How many people total would have died in a US invasion of the Japanese islands in 1945-46?

[Recursion]

Since this question seems to not get polled much this time of year.

(Good point from down-thread: this is including civilian casualties, as well as American and Japanese combatants.)

10 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Less than 10,000 (Battle of Tarawa death toll)
	0 (0%)
	10,000-50,000 (Battle of Iwo Jima death toll)
	0 (0%)
	50,000-65,000 (the deaths at Hiroshima)
	0 (0%)
	65,000-80,000 (Fire-bombing of Dresden death toll)
	0 (0%)
	80,000-100,000 (the combined deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
	0 (0%)
	100,000-200,000 (Battle of Okinawa death toll)
	0 (0%)
	200,000-500,000 (Fire-bombing of Tokyo death toll)
	0 (0%)
	500,000-750,000 (U.S. Civil War death toll)
	0 (0%)
	750,000-1,000,000 (Armenian Genocide death toll)
	0 (0%)
	1,000,000+ (This doesn't need a comparison)
	10 (100%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[Johnny2X2X]

1. Could have been 0

An invasion wasn't inevitable. We might have not invaded Japan at all.

[Recursion]

6. I updated the choices to include less than 5,000

I strongly disagree, but I wanted your vote to represent your actual opinion.

[MillennialDem]

45. Japan was getting mighty scared about Russia getting involved in the war - they

may well have surrendered after the invasion of Manchuria.

[Adrahil]

70. Nah.. They were done after Okinawa, and they knew it.

The smart ones among them knew it 1943, or even earlier. After Okinawa, the U.S. Was on their doorstep, and they knew it was must a matter of how much blood before the end. I think they imagined a glorious end in battle. The bomba showed them there was going to be no such glorious end. Only fire.

[hack89]

21. Innocents in countries occupied by Japan would have continued to die in massive numbers

extending the length of the war to spare Japanese lives would have simply extended the killing.

[Sherman A1]

2. Many

I am certain the estimates from the time are available, but don't have them handy to add.

[Recursion]

3. The going estimate was 600,000 US casualties, X2 Japanese

Though that was probably overstated.

[sarisataka]

12. If anything, military plans

tend to be over-optimistic.

U.S. planners estimated the Japanese could have gathered 2000- 2500 planes and it was assumed they would all be used as kamikazes. In actuality they had over 10,000 ready with more still being produced or transferred from China. Also given what they learned in the Battle of Okinawa, rather than targeting the warships, they would focus on the transports to kill troops before they could land.

About the time of the Hiroshima bomb, U.S. intelligence had revised the estimated military forces defending the invasion sites from 350,000 to 600,000. This was causing grave concern about the viability of the invasion and helped sway the decision to used the bombs. Actual Japanese troop strength around the invasion beaches was nearly 1,000,000.

[oneshooter]

48. As a side note on casulties

In preparation for the invasion of Japan the War Department, in 1944, ordered one million Purple Heart awards. Today they are still using awards from that WW2 order.

[neverforget]

72. Yes they are.

http://www.stripes.com/blogs/the-rumor-doctor/the-rumor-doctor-1.104348/are-purple-hearts-from-1945-still-being-awarded-1.116756

[GusBob]

4. Civilians and military?

I hate to be obtuse but.....

The Japanese civilians were already starving how many deaths from that if the war went on?

During the prolonged invasion of Okinawa, civilians were urged to commit suicide and many did, during an invasion of Japan how many suicides?

[Recursion]

5. Good point, yes: including civilians

I am including civilian casualties, which pretty much has to be done ever since Dresden.

[GusBob]

16. Then in my view way over a million

And the civilian deaths would represent the largest percentage

Eta: on okinawa I think 25% of the civilian population died in 3 months from many causes including suicide

[Recursion]

26. Not to mention exposure and starvation during the occupation (nt)

[HooptieWagon]

7. The minimum estimate for just US deaths was 100,000.

Japanese deaths would number in the millions, plus millions more indirect civilian deaths due to suicide, disease and starvation. It's not far-fetched to estimate nearly half the Japanese population would have perished. There would not be a single building, farm, or tree left standing.

[hifiguy]

25. I agree. The Japanese army would have

fought like tigers to the last man. 1-2 million total dead.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. There was no need to invade Japan.

[Recursion]

9. So the war would have ended... magically? (nt)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. To all intents and purposes the war was over.

What would have happened if we didn't invade Japan and just ignored it? Would it have invaded Malibu?

[sarisataka]

15. The alternate plan to end the war

was to invade Korea and China. The U.S. would then be able to encircle Japan with air and naval forces launching continuous conventional airstrikes. Japan would eventually surrender from starvation of its people.

