Worst outcome for Japan

Worst outcome for Japan? That's easy, no atomic bombs available.

Not really. I think the main reason Japan surrendered is because of the Soviet declaration of war and the invasion of Manchuria. Yes, there's the bombings, but that cannot really be distinguished from the firebombings of the other Japanese cities at the time of the event.

Remove the Soviets from the equation, and you may have the Japanese actually attempt to recall their troops in China to the Home Islands and extend this war to a really bloody end.
 
IF the soviet dont attack that would led to Halsey dream of Japanese only been spoke in hell. There would been heavy use of chemical and bio weapons by bith sides and more nuclear weapons on the american side. There would be a death toll on the scale of nothing seen before. A would put the total at 10 million plus and thats just the death and the wounder would be just as high it wuld been a blood bath in everysince of that term. The four japanese islands woul have become a wasteland.
 
The fun part with the atom bomb is that it only needed one plane. Prior bombing raids to kill a city needed hundreds of bombers. With an atom bomb, you only need one.

So what the Allies could do is leak (or transmit) information to the general Japanese public that they only need one aircraft to deliver the bomb. Then announce which city will be hit next (again, to the general public). Give a rough time frame between when someone would see the bomber, when the bomb will go off, and the rough distance you need to get away.

Drop the warhead on that city. Then announce they will hit another city within two weeks. Send ten bombers, each to different cities. Only one has a bomb. Only one needs a bomb. The other nine cities will be panic evacuated and destroyed in the process.

I'd think that complete societal breakdown would soon follow.
 

loughery111

Banned
The Allied invasion of Japan plus the use of multiple nuclear warheads.

Operation Downfall combined with More Nukes.
After Nagasaki the Officer Coup is successful. Japan doesn't surrender.
A-Bombs used to clear the Beaches in Olympic. Then used while waiting for Coronet. Used again to clear the beaches during Coronet.


Sorry, guys, but the blockade option is still worse. We could carpet bomb the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area with first-generation nuclear weapons and the death toll from the blockade plan (and the Soviets getting an occupation zone) would STILL probably be worse.

Let's look at the numbers for a moment:
Olympic and Coronet combined can be counted on to kill 2.5 million Japanese military personnel and civilians. Adding nukes might bring the total to 3.5 million. Adding in the starvation that did occur IOTL takes it up to 4 million.

In contrast, we try the blockade, and knock down the SIX railway bridges that were still keeping Japanese cities somewhat fed... deaths by starvation (and exposure, etc, due to lack of fuel) would conservatively hit the 5-10 million mark, at a bare minimum. Meanwhile, the Soviets take Hokkaido, and after the ultimate surrender receive the northern quarter to third of Honshu as their occupation zone. Thus, we get the Democratic Republic of Japan, or whatever.

Now, for a moment, look at OTL's "Rice Years" and Soviet policy in occupied Eastern Europe. The US was required, and able, to ship something like 500 calories per person per day to keep Japan fed through 1947, and still almost half a million died. The Soviets, meanwhile, were busily stealing food, industrial capital goods, and agricultural machinery from Eastern Europe, which at the time was capable of feeding itself, if barely. They would have been completely unable (and unwilling) to ship food to Japan at this point. It is also likely that they would have been stripping North Japan of what little ability it had to produce food. Thus, out of the maybe 20 million people who would wind up stuck in the Soviet Zone, I think 3-5 million deaths of starvation is a low-ball estimate.

All in all, you get maybe 8-15 million for the blockade vs. 3-4 million for the invasion. And almost complete societal destruction, the near breakdown of civilization itself, with the blockade route.

No.

When this undead topic makes it's seemingly monthly appearance, it is always explained that it's not just a matter of growing enough rice, catching enough fish, or enough people becoming vegetarians. The crux of the problem is the distribution food and not simply the production of the same.

The US had all but shut down coastal freighting, the railway system had been cut to pieces, bridges were being smashed one by one, and the aerial preparations for Downfall planned on savaging what little was left of the Home Islands transportation network.

By 1945 it was becoming readily apparent that Japan would soon be unable to move food to where the people were or move people to where the food was. If the invasion preparations continued, followed by the invasions themselves, the Home Islands would have starved and Halsey's desire that Japanese only be spoken in Hell would come frighteningly close to reality.

