Land invasion of Japan

>>3180283
It would have been militarily awesome thats for sure.

The jap tanks were so fucking shit though, their Chi-Nu, saved for the invasions, were so 1941 tier.

>>3180289
Does Japan's terrain lend itself to tank warfare anyway? It seems like they'd have played less of a role than they did in Europe.

>>3180283
Should the emperor have decided to surrender (I'm guessing he would've in the case of a land invasion of japan) there would've been a military coup, with the emperor being made a puppet. Japanese patriotism + the fact that allied propaganda had weaker influence in the pacific theatre would've meant that the majority of the civilian population would've been armed and fighting.

I'd say it would've added another 6 months to the war assuming the soviets launched a joint invasion. It would've been extremely bloody on both sides. Much more humanitarian to nuke them rather than force soldiers to shoot hundreds of desperate women and children with guns.

>>3180296
Probably be like the Italian campaign, with tanks delivering indirect fire support, doubt there would have been many head-on engagments. Probably lots of suicide attacks on the tanks. Would've been a very messy battle, considering the way Japs acted on home soil (Okinawa)

>>3180312
Wasn't there a failed coup after the bombings anyway? Why do you think a land invasion would've resulted in a successful coup? Do you think a coup would have enjoyed wider support simply because the threat of annihilation was less inevitable than in the case of the atomic bombs?

>>3180283
most of the plans for DOWNFALL are available on dtic.mil if you want to read primary sources

>>3180328
Thanks for the suggestion anon, will definitely hit that up. Was also just asking though because I'm curious how people who are well versed in this area think the invasion might have gone down given what we know now (rather than estimates based on contemporary intelligence).

>>3180323
Keep in mind that this is all personal speculation. I probably know only as much as you do.

There's at least some hope for the Japanese military in the case of a land invasion that dragging it out long enough would result in the Allies giving in to negotiating a peace treaty. Land invasions would've also provided good propaganda material for the Japanese since civilian massacre would've been inevitable. The nuclear bomb changed that by giving the allies an option to erase Japan from the map without ever having to step foot on Japanese soil. The Japanese knew this at the time, hence why I think the coup failed (and would've succeeded in case of a land invasion).

>>3180283
It would have been the most glorious massacre, an epic scale slaughterhouse, an absolute shame in mankind's history.
But no, the coward burgers ruin everything, they chose the easy way instead, they can't into aesthetic.

It's impossible to know how long it would have lasted, with a military commander in every village it's uncertain that the Emperor surrender would have been effective as long as there were an enemy in sight. The last japanese soldiers fought until the 60's because they thought the surrender was a hoax. Guerilla warfare could have lasted years in the mountains.

bamboo spear armed high school girls

OP here, something I'm curious about that no one's mentioned yet is what the Soviets would be doing. Are they busy chewing up Manchuria, or would we have seen a northern invasion of Japan resulting in a modern North/South Japan division?

>>3180465
muh dick

>>3180479
Soviets didn't have any navy whatsoever so it would have taken them years to get to the stage of doing an amphibious invasion.

>>3180503
Please slap me down if this is stupid, but let's say they, in typical Soviet fashion, requisitioned a whole bunch of civilian fishing boats or something, or essentially crafted some last-minute rafts and slapped motors on them to tow behind what ships they did have. As I understand, they don't have very far to go (although I don't know what that area of Russia is like in terms of acting as a staging area, or what the sea conditions are). The IJN was pretty much ineffective at this point wasn't it?

Could the Japs have spared the troops to oppose their landing? Or would the Soviets have been happy to have left it to the Americans while they turned on Manchuria?

But why not just one bomb instead of two?

>>3180522
Also, just for clarification, I don't mean literal rafts - I mean some rushed, cheaply mass-produced landing craft. Though I'm guessing with a navy supplying your land forces is pretty difficult.

>>3180312
>Should the emperor have decided to surrender (I'm guessing he would've in the case of a land invasion of japan) there would've been a military coup, with the emperor being made a puppet.
That actually did happen, their Emperor recorded himself ordering the unconditional surrender of Japan. The military got wind, took the record and locked him under house arrest.

