Reluctant surrender

Codename Downfall:  The Secret Plan to Invade Japan
by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar
Hodder Headline

Fifty years after the end of the Second World War, an army of revisionist historians is hard at work.  One of their central arguments is that in 1945 Japan was a beaten opponent, desperate to surrender, and that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a calculated atrocity, the opening shots in America's cold war against the Russians.

Utter rubbish, say Allen and Polmar, in this comprehensive, detailed book.  Historians rather than ideologues, they provide a wealth of data showing the extent to which the Japanese were prepared to repel an invasion, pointing out that suicide aircraft and boats were being built by the hundred, and even schoolchildren were being trained to make suicide attacks against American tanks.

NO PEACE

Neither was there any political desire for peace.  The first action of the Suzuki Government, installed after the fateful battle for the key island of Okinawa, was to jail hundreds of political figures who had discussed the possibility of an armistice.  It began to adopt the rhetoric of national suicide, although Allen and Polmar believe that the goal of the Japanese military was to make the invasion so costly that the Allies would settle for a peace that would allow Japan to keep its conquered territories in mainland Asia.

The picture drawn by the statistics and the military documents is not one of a country willing to accept defeat, but of a tough regime ready to go down fighting.  Even after the atomic bombs, a faction in the military argued against surrender, and even plotted a coup.  Only personal intervention by the emperor ended further bloodshed.

An invasion would have been a huge undertaking, far more complex and dangerous than the invasion of Europe.  The death toll would certainly have been over a million.  The Americans, drawing on the experience of the battles of Saipan and Okinawa, believed (probably correctly) that civilians would fight just as hard as regular soldiers, and that few would allow themselves to be captured.

After a string of bloody battles across the Pacific and facing such daunting obstacles, it is no surprise that the chance of ending the war without further loss of Allied lives was grasped immediately, even desperately, by the American leaders.  Several hundred thousand deaths is awful, but less awful than over a million.  It is the fundamental point in this careful analysis of why a grim story was not a much worse one.