details on Olympic and Coronet), I recommend that you click here.

I've seen that History Channel documentary and am skeptical. The Japanese did not have nuclear weapons. All they had was a "dirty bomb". A dirty bomb is no more destructive than a conventional bomb. It just has some radioactive material in it that can cause radiation illness in exposed populations. This illness isn't even necessarily fatal, but just very uncomfortable. Even if the Japanese had succeeded in launching a dirty bomb (and this is a big if), it will have no greater impact than the German buzzbombs in England. Even though those things were hitting England all the time, it didn't stop anything. And as far as all those ill people would be concerned, they may not even realize that they were suffering from any particular illness. You just may find a bunch more hospitalized people. That's all.

The way I see it the Japanese would have had to do something like turn the entire state of California into a nuclear wasteland and prove that they could do it again for them to have a prayer of getting the US to surrender.

Japan WMD attack on west coast

At best, the japanese could make an attack with a submarine based seaplane. Perhaps one or two bombs with dirty, chemical or biological warhead on either los angeles or san francisco. The larger I-boats had the range and were designed to carry aircraft. The result in terms of casualties in US would be minor. The result in terms of Japanese casualties would be horendous. Imagine mass b-29 raids on japan with chemical and gas ordinance. The accidental explosion in Bara(sp?) Italy of this ordinance caused tremendous casualites. Imagine dedicated attacks of this kind on Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka with the full support of the Allied populace. The casualites would dwarf those of the atomic attacks and there wouldn't be a Japanese populace, only Japanese survivors. Talk about stiring up a hornets nest.

Truman would never surrender to Japan even if there were Japanese tanks on the Capitol steps, as implausible as that is.

Robert Sullivan said:

With all due respect, I must say that this was being planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, an entire History Channel documentary was made about this subject.

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I wasn't trying to be mean. I was just pointing out that if you really think about it, there is no realistic way for Japan to have a real nuclear bomb in 1945 unless you chnage the timeline at least 20-50 years. In 1945 they had no navy, there army was in ruins and it was only a matter of time until they would have to surrender. Even if ASBs gave them enough atomic bombs to kill a few million Americans in a last ditch effort, Truman wouldn't just surrender. As I said I wasn't trying to bash your idea, it's just very far-fetched.

BTW- I have seen that history channel documentry a few times . I believe that was the "Swastika (sp?) and the Samurai" documentry.

Robert Sullivan wrote: With all due respect, I must say that this was being planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, an entire History Channel documentary was made about this subject.


Mr. Sullivan,

I wouldn't count on the History Channel too much if I were you. They've done documentaries on ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster too.

Back to your idea -

- The IJN had dispatched a minor strike towards the Panama Canal at war's end. IIRC, it involved two seaplane-carrying submarines that surfaced and were interned after hearing the news of the surrender. They were supposed to blow up a few dams in the Canal Zone thus knocking out electrical generation and lock water supplies. Their chance of success was minimal, even if they had got through the Canal defenses. Look at the trouble the Brits had with the Rhineland dams for instance; had to develop a specific bomb, new aiming devices, still failed against most targets, etc.

- You could craft a POD in which the IJN has more seaplane-carrying subs with which to strike at the continental US.

- A Japanese WMD strike at the US West Coast would be bad news for the Japanese.

- The US had only two fission bombs ready, materials for others wuld not be in hand until late '45/early '46. If Japanese dirty bombs and biowar materials hit the US West Coast, one of those fission bombs would have been dropped on the Imperial Compound in Tokyo. Scratch Hirohito and remember; In the OTL, he broke the tie vote in favor of surrendering in the Imperial Privy Council. That was only the 2nd time an emperor had intervened in such a manner, the other happened nearly 80 years earlier by the Meiji Emperor.

- Without the Emperor, could the Japanese have surrendered? I'm not taliing about isolated groups and units, I'm referring to the nation as a whole. The Allies may have been forced to deal with individual pieces of the Empire; Formosa, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, etc. In the OTL, those areas were cleared 'on the cheap' thanks to the Emperor's orders.