>>3180465
In my autistic inner fantasies there is a moe high school sol anime series about an ordinary high school girl and her friends conscripted to fight a hopeless guerrilla campaign against GIs on Honshu

I call it Downfaru no Banzai

>>3180565
They never found the recording, and it was some junior officers - they didn't manage to convince anyone in high command (one of the people involved in the coupe, the commander of one of the battalions of the Imperial Guard I think, only took part because they told him higher ranking officers were in on it, and he ejected them from the palace once he found out they'd tricked him).

>>3180522
It's not just a matter of physical sealift capacity. Amphibious warfare is extremely complex. The USMC were just about the only force which practiced it seriously in the interwar, and there was still a steep learning curve in practice. The USSR had zero experience doing it.

Even if you deliver strelki to a beach successfully, they need either specialized craft to offload equipment or a harbor. Supplying men without these is nearly impossible (the Japanese tried to do it on Guadalcanal by drifting crates over to the shore). Add to this the extremely limited number of landable beaches in Japan and it would be trivial to defend against such an invasion even if the bulk of IJA forces were in action against the US.

The Soviets would be trying to land in difficult terrain with no specialized landing craft, minimal naval fire support and air support, and zero doctrine or training. They would then have to fight through mountain passes with minimal supplies and probably no armor or artillery because there is no way to offload that without a harbor. The IJA might not even have to show up.

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>>3180283
>Was Japan in a state to put up as much resistance as the Germans had in France? How long might they have been able to hold out?
Germany didn't actually put up much resistance in France. I think you mean to say Germany.

Japanese resistance would have been far more fanatical than that showed by the Germans in 1945. Most Germans knew they would be treated well enough by the Anglo-American forces and surrendered in large numbers
Civilian resistance after the fall of the German government was nowhere near as bad as they expected it to be

Japanese people viewed the Americans and British as subhumans who would torture and rape them and kill their children if they were captured. Women and children were armed with anything they could find like bamboo spears

>>3180600
To illustrate how hard modern amphibious warfare can be: there are a pair of tiny islands within 5km of the Chinese coastline called Quemoy and Matsu. These islands are under ROC control. Even though they are within artillery range of the mainland, far inside the PLAAF's air defense envelope, the PLA was never able to capture either island.

Quemoy and Matsu were bombarded so heavily in the 50s that there is a modern industry there based on making cutlery out of shrapnel. On a good day you can see mainland China from the islands. But crossing that gap without a well-developed navy and practice in amphibious operations was simply not possible.

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>>3180283

>what would a D-day style invasion of Japan have looked like?

Absolute carnage that would've put Stalingrad to shame.

The worst thing possible would have happened, the Soviets invading from the north and not leaving, causing another split state.

>>3180851
With that navy they don't have.

Soviet operations against Japan if the war had continued would have involved attacking Korea and China, not the Japanese home islands. It would have had significant effects on the Chinese civil war and how east Asia turns out, but not so much for Japan proper.

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>>3180283
We could

A. Nuke 2 cities and end the war leaving their wartime industry and economy intact and breaking their backwards fucking "YOU MUST NOT DISHONOR YOUR FAMRY" mentality. This would allow them to become one of the most prosperous and safe nations in the world and allow them to heavily impact the entertainment industry and culture.

Or

B. Have a costly invasion losing american lives, causing suffering throughout the entire island of Japan, and allowing the Soviets to invade from the north, uniting Korea as a communist regime and creating a North Japan communist state. There would also be intense rebellion and ritual suicides as well as kamikaze galore to resist occupation.

Overall, people who whine about the nukes being dropped are a bunch of crybabies who don't understand economics. An invasion of Japan would have been worse than Normandy, and an occupation would be hell.

Imagine the might of the Eternal Anglo Harris being targeted on the entire Island of Japan, rather than just 2 cities.

tl;dr:
Nukes are great, the invasion would have been massive casualties on both sides.

>pic somewhat related

>>3180465
nigga, I didn't ask for a new fetish.

>>3180479
The Soviets would have invaded Japan from the north, as they had planned to do irl, Stalin said to the Allies that he would have taken only the Kurili islands after the war, but he would have rushed an invasion of Hokkaido to claim it by occupation as he did with all of eastern Europe

Americans were too afriad to invade Japan

>>3180926
As much as I didn't want this thread to be derailed by discussion of whether the bombs should be dropped, I feel like the original question's been answered pretty well, and I'm curious anyway.

