AHC: U.S. Annexes Japan After WWII

2. Japanese losses much worse in WWII, to the point a much longer U.S. occupation is needed to keep the country working. IIRC MacArthur told Truman to "send me bread or send me bullets." A longer blockade or a truly awful invasion and there might not be very many Japanese left.

The simplest way to get to that scenario might be to eliminate or significantly delay the development of atomic weapons by the USA.

There are plenty of unlikely events in the chain that led up to the US taking over the British Tube Alloys program. Put a stick in the spokes of any of them, and there would have been no Manhattan Engineer District at all.

Slowing down the project is almost as easy.

So, without atomic weapons, we'd be on the original "Olympic" plan for the amphibious invasion of the Japanese homeland. Had the coup against the Emperor failed, or managed to keep him silenced, and had the Japanese used the same tactics as they did on Okinawa, there would have been darned few Japanese left by the end of it.
 
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