- With only two fission weapons and no Emperor to force a surrender, Cornet and Olympic would have gone off as scheduled. They may have even been bumped up. In the meantime, LeMay and his B-29's would be busy 'rearranging the rubble' as he put it in the OTL. This time they'd have many different payloads too. With the Japanese use of WMDs, all those chemical weapons the Allies made and never used in the OTL would be used.

- The late Stephen Ambrose had his faults as an historian but he did point one thing out; the Pacific War was a racial war. Both sides hated each other as a people. He also believed that the horror(1) inflicted by Fat Man and Little Boy some how evened the moral score between the two peoples; we had Pearl Harbor, you had Hiroshima, now we're even. He felt that the suffering Allied occupation troops witnessed in Japan helped them see the Japanese as human again. That would not happen in the case of your WMD strike.

What do I think would result in a Japanese WMD strike on the US West Coast?

- Definitely no US surrender. As one poster pointed out, Truman would have died on the Capital steps under the treads on an IJA tank first.

- More indiscriminate strategic bombing this time including chemical weapons with much, much higher civilian losses.

- Invasion of the Home Islands with Soviet assistance. Imagine a Soviet Hokkaido and northern Honshu with (maybe) a Tokyo Wall(2).

- Much higher Allied deaths due to the Home Islands invasion and the necessity to force the surrender of the rest of the Empire; Rabaul, Formosa, Burma, Singpore, etc.

- A unified communist Korea. Not because the North would have won the Korean War, that war would not have happened. But because the Soviets would have fought through and occupied the entire penninsular.

- A far more 'hot' Cold War thanks to the Soviets having an ice-free outlet into the Pacific.

- A Japan forced to face it's war responsibility and crimes, something that has still not happened to this day. Bigger, longer war crime trials in the Far East and a much harsher Occupation. MacArthur will not be able to set himself up as a Shogun-like SCAP and shield the Japanese from retribution.

- Far fewer Japanese and a much smaller economy. With no Korean War, there will be no need for the Allies to spur Japanese manufacturing. Japan will remain backward during the Occupation and will have to start from a much lower level.

I think in order to envision an American surrender to the Japanese in WW2, you'll have to come up with a POD much further back and much more involved than a few dirty bombs, canisters of gas, and bundles of anthrax in 1945.


Bill

1 - We killed more people in one night over Tokyo with napalm than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sadly, only the nuke bombings are remembered and then only the first one. Tokyo and Nagasaki get the short end of the stick in popular memory.

2 - Would a Soviet garrison surrounded by Western territory in Tokyo make the Soviets a little less likely to get snarky in Berlin where a Western garrison is surrounded by Soviet territory?

Robert Sullivan said:

With all due respect, I must say that this was being planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, an entire History Channel documentary was made about this subject.

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History Channel! Feh!

Granted this is the absurd, but while reading the thread I have one question. How would the United States surrender its government to a foreign power? I mean, the President as Commander in Chief can surrender the military, but for an all out surrender would Congress have to approve it? What about the states, since the Consitution is pretty much being nulified. Or am I just over thinking this, since Congress and the Consitution would be a moot point by then.

MBarry829 said:

Granted this is the absurd, but while reading the thread I have one question. How would the United States surrender its government to a foreign power? I mean, the President as Commander in Chief can surrender the military, but for an all out surrender would Congress have to approve it? What about the states, since the Consitution is pretty much being nulified. Or am I just over thinking this, since Congress and the Consitution would be a moot point by then.

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Surrenders vary, the Japanese surrender was very formal and actually a piece of legislation by the surrendering government. The German surrender was technically illegal, I think, since Doenitz was entrusted it by Hitler on the condition he keep fighting. The surrender of Lee at Appomatox was actually just the surrender of the only effective Army the South had left, Jefferson Davis the President and "real" head of state wanted to keep fighting. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktowne was, apparently, just the end of fighting and the beginning of negotiations, an armistice (As was the end of WWI.).

It leads to an odd question, is the forcible surrender of sovereignity itself a sovereign act of a sovereign state?