The plan was rejected, not be cause of the millions of Japanese and collateral Korean and Chinese deaths it would cause but it was likely Japan would hold out for a year or more. That would erode civilian morale among the allies. The people might call for and end to the war with the status quo, leaving Japan with large areas of China still under its control and the military firmly in power.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Russia invaded China and rolled over the Japanese army without that happening.

[hobbit709]

35. AFTER Hiroshima.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

42. So what?

Are you saying they couldn't/wouldn't have invaded and rolled over the Japanese army in China without the bombs? Hell, even the Americans and Brits made concessions to the Soviets in fear of their army.

[sarisataka]

73. And the bombs had been used

There was much confusion in the Kwangtung Army if Japan had surrendered.

There were many reasons for the rapid Soviet victory but they had reached their limit of supply. The advance had reached its limit for the time. The surrender made U.S. occupation of airbases moot.

[MicaelS]

22. Millions would died of starvation.

That is what a naval blockade, without invasion, would have caused.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Why blockade. What would be the point?

[MicaelS]

33. To force the Japanese to surrender. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

40. So, it was for the winning trophy?

They were already defeated and helpless.

[NutmegYankee]

57. They were not defeated.

They had not surrendered. Surrender = defeat.

The Japanese had tens of thousands of POWs and slave laborers working in factories and would have required constant bombardment to contain them without a surrender. Even as they surrendered, they were sending the I-400 class submarines to perform Kamikaze attacks on US carriers. The subs had to abort the mission after tense standoffs after hearing the surrender announcement.

[NutmegYankee]

36. The war had to end to get the POWs released.

Or should we just have abandoned them to suit your ludicrous take on WWII?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

43. So we killed thousands on the chance that they would release the prisoners?

[MicaelS]

46. Are you trying to imply the Japanese were innocent? Because they weren't.

The Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people weep bitter tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. The Chinese alone suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). Not to mention all the other countries they Japanese conquered and occupied. Like the Philippines or Korea.

The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually service, as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for years on end.

Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWs and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.

People these days find it easy to take some moral high-ground when they are not involved in a war to the knife for the future of civilization. Hindsight is easy.

[NutmegYankee]

47. Once Japan surrendered, the POWs were released.

At least those Japan hadn't starved to death or beheaded. The 30,000 American POWs Japan interned suffered a 40% death rate as they were forced to work in factories, shipyards, and mines in Japan with minimal food.

This is what they looked like:







The Japanese regime murdered more people than Hitlers. It had to be dismantled/crushed just like the Third Reich.

[hack89]

24. Millions of innocents in countries occupied by Japan would die.

the Japanese killed nearly 30 million civilians during the war.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. Those occupations were over or ending.

Japan was defeated. It didn't have the means to supply those troops even they had the supplies, which they didn't. Most of the civilian casualties perpetrated by Japan were in China and countries bordering China. The Russians had destroyed the Japanese forces in China with ease. The forces in Korea and Taiwan were stranded. Burma was in British hands. How is your hypothetical of "millions" even possible?

The Japanese militarists were more fearful of popular uprisings and Communist revolution in Japan than they were of more bombs. Which is why they wanted to continue the war after the bombs and stop Hirohito's surrender.

The formal surrender was inevitable with or without the bombs.

[NutmegYankee]

49. What about the tens of thousands of Chinese/Koreans/Filipinos forced into slave labor in Japan?

Or do they not matter either?

[MicaelS]

50. Not in the minds of some, apparently.

Only the Japanese "victims" of the atomic bombings matter.

[GreatGazoo]

17. 2 Nuclear bombs did not force Japan to surrender

The A-bombs had less destructive force than many other bombing raids late in the war. The Soviets declared war on Japan Aug 8th and invaded Manchuria. The best argument I have heard is that the combination of impending loss and a now 2-front war forced the surrender.

We often imagine, because of the way the story is told, that the bombing of Hiroshima was far worse. We imagine that the number of people killed was off the charts. But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer.

From our perspective, Hiroshima seems singular, extraordinary. But if you put yourself in the shoes of Japan’s leaders in the three weeks leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the picture is considerably different. If you were one of the key members of Japan’s government in late July and early August, your experience of city bombing would have been something like this: On the morning of July 17, you would have been greeted by reports that during the night four cities had been attacked: Oita, Hiratsuka, Numazu, and Kuwana. Of these, Oita and Hiratsuka were more than 50 percent destroyed. Kuwana was more than 75 percent destroyed and Numazu was hit even more severely, with something like 90 percent of the city burned to the ground.

