Monday, August 15, 2016

He Saved Japan


"71 years ago today, Aug. 15, 1945, Hirohito the Emperor of Japan announced to his people that Japan was surrendering to the Allies.  It was unprecedented that the people of Japan heard his voice on the radio. He spoke in a formal, imperial language that made it difficult for many Japanese to understand.  However, his meaning came through.... Japan would submit to the terms of the Potsdam Conference which required the unconditional surrender of Japan.

I say that he saved Japan because I believe that if Japan had continued to resist and it became necessary for the Allies to execute our invasion plans, Japan would have been destroyed.  Japan's women and children had been trained and motivated to assault invaders even with simple bamboo spears.  Japan still had formidable aerial capability (estimated 4,000 fighter planes, with 8,000 additional aircraft) and would have resisted with thousands of "kamikaze" suicide attacks.  All would die before submitting to invaders.

The Allies would have had no choice but to continue massive bombing including the use of additional atomic bombs as soon as we had more ready.  Allied plans have been said to include the atomic bombing of the Tokyo area's eight million people. Of course untold hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers , sailors and airmen would have died as well.  Invasion would yield the bloodiest massacre, on both sides - more than our world had ever experienced. Some have estimated as many as 1.7 to 4 million American casualties and five to ten million Japanese.

Our materiel capacity would have eventually overwhelmed the resource limited Japanese.  It has been clear to post-war military historians that Japan, as an organized society, would have been destroyed.

Japan's surrender, brought on by the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saved tens of millions of lives."

[clipper]

No comments:

Post a Comment