Why were population centers the targets? I'm sure the US wasn't out to be mustache twirlingly evil, but could they have demonstrated the power of the bombs on purely military targets, or were cities simply the only option to showcase the destructive capabilities of the atom bomb?

>>3181020
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had heavy industry directly contributing to the war effort.Of course there were bustling cities of civilians around these industrial sites, but by that point in the war, firebombing Japanese (and German) civilians was a regular practice for us

>>3181020

To kill as many people as possible. When Truman announced the bombs had been dropped he claimed Horishima and Nagasaki were military bases in the same breath.

>>3181020
By the time we dropped the nukes on them a lot of the populated parts of the country had already been reduced to a smoking ruin due to the strategic bombing campaign. The point of strategic bombing is total war from the air, you want to destroy all of their economic and industrial infrastructure and demoralize and kill as many people as possible. Le May literally picked bombing targets in Japan based on a list of the most populous cities in a world almanac, the point was to kill civilians.

>>3180479
Everyone worries about this, but what's going to stop the Soviets from marching to Beijing or Shanghai?

Even better, with Manchuria cut off, and the naval blockade in effect, how is Japan going to supply the bulk of it's army still tied down in China?

Also, the defenses of Japan were not up to the epic to the death imaginings of the Americans. They based those on Okinawa. But the Japanese literally did not plan for the fall of Okinawa. They picked that as their last stand, and put all their efforts constructing fortifications and their best troops there. On top of that, the Japanese plans estimated the invasion would have been half the size it actually was, and they required the navy to destroy half the American army in transit to be able to mount a coherent defense.

Contrary to popular myth, the Japanese did not prepare their population for mass resistance. Everyone cites the girls with spears, but in Germany, they'd have panzerfausts. It's a testimony to how half hearted preparations for a perpetual resistance were: they didn't even want to give the populace guns (because they largely feared them and suspected their loyalty)

>>3181115
Another anon in this thread linked me to the Dept. of Defence archives, which had a document that seemed to indicate that the Japanese High Command had been preparing for heavy fighting in Honshu. Do you have any sources that they didn't?

The Japanese believed that being brutal in China would crush the Chinese will to resist. Same rationale as dropping nukes.

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>>3180283
It is a matter of a willingness to fight and geography. Lets talk about Italy and how the invasion of it during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Campaign_(World_War_II)

Over the course of fighting in earlier campaigns the Italians had lost much of their will to fight before allied forces ever put a boot on their mainland. Many of their people, especially in the south, hated their government. They gave the invaders aid and intelligence. A number of them even rose in armed revolt against the Fascists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_resistance_movement

Allied forces would find non of that in Japan and they knew it. They would face a large volume of suicide attacks.

As for geography it would of been moderately more in favor of the defender then it was in Italy.

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>>3180522
The Soviets did attempt several amphibious operations in the Black Sea during WW2 (both Kerch landings and landings at Mt. Myskhako/Novorossiysk) using tactics like you described, but those are a far cry from the kind of landings required for the invasion of mainland Japan.

The Kerch landings crossed straits less than two miles wide in a docile inland sea. Even in the dead of winter with hilariously terrible coordination and execution of the operation, the Soviets managed to gain a bridgehead in 1942 using rowboats, barges, and the occasional destroyer. Their longest-range landing, at Yevpatoria, involved loading soldiers onto destroyers and beaching them.

The landings during the Myskhako operation were a bit more complicated (pic related), as they had to sail around the city instead of across a strait, but even those were comparatively simple. Small ships dumped men across multiple landing zones, and only the bridgehead at Myskhako stuck, as it was closest to the front.

During the war, the only amphibious operations the Soviets had launched were small littoral operations where the landing zones were so close to the front that the Soviets were able to use just about anything that could float to ferry men and materiel in. They did invade the Kuril islands at the end of the war using the same tactics (dumping men on beaches with trawlers, minelayers, and other auxiliary vessels), but the Soviets ended up with 10% of their 15,000 strong force being casualties even against a backwater garrison in Japan. An amphibious invasion of mainland Japan would have been impossible

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>>3180283
>hypothetical situation, discuss
>>3180312
>I have a hypothesis.
>>3180323
>How did you come to this hypothesis?
>>3180377
>Here's how I came to my hypothesis.
>>3180328
>Here's some direct sources for hypothetical situation

This is a good thread, I'm proud of you /his/

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>>3181113
He wanted to break their backs and their spirits, by crippling their industry and killing their populace, to put it simply.