Three days later you have woken to find that three more cities had been attacked. Fukui was more than 80 percent destroyed. A week later and three more cities have been attacked during the night. Two days later and six more cities were attacked in one night, including Ichinomiya, which was 75 percent destroyed. On August 2, you would have arrived at the office to reports that four more cities have been attacked. And the reports would have included the information that Toyama (roughly the size of Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1945), had been 99.5 percent destroyed. Virtually the entire city had been leveled. Four days later and four more cities have been attacked. On August 6, only one city, Hiroshima, was attacked but reports say that the damage was great and a new type bomb was used. How much would this one new attack have stood out against the background of city destruction that had been going on for weeks?

In the three weeks prior to Hiroshima, 26 cities were attacked by the U.S. Army Air Force. Of these, eight — or almost a third — were as completely or more completely destroyed than Hiroshima (in terms of the percentage of the city destroyed). The fact that Japan had 68 cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of Japan’s surrender. The question is: If they surrendered because a city was destroyed, why didn’t they surrender when those other 66 cities were destroyed?

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

[Recursion]

19. I pointed out in the options that the Tokyo firebombing killed twice as many as the two nukes

So what made Japan surrender?

[GreatGazoo]

20. Likely they expected better terms from the US than from the Soviets

who declared war on Aug 8 (and promptly annihilated elite Japanese forces in Manchuria).

And looking at East Germany, that would seem to be correct. East Germany was lost to the Soviets for 42 years and the Soviets oppressed East Germany dismantling factories and moving them into Russia. In contrast the US worked with Japan. How many cars made in East Germany were imported to the US during the 1970s and 80s? Japan economy was the best in the world in the days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The war was won before the Bomb. The timing of the surrender of Japan to the US was a strategic decision to get the (relatively) best terms they could for their future.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

44. Bingo! The Japanese feared the Soviets more than us.

Which is why the militarists tried to stop the surrender.

[irisblue]

53. you really mean this? wow, just wow n/t

[cherokeeprogressive]

11. Speculation. NO possible way to tell.

No point in judging the actions of 70 years ago by today's measure.

[Amishman]

13. read about the planning done for Operation Downfall, total deaths could easily top 1 million

The Japanese combatant deaths alone could have topped one million. The Japanese were recruiting and arming militias, with 2 million people recruited into the Volunteer Fighting Corps and were actively being trained to fight a war of attrition against the invaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps

The Japanese were estimated to have between 5000 and 10000 kamikazi planes available by the time an invasion force would be ready.

The wikipedia article has a number of different casualty estimates from the invasion planning, the highest of them being:

A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

[1939]

56. Numbers I have seen

Japanese Army: 1,100 combat aircraft + 2,100 kamikazes
Japanese Navy: 3,200 combat aircraft + 2,000 kamikazes

2,850 Suicide torpedo attack boats
450 suicide submarines

55 combat divisions plus 40 separate brigades

34 surface warships
21 regular submarines

[matt819]

14. When I was growing up

My father, who would have been in an invasion of Japan, told me that casualties were expected at a half million or more. I was a kid then, of course, and so had no reason not to believe my father.

On reflection? Who knows?

[geek tragedy]

18. Given the way they fought for a piece of crap island like Iwo Jima,

1 million dead Japanese seems like the floor, not the ceiling.

[Rex]

23. Wow concern trolling one OP right after the other huh?

[edhopper]

27. Dick Cheney said

we would have been greeted as liberators.

[TexasTowelie]

28. There is a reasonable chance that I would not be here.

My father was in the Navy at the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

[Malraiders]

29. Uhm japam was willing to surrender before the bombs were deployed people. eom

[Recursion]

30. Were they?

They didn't.

[EndElectoral]

39. Tojo didn't want to surrender. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki it took continued firebombing of Tokyo.

[MicaelS]

34. If they were willing, why didn't they surrender? n/t

[EndElectoral]

37. My father was in the front lines of Okinawa, so had there been invasion I might not be posting this.

[Motown_Johnny]

41. No way to know.

We are told it would have been millions because that helps justify dropping 2 A bombs on Japan.

[1939]

51. US Military estimates of US casualties in the invasion of Japan

80,000 US dead
290,000 US wounded

This would add about 22% to the total of actual US WWII casualties.

Based on Saipan and Okinawa experiences, my personal estimate, based on ratios of US casualties, would be on the order of 600,000 Japanese military deaths and possibly an equal number of civilian deaths

[still_one]

52. General MacArthur's staff anticipated about 50000 American casualties, and several time that number

of Japanese casualties.

Here is an article which addresses this very question

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/

[Cleita]

54. None. Some historians say that Japan was ready to surrender

but the military were itching to try our their new bomb and since Americans were very bigoted at that time about Asians, not considering them quite full humans (I know, I lived then and heard the conversations) and many Americans wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor, that the bombing got the go ahead.

