DBWI: What if we used nuclear bombs on the Japanese in WWII

Hey guys. As many of you know, Operation Downfall was one of the most brutal offensives of the war. It cost the lives of over two million Japanese and saw Japan's division into the US-backed Republic of Japan and the Soviet-backed People's Republic of Japan (more commonly known as Ezo) on the island of Hokkaido. Many argue that, had we used the recently developed atomic bomb at the time, we could have avoided such brutality, and it's still a controversial discussion to this day.
What do you guys think would happen if we used nuclear force?
 
Nothing the Imperial Japanese government is likely to be unfazed these men had seen a quarter of Tokyo burned to the ground in a single night starvation was rampant and Japanese cities were burning every day what another city burned? No Downfall goes on and millions die
 
Probably the loss of life could have been avoided...though then again, Japan might not have become as developed over the long-term. The US poured huge amounts into rebuilding the South, and because of the division both occupiers encouraged the heavy remilitarisation of their respective zones.

Which has left its mark. Even though the State of Japan cut its Army when the two nations reunified in 1988, it kept the south’s two-light-carrier navy and Air Force, and has been upgrading them - their new Izumo-class light carrier and VTOLs are pretty fearsome compared to anything the neighbours have.

Funny...still a Republic, but their Constitution says that if any direct descendants of the Yamato Dynasty are ever found - remember, it’s an endiring myth ion Japan no-one ever found Prince Akihito’s body after the air attack on the Imperial convoy -they’ll be given the throne. And a lot of Japanese still venerate Hirohito as an immortal emperor now gone where mortals can’t harm him.

I wonder how long US forces would have stayed in-country in this scenario. OTL they only started leaving after unification, only a couple of small airbases left now...
 
Nothing the Imperial Japanese government is likely to be unfazed these men had seen a quarter of Tokyo burned to the ground in a single night starvation was rampant and Japanese cities were burning every day what another city burned? No Downfall goes on and millions die

This. Too many fanatics were in control. The Negotiation Faction led by Prime Minister Suzuki were assassinated in October for continuing to push the idea of discussion of terms with the Allies. Many of the fanatics directly killed more Japanese than Allied soldiers, simply because their victims did not want to fight, or because they were children and elderly and could not fight.
 
It's wishful thinking on our part to think the Pacific War was going to end cleanly after the kind of fighting it took just to get US bombers in range. The invasion of Japan, the pacification, the suicide bombers, it was set in stone the moment we demanded an unconditional surrender.

We should have went to the negotiating table if we wanted that war to end quickly.

It's not like we're against breaking bread with our enemies, just look at how we treated the Germans after the war. In one theatre we're sick and tired and just want to get back to normal so we sanitize war criminals. In the other we're so thirsty for blood we throw our peoples into a meatgrinder just to make a point. It's a shame.

Dropping an oversized coke bottle on a few cities wouldn't have changed that.
 
I wonder how long US forces would have stayed in-country in this scenario. OTL they only started leaving after unification, only a couple of small airbases left now...

... and, if I may pull out a tired old joke, they left the island "half haafu". I mean yes, using the nuclear bombs might have been... troubling, but was the demographic disaster of losing over 80% of the island's fighting age male population really worth it? Granted, alot of that came down to starvation and illness as well as the unintended consquences of firebombing once we started hitting the forests (Lets not even get into the... are we even allowed to talk about that? I think so because talk of Kamikaze is kosher). Add that to the fact that you had for several decades a bunch of mostly young, mostly single men manning US and Red garrisons, ports, and airbases around the islands as well as a (mostly young male) civilian contractor/construction workforce, and its no surprise Japan became the poster child for the decriminalization of miscegenation movement in the US. Without that, would be see as many interracial couples as we do today? The nation at the time was pretty segregated... to think my uncle's marriage might have been illegal down in Mississippi.
 