>>3181401
Thanks man, that's actually all very interesting - and I had no idea about any of it.
>>3181423
Despite the inevitable shitposting, /his/ is still one of the best boards for actually being able to discuss a topic, find out interesting new stuff, and getting actual answers to your question without too much derailing.

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>>3181423
Have a variant

>>3180283

Imagine Mai Lai times 10,000.

From reading the primary documents it seems the American high command did not actually expect to win in an invasion of Japan due to the casualties.

>>3181458
I believe the history threads are some of the best on the site due to being fairly factual, especially contemporary history. It's when you get into the humanities bit, where opinions are wildly varied, that the shitflinging starts.

That said historical "What-if's" are my favorite type of discussion, hands down.

In this particular case, I'd like to bring up the civilian populace of Japan, and how exactly they would have reacted to an invasion. I don't believe that they would assist the Allies in any capacity, but would every citizen pick up a rifle or sharp stick to defend their home like the old propaganda would have us believe? Or would they just try to stay out of the way and survive? Or would there be more of a middle ground, where they would hide and aid guerilla fighters, similar to how the VC operated in Vietnam, and Al-Queada in Iraq, attacking and then melting back into the civilian populace. How war weary was your average Japanese citizen during 1945, and how far would be go to protect his home from invasion?

>>3181647

They were so brainwashed they believed the emperor was a living god and to die for him was the greatest thing you could do.
On Okinawa you had thousands of civilians jumping off cliffs rather than be captured, and women and children doing suicide attacks with grenades on American soldiers, so it would be like that or even worse.

>>3181647
The main problem with alt-his is that a lot of the posters here can't separate their wank from realistic appraisal of cause and effect. There are so many

>If only Germany had done [tiny tactical change X] THEN EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE WORKED OUT PERFECTLY AND THEY WOULD HAVE WON THE WAR!!!!!!ONE!

I've had people literally claiming that giving Rommel more troops would have won Stalingrad. It's insane.

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>>3181964
A big part of them diving off the cliffs was that they thought the Americans were going to torture and rape them, wasn't it? They'd been told that the Marines were monstrous, brutal savages that ate babies and collected scalps and shit.

Which still means you're most likely correct, that they'd die before letting Americans set foot on their land.

>>3182067

Yes, Japanese army made them kill themselves too

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>>3182066
That is true, coupled with the stuborness native to this site in general makes it a chore sometimes.
>I think X would have affected Y, leading to Z
>That's wrong, because X wasn't significant enough to affect Y in any capacity
>FUCK YOU, YOU FUCK lick my balls I'm right and you're wrong!
I see that a lot. It's comfy when we get threads like this one where everyone seems happy to have actual discussion about an interesting hypothetical.

You learn things that way too, for instance
>>3181401
It had never occured to me to consider the Soviets amphibious capacity, but now I know that they basically didn't have any, which is cool. These types of discussions bring up interesting facts and knowledge that otherwise might not have been looked at.

>>3180503

I have an old aunt that lives in Japan. She says that Japan was ready to surrender before the two nukes, because they feared imminent threat of invasion by the Russians.

>>3182134
Now that is interesting, why were they so afraid of Russian invasion?

>>3182134
I see these anecdotes all the time, is this a new meme?

>>3182166

They thought they were going to be invaded, and would rather be invaded by Americans than Soviets because they thought Americans would treat them better. Japanese-American relations had been warm in the past, whereas Japan spanked Russia in a war.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had already promised Washington and London that he would attack Japan within three months of Germany's defeat. He thus ignored Tokyo's plea and mobilized more than a million troops along Manchuria's border. But, America dropped the bombs so the Soviets stopped just 30 miles from Japan's main northern island, Hokkaido.

Here's a quote from the Japanese wartime prime minister

>If we miss [the chance] today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, but also Hokkaido. We must end the war while we can deal with the United States.