[rug]

55. +1

Invasion was not the only option. Not by a long shot.

[NuclearDem]

58. It's not that simple.

The Japanese were in talks with the USSR, with who they had a non-aggression treaty, to get Moscow to end the war on conditions more favorable to them. What they didn't know is that the USSR had agreed to enter the war at Yalta, and even if they hadn't, the USSR had no intention of ending the war without getting some territory off their Pacific coast anyway.

[Cleita]

59. We still didn't have to drop a nuclear bomb on them. eom

[NuclearDem]

60. Considering Hirohito himself cited the atomic bombings--and not the USSR--as his main reason

Apparently, we had to.

[Rex]

61. Bombing civilians is a war crime.

We should have picked military targets imo.

[NuclearDem]

63. No argument from me on that point.

[Cleita]

65. Cited what as his main reason for what?

[NuclearDem]

67. Cited the atom bomb as his main reason for surrender.

His radio broadcast to the Japanese stated that the United States had weapons powerful enough to completely annihilate the Japanese as a people, and to prevent that from happening, he was surrendering.

[Cleita]

68. So he had a face saving excuse. He was ready to surrender before we dropped the bomb.

I'm not pulling this out of my ass. A three star general, who was a guest professor, in my history class and an expert in WWII said so when he was teaching us about it. It was in 1960 so don't ask me his name. I don't remember. But he was stationed at Fort Leavenworth. This, however, says more than I can.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

[hueymahl]

62. A LOT of revisionist history going on here

But what else is a good forum for?

Upthread someone mentioned "concern trolling". That pretty much sums it up. Next thing you know someone is going to be second-guessing our battles for independence against the British.

[Rex]

64. The War of 1812 say

we had the Bomb back then...how many American lives would have been saved by dropping it on London? Er sorry...we are only interested in dead people...how many dead people.

Series...these stupid threads are way too common in GD imo.

[former9thward]

66. Not that many.

The Soviets had just declared war on Japan and they had a lot to gain by attacking Japan. Japan could not withstand a two-front war for long.

[hunter]

69. It's interesting how the wartime propaganda still lives on.

A Normandy style invasion wasn't really on the books by the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was going to be bombs, bombs, and more bombs, both nuclear and conventional, until Japan surrendered or Japan was in total ruin with no organized leadership left to surrender.

The feel-good story that the atomic bombs "saved lives," is simply another nuclear mythology. Dead or maimed by either nuclear or conventional bombs is still dead or maimed.

Another mythology is that the "Fat Man" was a one-off kind of thing. In fact there were more than a hundred of these bombs in the pipeline and all were assembled in the next few years, and all were "retired from service" by 1950 in favor of more advanced designs. The production of plutonium at Hanford was only briefly interrupted when the war ended to install safety equipment and procedures that had been overlooked in the heat of the war, and to assign various operation contracts in a more traditional "pork-barrel politics" and less hurried manner.

The success of the Manhattan Project, in the most basic military analysis, simply increased the total TNT equivalent tonnage of bombs the U.S.A. could produce and delver to any target in Japan.

That's exactly how the military planners, entirely naive about the poisonous fallout of nuclear weapons, were thinking about the problem. Now a single airplane can deliver a very big bomb, rather than a fleet of airplanes delivering many smaller (but still very big) bombs. By most accounts that's how the Japanese leadership saw it too. And like other posters have observed, Japan may have preferred surrendering to the U.S.A. over the Soviet Union.

This naivety about nuclear weapons was so great they were tested in the open air here in the U.S.A.. My father-in-law is one of those rare people who has witnessed a nuclear explosion up-close from a hole in the ground. He was one of the American guinea pigs who participated in mock nuclear battle in the Nevada desert, marching directly off to ground zero through radioactive ashes, mushroom cloud still rising in the sky, past rolled and mangled tanks and jeeps, desert plants, and other stuff that was still burning. As someone who didn't want to shoot anyone he'd fully expected at worst, to end up as a medic in the Korean conflict. Then things got strange. At the end of the exercise they all shed their clothes and scrubbed off in field showers until the Geiger counters registered what were considered to be "safe" radiation levels at the time.

[Cleita]

71. I remember watching those bomb tests on TV.

Someone was up and close with a camera.

[roamer65]

74. We are very fortunate Hirohito was a man of some sense.

Last edited Thu Aug 6, 2015, 11:07 PM - Edit history (3)

Plans were to invade and utilize every atomic bomb we could produce during the invasion, to the tune of 3-4 bombs per month...according to War Dept documentation shown on PBS's "The Bomb". I also remember reading elsewhere our troops were going to be marched right through the fallout and blast zones.

He was right to surrender so quickly, it saved many, many lives.