... and, if I may pull out a tired old joke, they left the island "half haafu". I mean yes, using the nuclear bombs might have been... troubling, but was the demographic disaster of losing over 80% of the island's fighting age male population really worth it? Granted, alot of that came down to starvation and illness as well as the unintended consquences of firebombing once we started hitting the forests (Lets not even get into the... are we even allowed to talk about that? I think so because talk of Kamikaze is kosher). Add that to the fact that you had for several decades a bunch of mostly young, mostly single men manning US and Red garrisons, ports, and airbases around the islands as well as a (mostly young male) civilian contractor/construction workforce, and its no surprise Japan became the poster child for the decriminalization of miscegenation movement in the US. Without that, would be see as many interracial couples as we do today? The nation at the time was pretty segregated... to think my uncle's marriage might have been illegal down in Mississippi.

Probably not long enough for that sort of colonial relationship to develop, blood mixing doesn't seem very likely in any scenario where a functioning Japanese society comes out the other side of the war. There'd be too much internal resistance left in the country for anyone to get that close in the already significantly diminished "occupation" (or whatever you'd call a troop presence comes about with a peaceable end to the conflict.
 
How would we have even produced weapons-grade isotopic uranium in 1945? Lasers weren't invented until the 1960s and materials strong enough for ultracentrifuges didn't exist until 1970s.
 
...in any scenario where a functioning Japanese society comes out the other side of the war.

How do you mean? The Empire collapsed but culturally Japan is still very much Japanese even with the mixed demographics. Shinto and Buddhism are still the dominant religions, people practice the same rituals (OBon, keeping altars to their ancestors in their homes), the traditional arts are still as valued as ever. Heck, many argue that the changes the country went through made people cling to the culture more as a stable thing in an uncertain time.

Of course, there were quite deep changes too. Feminism became even bigger in Japan than much of the West, as Japanese women had had to enter the workforce in huge numbers after the war. Plus when both North and South Japan introduced the draft they ended up making it Israeli-style and universal - initially women were in rear-echelon posts but from the 80s those who pass the physical tests have been in combat roles. To the point it’s become its own trope on TV Tropes (Warrior Women of the Rising Sun :p )

@FillyofDelphi - I wonder...would Japan have accepted immigration if not for the demographic shifts you mention.
 
The soviets would not have had time to invade and ocupy Hokaido; they'd have to settle for Sakhalin. And Korea would not have become a soviet/chinese-backed comunist peninsula.
 
... and, if I may pull out a tired old joke, they left the island "half haafu". I mean yes, using the nuclear bombs might have been... troubling, but was the demographic disaster of losing over 80% of the island's fighting age male population really worth it? Granted, alot of that came down to starvation and illness as well as the unintended consquences of firebombing once we started hitting the forests (Lets not even get into the... are we even allowed to talk about that? I think so because talk of Kamikaze is kosher). Add that to the fact that you had for several decades a bunch of mostly young, mostly single men manning US and Red garrisons, ports, and airbases around the islands as well as a (mostly young male) civilian contractor/construction workforce, and its no surprise Japan became the poster child for the decriminalization of miscegenation movement in the US. Without that, would be see as many interracial couples as we do today? The nation at the time was pretty segregated... to think my uncle's marriage might have been illegal down in Mississippi.
Come on, we all know very well that the 80% of Japanese men died figure is vastly exaggerated. Nowadays it's usually thought no more that 40% of Japanese men died, with about 15-30% much more likely. Japan was in no state to accurately record how many people died.
 
The soviets would not have had time to invade and ocupy Hokaido; they'd have to settle for Sakhalin. And Korea would not have become a soviet/chinese-backed comunist peninsula.
North Japan would likely be even larger than OTL as Japan would likely be split into German style occupation zones, the Soviet zone would probably include Tohoku, Hokkaido and Sakhalin, all becoming part of North Japan.
 
Hey guys. As many of you know, Operation Downfall was one of the most brutal offensives of the war. It cost the lives of over two million Japanese and saw Japan's division into the US-backed Republic of Japan and the Soviet-backed People's Republic of Japan (more commonly known as Ezo) on the island of Hokkaido. Many argue that, had we used the recently developed atomic bomb at the time, we could have avoided such brutality, and it's still a controversial discussion to this day.
What do you guys think would happen if we used nuclear force?
If we used the nuclear bombs on the Japanese, we wouldn’t have so many people arguing if the Nuclear bombing of Cologne and Leipzig was a good or bad thing.
 