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>Projected to last until '47
>400,000 serious casualties in the first 120 days
>1.7 milllion + casualties for the US, 5-10 million Japanese

>>3182202
I've an old aunt that lives in Japan, she says that these anecdotes have been around for ages and aren't a new meme, because they fear imminent threat of invasion by the russians

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>>3182296
I have read (but don't remember where so tell me if I'm memeing or not) that those numbers were deliberately blown up to help justify the use of the atomic bombs. I do know that Truman himself started the "Saved a million American lives," meme during a speech, so I don't know if it would be much of a stretch to say that they were very liberal with their casualty estimates. Again, I may be misinformed, please inform me.

Because that seems like a fucking metric shit ton of dead people.

>>3182134
The civilian population was in many cases ready for the war to end since everything they had was already ashes. The Kempeitai and the Army didn't care what the civilians wanted.

>>3181115
>what's going to stop the Soviets from marching to Beijing or Shanghai
the soviets never had much interest in China, even after ww2 when the US pledged $40billion in military aid to the GMD the soviets did very little.

>>3182324
I'll admit that it is from wikipedia (oddly enough its sourced from Downfall, which is next to me unread), so I can't really talk about that. Talking of Downfall,I did find this passage flicking through just now.

>"At this same time [September 1944], sobering thoughts about the prospects for the final defeat of Japan emerged in a paper by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee of the Joint Chiefs of staff

>""Our great superiority over the Japanese rests in our capacity to produce and to employ...primarily naval vessels and aircraft. Enemy strength rests in his land forces, some 3,500,000 strong. In our Saipan operation it cost approximately one American killed and seven wounded to exterminate seven Japanese soldiers . On this basis it might cost us half a million American lives and many times that number in wounded to exterminate the Japanese ground forces that conceivably could be deployed against us""

This is from people who can't even consider the bomb. Add in things like how the Japanese had a pretty good guess of where the invasion was going, and how many suicide attacks they were planning. It was going to be horrific and they knew it

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>>3182447
>Those containers of underwater suicide bombers
And Japan wonders why they got nuked.

Wouldn't it be easier to enforce a complete naval and aerial blockade and wait for them to run out of oil and other essential materials?

The war drags on bloodlessly for another year or two I guess.

>>3182692
>Blockade
>Bloodlessly.
Do you have any idea what mass starvation is like? Or the fact that fighting is not likely to die down in outlying Japanese holdouts in places like China, Malaya, the Solomons, the DEI, etc?

>>3182711
>Bloodlessly
Bloodlessly for Americans. If they want to stop starving they can surrender.

>>3182692
Their ports were already full of mines, surface ships converted to submarines courtesy of the USN and the USAAF, and American Submarines.

How much stocks of ammunition and weapons did the Japanese have to continue fighting? If you come to the point where you're using bamboo spears against the most powerful military in the world, instinct would make it hard to continue fighting no matter how brainwashed you are.

>>3182692

It is unlikely. The naval blockade might seem the 'cleaner' option than the nuclear option, but it too had its costs.

Japanese leaders were well aware of their worsening situation in 1945.

The rice harvest of 1945 was predicted to be bad. The Allied naval blockade had eliminated ocean traffic and was making great inroads into coastal shipping traffic. Since the Imperial Japanese Navy had been immobilzed for lack of fuel or sunk, American carriers were launching raids on the Japanese Home Islands targeting land transportation links: railroad marshalling yards, bridges, tunnels and roads. The rice harvest and the worsening transport situation led Japanese officials to predict widespread famine in fall 1945. This foreknowledge did not have any apparent impact on government policy up to August 1945 and it didn't explicitly figure in the surrender debate either.

The naval blockade had cut off the Imperial Japanese Army from its overseas forces. The Kwantung Army in China had been mined for its best units and these were directed to the defense of Kyushu. The IJA was feverishly raising hundreds of thousands of new troops to defend Tokyo and the Kanto plain. The troops would have been poorly trained and poorly equipped but Japanese strategy aimed not for a military victory but imposing high casualties on the Allies.

Continuing the naval blockade had costs for the Allies as well.

Further amphibious invasions would have been launched. Taiwan (then Formosa) was well defended and was being considered as a target. Other smaller islands would have been attacked. The Allied drive in Burma would have continued into Malaya. More islands in the Philippine archipelago awaited liberation (and MacArthur knew he was just the man to do it). China was still were most of the fighting and dying by civilians and combatants was being done. The intense combat would have gone on in spite of the naval blockade.

