raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
I don't think that was meant to be taken literally. I think the idea was that the Japanese and Germans won the war, and rewrote history in the way that made them look the most innocent and honorable.
Worst case scenario for US In Downfall?
- Thread starter SadSprinter
- Start date
I don't think that was meant to be taken literally. I think the idea was that the Japanese and Germans won the war, and rewrote history in the way that made them look the most innocent and honorable.
If the Atomic bombs and the Soviets steamrollering an area as big as France and Germany combined don’t force the Japanese to give up then there is still months of atomic bombing to go. Even just bombing the railways will stop food distribution and millions will starve before a foreign boot lands on a Japanese beach.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
According to Richard B. Frank, while privations were increasing in the Japanese mainland outright famines would not have been an issue until the end of Spring 1946. Throughout all this, the only way Japan could have surrendered was, as historically, through the personal intervention of the Emperor. Hirohito was personally paranoid about the possibility of a mass Communist uprising and social collapse might have tipped him over the edge. By that point, however, the Americans would have already invaded and the country would presumably be united behind the 'national defense effort.'
By the summer, the average caloric intake of civilians was at around 1,650 - well below what's good for a menial worker having to repair a marshalling yard. But that's the average, which was heightened by farmers residing close to the sources. The average city dweller - say that worker - received little more than their official ration, which was at 1,050-1,150. The brink of starvation. I doubt they would have even maintained that level through further months of complete blockade, no fishing, collapsing transportation infrastructures, and epidemics.
People living in those paper houses were reporting to the police breaking&entering theft - people who forced their way into kitchen and took the food. Rice itself was rationed, and by 1944, fish had disappeared from several regions. At the time, a day of fasting per month was mandatory - by law.
Interestingly, there are sources that have looked into the works of the political police, and found unsigned letters telling politicians that the war had to end and that the emperor was a stupid. So I wouldn't bank on that mythical national unity and discipline.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
The rationing of food was skewed in favor of manual laborers and industrial workers in order to maximize productivity; the military itself had separate stocks to be tapped when the 'Decisive Battle' began. Despite this, there was not outright starvation among the general public: Japanese civil authorities (specifically, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida) only estimated that food supplies in southwestern Honshu - the most vulnerable part of the country - would be exhausted in late Spring 1946 and that famines would start in the summer. If that trajectory continued, he feared that 10 million could starve to death by the end of that year.
Even so, there is not much to suggest that there would be a mass rising against the regime: tens of thousands of Japanese noncombatants - considered second class citizens by Tokyo - had already fought to the death, starved, or killed themselves on remote islands rather than "betray" the Emperor. Why do you think it would be any different if the Americans landed not on relative backwaters but on the territory of the mainland?
The typhoon occurred in OTL Oct 1945. The POD can't be latter than Aug 15, so Louise would almost certainly have been butterflied away.
With the anti Japanese sentiment popular during that time could a genocide of the Japanese be carried out?
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So basically like stateside internment on a huge scale - it’s a fuck job with no lube but at least it’s not goddamn Auschwitz. It’s basically about 70% of the way to the moral event horizon, given that some really pissed-off Yanks are going to take their rage out on Japanese civilians and POWs (like a sort of eye-for-an-eye for Bataan.)
This would be effective short-term but a nightmare long-term, so the Allies will demand a quick surrender and a thousand-yard death stare at the Russians to back off Hokkaido. You can also forget about even the last shred of sympathy for Hirohito; that royal SOB is going to prison along with the rest of the Black Dragon regime.
The key to this? Firebombing Japan to the goddamn Jurassic age. I’d say they would have to send Japan straight to hell, but in the words of an old Boy Scout troopmate of mine, it would be worse than hell - it would be FUCK. Worst case - the Soviets get Hokkaido, the Empire hangs onto the rest of Japan north of Tokyo, and the US gets the rest south of Tokyo. So not only does the US lost six figures of people and devastate Japan, but they do it for an unstable peace.