Come on, we all know very well that the 80% of Japanese men died figure is vastly exaggerated. Nowadays it's usually thought no more that 40% of Japanese men died, with about 15-30% much more likely. Japan was in no state to accurately record how many people died.

And here we go again with this misunderstanding...

I know that's how the media kept running the headlines, but let's be clear here: no government agency ever claimed that 80% of Japanese males died. Any reading of the reports will clearly show all the figures specifically refer to "fighting age men", which the DoD's official definition is able bodied males between 18 and 35. And it's hardly as though they were all combat casualties; at least a quarter of those were victims of the "Ishii Infection" (And don't bring up any of those conspiracy theories about how it as MacArthur who unleashed it; Unit 731 is just a verified as the Alshwist, and as Downfall showed there were plenty of crazies in the top brass who were willing to use ANY means to try to drive the invaders from their sacred soil. Thank god we'd just gotten a handle on antibiotic production), and another quarter the result of either direct starvation or health complications from malnutrition.

Though, you're right that 80% is a highball estimate. Especially after the Soviets pulled their eastern Kaliningrad and the number of self-exiles to Korea and the Phillipenes out of shame it's hard to know how many actually died
 
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Though, you're right that 80% is a highball estimate. Especially after the Soviets pulled their eastern Kaliningrad

Though that was an abysmal failure as well as being evil - the bulk of the population was still ethnic Japanese, hence reunification in ‘88.

And a lot of descendants of those who went to the Philippines came back to Japan when South Japan’s economy took off in the 60s. As did huge numbers of Japanese-Brazilians - the South gave anyone of Japanese ancestry citizenship.

Some have argued that the large influx of ethnic Japanese from other nations - even from America during the race nastiness of the 60s - is what led to Japan being such a hub of innovation and to Niihama being called ‘Technology City’, with companies like Sakura Computing* springing up there.

Speaking of Sakura, the Kikka 6** is the best smartphone on the planet. Beats anything from America solid.

* OOC: Sane size and popularity as OTL’s Apple

** iPhone 6
 
Perhaps a later evolution of Manga and revival of Class S aka Lesbian literature including in Manga, since the first golden age of Manga was in the 70's which was inspired by the liberals who were anti War in Japan.
 
Breaking news from Japan the nation wide DNA tests have found a Yamato decendent!
16 year old Akira Oyama was helping run his family's Ramin shop in Osaka, he is now the Emperor designate. Akira Oyama was proven to be a direct make line dependent of Emperor Menji.
There's tons of video showing up on line seeing as how the government officials contacted him as soon as possible, and he was in school at the time
 
Breaking news from Japan the nation wide DNA tests have found a Yamato decendent!
16 year old Akira Oyama was helping run his family's Ramin shop in Osaka, he is now the Emperor designate. Akira Oyama was proven to be a direct make line dependent of Emperor Menji.
There's tons of video showing up on line seeing as how the government officials contacted him as soon as possible, and he was in school at the time

Bull and shit. How many Anastasias did we go through before we figured out the Bolsheviks iced her along with the rest of the Romanovs? If this guy’s the real deal, I’ll eat my hat.

Anywho, the Japanese were the poster children for “why fighting to the last person is a horrible idea.” Yeah, the RoJ is one of the finest places to live in the world - NOW - the next 25 years were pure hell for Japan. But I don’t see nukes being a real deterrent - Uncle Sam on the doorstep of Tokyo should have been enough for the Japanese to say, “You know what? Maybe we ought to surrender because we’re probably fucked if we don’t.” And they still didn’t get the message. The Yanks could have turned every small fishing village into a smoldering crater and it wouldn’t have meant jack without a visible line of American boots actively fucking up Japan’s shit.
 
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