>>3182757

Gideon Rose, the editor of the journal Foreign Affairs, estimated that during every month of 1945 in which the war continued, Japanese forces were causing the deaths of between 100,000 and 250,000 noncombatants.

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>>3181020
This: >>3181436

Also, desu, they dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an experiment. They had a control variable by testing them in the middle of the desert, and now, they used them on big, populated cities, just like ones in the US, to see what the impact would be.

That's why they dropped 2

tl;dr: SCIENCE AND STRATEGY

pic related is of the Enola Gay taking off for it's infamous flight

>>3180283
There was never going to "be" a land invasion. If the Atomic Bombs failed, then we would have borrowed churchill's anthrax and thrown that down, along with the dozen or so nukes we'd have that would have been ready by that time. The world was too done for Japan's shit at the time to go for an extremely bloody land invasion.

>>3180312
he already was a puppet

>>3180465
In this future alternate timeline, some butthurt web novel author, a veteran of JIDF, would write something chuuni like that just to spite at the invader countries.

>>3183474
They were also really the only two major cities that had up to that point escaped bonmbing.

>>3180600
What about airlifting though?

>>3183552
You can't airlift in heavy equipment, tanks, or a lot of supplies. Having paratroopers only works if the amphibious component can link up with them quickly enough to stop them from getting overwhelmed, which wouldn't have happened considering the russians weren't exactly on the same level as US marines

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>>3183568
>You can't airilift tanks
Nothing is impossible for Mother Russia.

>>3183548

>what is Kyoto?

>>3183579
Our codebreakers actually figured out that kyoto was just a sneaky jap anagram for tokyo, and that kyoto actually never existed.

>>3180296
I remember reading something about that and only Tokyo Plains were suitable for massed tank maneuvers

>>3183576
that prototype could only carry a really shitty T 72, and it was abandoned anyways

>>3180465
When did they start having them wear those weebshit uniforms? Would they be fighting in those?

>>3183797
You mean the Seifuku? Yes

>>3183805
Really? They were wearing those in 1940's japan? When did they start wearing them?

>>3183811
The 1920s because an Angloboo liked the British naval uniform

>>3180533
One wasn't enough. They had 3 days after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki during which they could have surrendered.

Also, it is proof that Hiroshima was not just a one-off lucky strike; that more atom bombs were being built and would continue falling.

>>3180533
Because the japanese high command was literally autistic

>>3180926
>have a costly invasion losing american lives
The brits would have been there to help the americans with that one

>>3182744
>instinct would make it hard to continue fighting no matter how brainwashed you are.
That's where suicide comes in. You're still looking at millions of deaths.

90% of Japanese, including civilians, on Okinawa died. That figure raises to something absurd like 98% if you exclude civilians.

>>3182757
And lets not forget the Russians were planning for an invasion of the Home Islands. The Americans needed to end the pacific campaign quickly or Japan may have ended up like Germany did in 44, or the Korea's did later on. Divided in half as the Russians turned their part of the islands, likely the northern part, into a communist state. hence the need to end the war quickly and decidedly.

>>3180283
>battle of okinawa
>1,206.98 km^2
>battle length: 80 days
>1206.98 km^2 / 80 days = 15 km^2 per day
>kyushu is 36,782 km^2
>terrain is the same as okinawa
>36,782 km^2 / 15 km/day = 2452 days
>75k american casualties / 1206.98 km = 62 casualties/km
>62 casualties/km * 36782 = 2.280,484 casualties
>kyushu is 9.73% of the total surface area of japan
Gee, I wonder why we didn't want to invade

The largest concentration of artillery ever assembled by Naval barrage
Its gonna make Moscow look like a goddamn M80 explosion
1000 bomber raids except with B29
Every square inch in Kyushu will be bombed or artyed
The Usaf will bomb by day and RAF by night
New weapons will be introduced by then,we couldve seen the first generation of MBT like the Centurion and T54 roaming around supporting infantry,with zippo Sherman burning stronghold
Any formation movement will be impossible due to CAS strafing anything in daylight,deployment only possible at night
The level of American GI brutality would reach unimaginable height,Those Vet in Nam would puke in disgust as Soldiers burn out civilian house with flamethrowers or coordinate long toms into barraging some villages into oblivion
Fukuoka will be the most destroyed city in the world like Grozny
Wh*teys and black would probably fight in mixed units for the first time due to casualty

>>3183945
>The Soviets will invade with no fleet.
I swear, this point has been raised and trashed like 3 times in this fucking thread. Why do people keep bringing it up?

