I Am Interested In Ww1 and Ww2

The realm of Bushido... Total subservience to the Emperor god.. The ultimate death before dishonour in the Japanese ideology @Human1000

@braveheart21 Indeed. Hindsight is completely 20/20 but once there was total air and sea superiority around June 1944, I wonder if more Island "skipping" may have been better like the US did at Rabaul. Perhaps not Okinawa, but Iwo Jima. "Ernest King, the chief of naval operations, dismissed the occupation of Iwo Jima as a waste of resources."

As u say hindsight is wonderfully clear but at the time total destruction of the Japanese ability to fight was uppermost in everyones thinking... @Human1000

@braveheart21 I would have thought so too, but just in terms of Iwo Jima, I was surprised to see Admiral King was against it. It didn't have strategic value it seems. So it goes...

@Human1000

The Nazis likewise kept Germany fighting, long after there was any chance of victory.

I think looking back it was a trophy battle... The American people needed more successful invasions to prepare for the possible invasion of the Japanese homeland... Thankfully that never happened or the death toll on both sides would have been unimaginable... The A bomb didnt cost American or Allied lives @Human1000

@Thinkerbell That's for sure -- Goebbels said "If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction”

@braveheart21 I don't think the Americans expected the resistance they got. 26,040 total casualties 6,821 killed.

True but the brass weren't interested in the figures.. Estimates before the event and plenty excuses afterwards @Human1000

@braveheart21 The war became such a meat grinder the numbers start to lose their significance. I don't think any serious person can read about these battles and still think the Americans should not have dropped the bomb. Not dropping it wasn't even considered.

@Human1000

Can you imagine the outcry from the American public if they had not used the bomb, but had suffered a million casualties to capture the Japanese home islands instead?

@Thinkerbell Absolutely. There was in fact some criticism beginning of the casualties. Not a ton, but who knows what would have happened.

@Thinkerbell Why was either the bomb or a land invasion the only options? We could have negotiated a conditional surrender with Japan. Their industry was crushed anyway, they wouldn’t have been a threat.

People say that Asians always have to “save face” but I think that really applies to us. It’s why the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars went on for so long.

@LeopoldBloom There was a conditional surrender, actually. The Japanese were allowed to keep the Emperor. The Japanese couldn't accept defeat, and didn't indicate any willingness to surrender until after the atomic bombs were dropped. Any maintenance of the old government would have been impossible given how they conducted themselves in the war, especially against China.

@LeopoldBloom

As Willie has already correctly pointed out, we did give the Japanese a conditional surrender.
And it had been decided at Yalta and Potsdam that the existing governments of Germany and Japan had to go, and their leaders tried as war criminals.

The existing government of Japan would never have agreed to an occupation without the bomb or without an invasion of the home islands.

It's ironic that Tojo, who sent millions of soldiers to their deaths under the Bushido code, proved unwilling to follow that code himself. He tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the heart only when US soldiers were at his door to arrest him. He missed his heart, recovered, and was hanged after being found guilty of war crimes at his trial.

Talk about losing face... 🙄