Suddenly two nukes over south Japan seem a lot like a merciful end to the war.
Historian299
Banned
Several nukes are used. The initial invasion has hundreds of thousands of American casiulities. The Japanese hide and contiune to resisit for years. The Soviets occupy the northern half of Japan and install a communsit government.
By 1950, the British and commonwealth troops have left. Imagine Vietnam 20 years early. More and more Americans come home in body bags or with cancer from the radation. Eventually the Americans pull out by 1955-1960. The Soviets occupy the entire country, resulting in a huge lost of prestige. By this point all of China, Korea, and Indo-China have fallen to communism.
This results in an even greater Red Scare in the US and a more divided country.
By 1950, the British and commonwealth troops have left. Imagine Vietnam 20 years early. More and more Americans come home in body bags or with cancer from the radation. Eventually the Americans pull out by 1955-1960. The Soviets occupy the entire country, resulting in a huge lost of prestige. By this point all of China, Korea, and Indo-China have fallen to communism.
This results in an even greater Red Scare in the US and a more divided country.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Japanese military leaders, especially Takijiro Onishi (Admiral who founded the kamikaze program) used figures on the order of 20 million - sometimes for "casualties," sometimes for "dead."
According to Giangreco, US planners estimated that of 3.3 million Japanese civilians living within the target area in Kyushu, 1 million would be killed or flee northward, leaving the rest to be cared for by the Sixth Army. For Coronet, out of 14.5 million in the target area, 5.1 million would be killed or made refugees. Even out of the 9.4 million remaining, it was expected that at least 700,000 would be wounded or sick as a consequence of the fighting. (In other words, the US military believed up to 10 percent of the Japanese population would be killed or dispersed into the country as a direct result of the invasion).
For the rest of Japan, it is impossible to say. Of those area under IJA control we can roughly estimate a 10-15 percent death rate for the first year based on PM Yoshida's figures, after which things would only have gotten worse.
In fact I'm not talking about them being already at starvation. I said they were on the brink of that. And they already suffered from malnutrition-related problems, such as widespread beriberi. As to the calculations of Yoshida (who was Prime Minister in 1946, not during the war), I have to wonder whether he had factored in a cumulative, avalanche effect of the bombardments. A linear trajectory is not an adequate representation; there is a tipping point.
In fact I don't suggest there would be an uprising. I do suggest that widespread apathy and passive resistance might be a possibility. I'd also like to mention that in 1949, the Japanese Communist Party mustered 10% of the votes in the elections. I would also point out that a not insignificant number of civilians had not "killed themselves", but had been killed by soldiers.
Three-quarters-of-a-million Allied dead, out of four million casualties, and twenty million Japanese. Mass starvation from attacks on transport and agriculture. Thirty nuclear detonations, large scale chemical weapons use and some biological warfare. Japanese suicide attacks with bio-weapons against the USA, Russia, China, Australia and Britain.
Yoshida and other conservatives also had an incentive to put as much blame as possible on "Red Fascists" in the military while showing themselves in a good light after the war ended to steer criticism away from bureucratic and political classes. I would take anything he said about the war with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Derek Pullem
Donor
I mentioned this on a different thread. Why is Hokkaido always seen as a push over for the Soviets to occupy? If it were that weakly defended wouldn't it make sense for the US to pursue a Husky style landing to occupy it first to give them the close support bomber bases the navy and air force wanted?
Worst case.
B-29 cashes on take off and the bomb goes off.
Allied landing gets hit by Typhoon Louise.
B-29 cashes on take off and the bomb goes off.
Allied landing gets hit by Typhoon Louise.