>>3183971
>its been trashed
I've never seen it be debunked before, anon

>>3182324
https://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap4.htm

This gives a pretty good insight on the Japanese defenses built on home soil; they were basically planning to go full Iwo Jima. It's pretty safe to assume it'd have been a bloodbath of epic proportions.

>>3183950
Soviets would try to invade Hokkaido
and the assumption that they dont have any assault craft is correct but you forgot the US provided it to them in Project Hula
If they ever got a foothold than its very likely that they would annexe Hokkaido since the J*ps gambitted everything in the South but they wouldnt expect to go any further

>>3183977
see
>>3180600
>>3180621

>>3183986
I think you're replying to the wrong person, anon

>>3183986

It doesn't matter what their capabilities were, it matters what the Japanese THOUGHT they were capable of. Even after getting nuked twice the government didn't panic, only when the soviets broke non-aggression did they freak out and sue for peace with America.

>>3183986
It doesn't matter weather or not they could have really done it. I think the reason this persists is that the Russians were, or "preceded" at the time to be planning this kind of move.
So the preceded threat of a Russian invasion is what i think >>3183945 is referring to.

>>3184007
Anon, they only cared about the soviets entering the war because they wanted to use them to negotiate peace with the allies. Hirohito himself said that the reason for the japanese surrender was the atomic bombs, not the russians:

"Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."
(Hirohito's surrender speech)

>>3183977
For starters, look at the clusterfuck that was the Kuril islands invasion; the Soviets took 10% casualties for their land forces, 33% casualties for their sealift, against a bunch of barely defended islands whose campaign only stopped because the Japanese government surrendered and the Americans forced them to. Hokkaido is enormously more heavily defended.

>>3183984
Hula gave them 36 craft, and they lost 5 of them in the Kurils. The remaining 31 boats, assuming they were all stuffed to capacity, give them a sealift capability of 1,116 people at a time. That's going to get them killed real quick; for comaprison, an operation like D-Day involved over 4,000 landing craft, and Olympic called for even more. If you want to read more on the subject, check this book out.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Za_xPPsxhmwC&sitesec=buy&source=gbs_atb

>>3184007
If you're claiming that we'd have a "North Japan" and "South Japan" division, it is damn well important whether the Soviets are actually capable of putting troops into Japan.

>>3180575
LOL

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The Japanese were more than ready to defend against an amphibious assault. Moreover they knew exactly where the Americans would hit first. I'm surprised the allies didn't attempt a deception campaign like with Operation Bodyguard in Europe, considering how many lives were at stakes.

>>3184025

>the emperor
>mattering

>>3184061
Because it would be much harder to pull off. Mounting an amphibious invasion is enormously difficult, and almost requires you to have air supremacy over the target beach, close at hand where you can launch a lot of bombing sorties and make up for the fact that it's really hard to carry heavy equipment in things like Higgins boats.

And while the Americans had pretty much complete air supremacy over the Japanese, range is still an issue, your plans can only fly so far, especially your lower flying CAS bomber types.

On a tiny distance like the Channel, that's not as much of an issue; there are lots of places you can theoretically target and still be within your air umbrella, and thus deception towards where you're going to land can work.

The distance from Okinawa to Kagoshima, on the other hand, is about 700 kilometers in a straight line. If you want to strike further north than the southermost tip of Japan proper, you'd have to give up your air support, and that's practically unthinkable. That in turn limits the amount of places you can realistically land, and thus the sorts of places you can fool the Japanese into think you might land but in fact won't plan on doing so.

>>3181020
It's well known that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the highest pre-war Catholic communities in Japan and that the atomic bombings were in fact a sick masonic ritual orchestrated by Truman.

>>3184061
Because there was no Pas De Calais to bluff on
And the circumstance would be much difference since the defense of the beach would depend alot on the panzers which is non existant there

>>3184093
Kek i actually saw this in instagram

>>3184079
>man who ultimately gave the order to surrender to the allies
>not mattering

>>3184105

The Emperor had very little real power in either the conduct of the war or the decision to surrender. His power in this last act was essentially a myth, created by the Japanese oligarchy to excuse their surrender to the people, and heavily endorsed by MacArthur who wanted a rebuilt and rearmed Japan as quickly as possible.