Quite honestly, this point has been covered dozens of times here in the last year alone. Considering the number of times this topic is dragged from it's coffin - at least twice today alone - there's no good reason apart from being a recent arrival for most active members not to be aware of it.

Did you actually READ the rest of his post? He essentially says that when conditions were perfect they could feed most of the population; then tells us why they never would have pulled it off IOTL, reason one being that the US had completely shattered their distribution system. Read the whole post next time.
 
Operation Downfall instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Japanese will commit suicide if the invasion happened. Japanese before atomic bombing are starving due to constant US bombing in major cities in Japan.


Also, atomic bomb dropping at the Mt. Fuji will be total disaster not only to Japan but to Pacific Rim nations.:eek:
 
Did you actually READ the rest of his post?


Yes, I did. Did you read mine?

He essentially says that when conditions were perfect they could feed most of the population...

They couldn't feed their population even if conditions were perfect. Even you wrote about the level of imports needed.

Read the whole post next time.

You and I are making the same points and refuting the same idiotic claims. Take your own advice.

Seriously, this thread and it's recent twin are absolutely amazing. The level of idiocy displayed on this topic by even long time members is mind boggling. One member even seriously brought up the old chestnut about nuking Mount Fuji and it becoming an active volcano. It's as if the dozen or so threads on this very topic in the last calendar year never occurred.

It's heart breaking to see that nothing is learned, nothing is remembered, and nothing changes. :(
 
Indeed. In a normal year, if the Japanese went completely vegetarian they could have supported a significant fraction of their population (at a near starvation level, perhaps). However, a) the harvest in '45 was horrible, and b) there is that distribution problem. Oh, and c) they'd have tried to take high value foodstuffs for the army (e.g. meat).

The farmers in the boonies might well have survived. Tokyo would have been a wasteland.

As far as I know, prewar Japan was quite able to feed itself. It was only because of bad harvests, loss of labor, loss of land due to bombing, and the military hogging the food that imports were required.

I think people are overemphasizing the distance food travels in Japan and downplaying the effects of the numerous bad harvests. First of all, Japan is a tiny country. Japan isn't like the U.S. in having the luxury to move food production away from cities. Food didn't always need to travel 500 miles to feed someone. In many cases, it only needed to travel a few hundred feet. Second, Japan suffered through one bad harvest after another. That and the loss of people who could help with planting and fishing was what really crippled the country's ability to feed itself. I don't know how it was in WWII Japan, but going off of what I've seen on numerous trips, nearly every population center is surrounded by farmland. Even within the area considered Tokyo today there is farmland. Aside from rice and sugar from Taiwan and Okinawa, the distribution lines for food produced in Japan have always been fairly short. I assume cities in the 1940's were smaller than they are today, which means there was more farmland. The distribution of vegetables/grain is much less likely to be completely disrupted than that of meat (well, seafood, since beef was not a major protein source and chickens and pigs could easily be kept near houses).

Given a good harvest for several years, lack of bombing/chemical/biological warfare on fields and strict rationing, a good number of people would have lived even if distribution was restricted. The major cities (Tokyo, Osaka etc but probably not Kyoto) would still be devastated, but smaller cities would get through a lot better. The inability to distribute fuel, not food, is what's gonna kill a lot of people come winter (well, actually there are a lot of trees to burn too...).

That said, the US was considering using rice blast fungus to devastate the rice crop, but it was found to be not particularly effective in warm weather. Someone mentioned the use of anthrax earlier, which would kill off mammals and some people, but the traditional sources of protein, chickens, soy, and fish, would not be affected.
 
Yes, I did. Did you read mine?

Clearly you didn't, since you're claiming he said things he specifically didn't.


They couldn't feed their population even if conditions were perfect. Even you wrote about the level of imports needed.

And guess what Dathi wrote..."could have supported a significant fraction of their population". Note the absence of the word "all" and the disclaimer that it would be at a near starvation level, at best. He wasn't claiming that they could feed their whole population; just that they could feed *most* of it, if they rationed, cut back to the bone, had a normal (ie., regular harvest) year, and had an undamaged distribution network. All factors which they *didn't* possess in 1945.
 
Worst?

something like this for example ...

EDIT: BTW in the version I played it was invaded AND Nuked, several times ... and after that had a civil war like the Korean one ( but wit mechas, of course )
 
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