Typhoon Louise
Category 1 typhoon (SSHWS)
Duration October 2 – October 12
Peak intensity 150 km/h (90 mph) (1-min) 969 hPa (mbar)
Louise was first seen developing on October 2, 1945, in the Caroline Islands. It unexpectedly veered north and slowed down, only to intensify as it passed over Okinawa on October 9 with 90 mph wind gusts and a minimum central pressure of 968.5 mbar. Shortly after, Louise began to weaken, and hit Japan as a strong tropical storm. The tropical cyclone became extratropical shortly after on October 12. In Okinawa, 36 people died, 47 people were reported missing, and 100 people were seriously injured.
In Buckner Bay, where the US military were occupying a temporary base, 30 ft (9.1 m) to 35 ft (11 m) waves were reported to have crashed ashore, tearing into Quonset huts and other buildings. At the time, Buckner Bay was being used as a port by the US military. Fifteen merchant ships were driven ashore, with a few wrecked. Three US Navy destroyers were grounded and declared beyond salvage. Over 200 other US military vessels, including six LSTs, a number of special purpose boats, patrol boats, and amphibious landing craft were grounded, severely damaged, or wrecked beyond repair. Eighty percent of the buildings in the bay were completely wiped out, while all 60 airplanes at the local airports were damaged.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Pacific_typhoon_season
You want a worst case?
Firebombing, chemical weapons, thermobaric weaponry, Loon/V1 clones with better accuracy, and atomic bombs are used to cleanse the beaches and hinterlands of Kyushu before the first Allied troops land as scheduled. Japan deploys crude biological weaponry but a plague variant emerges able to stay suspended in the air for longer than previously recognized. Unfortunately these agents are widely deployed in small quantities, thus they are initially undetected by the Allies and USSR. The first case is diagnosed late enough to cause this "Red Death" to spread from Siberia to Saipan just from areas already exposed by that point. Eventually it goes global despite quarantine efforts, leading to almost 50% mortality rate in the US alone and only then because medical infrastructure is still largely intact.
Europe and Asia largely succumb while global death tolls approach 70% largely due to malnutrition and lack of access to clean water/medical facilities. It lingers for years with a vaccine coming to fruition over a decade later, the result of a global initiative to eradicate the disease. With a global population of less than 650 million in 1960, this ATL's 2019 is closer to our early 1970s but with a greater emphasis on a Space Program, Public Health, and "prepper" education. There is still a USSR though it is cooperating with the US in a much friendlier 'rivalry' - the possibility of a functional world government emerging becomes plausible because of how devastatingly traumatic the outbreak was. The last known case of Red Death is diagnosed in what was Somalia around July 2009, the ten-year anniversary leading to literal global celebration as the eradication is declared.
Firebombing, chemical weapons, thermobaric weaponry, Loon/V1 clones with better accuracy, and atomic bombs are used to cleanse the beaches and hinterlands of Kyushu before the first Allied troops land as scheduled. Japan deploys crude biological weaponry but a plague variant emerges able to stay suspended in the air for longer than previously recognized. Unfortunately these agents are widely deployed in small quantities, thus they are initially undetected by the Allies and USSR. The first case is diagnosed late enough to cause this "Red Death" to spread from Siberia to Saipan just from areas already exposed by that point. Eventually it goes global despite quarantine efforts, leading to almost 50% mortality rate in the US alone and only then because medical infrastructure is still largely intact.
Europe and Asia largely succumb while global death tolls approach 70% largely due to malnutrition and lack of access to clean water/medical facilities. It lingers for years with a vaccine coming to fruition over a decade later, the result of a global initiative to eradicate the disease. With a global population of less than 650 million in 1960, this ATL's 2019 is closer to our early 1970s but with a greater emphasis on a Space Program, Public Health, and "prepper" education. There is still a USSR though it is cooperating with the US in a much friendlier 'rivalry' - the possibility of a functional world government emerging becomes plausible because of how devastatingly traumatic the outbreak was. The last known case of Red Death is diagnosed in what was Somalia around July 2009, the ten-year anniversary leading to literal global celebration as the eradication is declared.