>>3181458

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Kuril_Islands

Soviets had potential to invade, but they were using torpedo boats. I mean they could have just done it Zhukov style and human waved it in canoes or something as the Japanese had no navy whatsoever at that point.

>>3184145
>At around 02:00 (August 10), Suzuki finally addressed Emperor Hirohito, asking him to decide between the two positions. The participants later recollected that the Emperor stated:
I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer. ...
I was told by those advocating a continuation of hostilities that by June new divisions would be in place in fortified positions [at Kujūkuri Beach, east of Tokyo] ready for the invader when he sought to land. It is now August and the fortifications still have not been completed. ...
There are those who say the key to national survival lies in a decisive battle in the homeland. The experiences of the past, however, show that there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance. I do not believe that the discrepancy in the case of Kujūkuri can be rectified. Since this is also the shape of things, how can we repel the invaders? [He then made some specific reference to the increased destructiveness of the atomic bomb.]
It goes without saying that it is unbearable for me to see the brave and loyal fighting men of Japan disarmed. It is equally unbearable that others who have rendered me devoted service should now be punished as instigators of the war. Nevertheless, the time has come to bear the unbearable. ...
I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister
( Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Penguin.)

>>3184145
>According to General Sumihisa Ikeda and Admiral Zenshirō Hoshina, Privy Council President Hiranuma then turned to the Emperor and asked him: "Your majesty, you also bear responsibility (sekinin) for this defeat. What apology are you going to make to the heroic spirits of the imperial founder of your house and your other imperial ancestors?"
(Bix, Herbert (2001). Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: Perennial)

>>3184186

Oh digging deeper... FDR actually gave the Soviets landing craft through Alaska. Always knew FDR was a crypto commie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shumshu

>>3184205

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_assault_on_Maoka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_South_Sakhalin

>>3184190
>>3184198

Right, the people with real power let the emperor take the fall and surrender knowing that he wouldn't get punished.

Hirohito served as a rubber stamper, approving what the Cabinet and Supreme War council told him to approve. He tends to get credit for the decision to surrender in the popular narrative, but his decision to surrender can also be viewed as the result of successful lobbying by the peace party within the Supreme War Council.

>>3184233
The council remained deadlocked until the emperor decided to surrender. It was him who decided the stalemate. The council just ratified his position.

What would have happened if the US occupation authorities executed the Emperor and his entire family line?

>>3184280
Then japan would have absolutely lost their shit

>>3181020
I believe the story goes that Truman basically asked for a list of the biggest industrial centers in Japan in 1945 and Niroshima was #1 and Nagasaki was #2.

>>3181508
except with schoolgirl rape fantasy

Why was the West so against having an Asian country that is setting up colonies and fucking over the natives?

>>3184335
nanking was pretty bad, anon. And the west didn't do shit except stop trading with the japanese after they started raping their way across china.

>>3184335
Westerners didn't even do shit except stop giving them oil.

>>3184346

Nanking was bad yea, but so was getting an entire nation addicted to opium, and other shit that happened to China at the hands of the British.

>>3184352

They knew this would cripple Japan, so it's not exactly as light as you make it out to be.

>>3184205
It's well known the Soviets needed Landing Craft.

>>3184361
The US isn't britain though

>>3184489

USA had a hand in that as well. West just couldn't stand to see a yellow power, even though they created the monster.

>>3184529
like 3-4k americans ever fought in the boxer rebellion, and they never nanking'd anybody

>>3184335
because they had business interests there

>>3184547

Americans ran drugs, and exploited China. The desire to avoid China's fate really motivated Japan.

>>3184568
The issue wasn't imperialism, it was all the genocide the japanese were committing

>>3184280
The only comparable idea I can float to you would be the general Middle Eastern reaction if US forces firebombed and occupied Mecca and Medina

>>3182722
If that's your definition of bloodlessly then 2 nukes work faster with the same effect

>>3181020
I remember learning this in school and surprised no one has mentioned it, but didn't Americans give warnings days prior to the cities via airdropping pamphlets basically saying "we're going to heavily bomb X on [date] so leave the city before then"?

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>>3180575