Over the next four months, the Imperial Japanese Army transferred forces from Manchuria, Korea, and northern Japan, while raising other forces in place. Close to 66,000 people were killed. The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing 210,000 peoplechildren, women, and men. Did Hiroshima Save Japan From Soviet Occupation? When the Western Allies began planning for the invasion of Japan's home islands, they asked for Soviet assistance to keep the large Kwantung army in Manchuria tied down so the troops could. [58], Allied counter-kamikaze preparations were known as the Big Blue Blanket. In a conference with President Truman on June 18, Marshall, taking the Battle of Luzon as the best model for Olympic, thought the Americans would suffer 31,000 casualties in the first 30 days and ultimately 20% of Japanese casualties, which he estimated would include the entire Japanese force. Invasion of Japan, 1945-46 by D.M. their plan for an all-out ground invasion of Japan. For comparative purposes, about 1,300 Western Allied ships deployed during the Battle of Okinawa (AprilJune 1945). Japan holds the G-7 presidency this year, and Kyodo News reported last week that such a step is being . This page was last edited on 30 April 2023, at 20:51. On 10 August Japan offered to surrender unconditionally under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration as long as the emperor remained sovereign ruler. On 29 July, MacArthur's intelligence chief, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, was the first to note that the April estimate allowed for the Japanese capability to deploy six divisions on Kyushu, with the potential to deploy ten. As the war raged, the leaders of the Allies met several times to direct the course of the fighting and to begin planning for the postwar world. 10:11pm: EU, Japan resist US plan to ban all G7 exports to Russia, FT reports The European Union and Japan have pushed back against a US proposal for G7 countries to ban all exports to Russia . Remaining major warships numbered four battleships (all damaged), five damaged aircraft carriers, two cruisers, 23 destroyers, and 46 submarines. The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria led to Japan's Greatest Defeat [36] The Japanese were secretly constructing an underground headquarters in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, to shelter the Emperor and the Imperial General Staff during an invasion. A number of surrender ceremonies took place across South East and East Asia culminating on 2 September when the formal instrument of surrender was signed by Allied and Japanese representatives on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. But the war in the east still raged on and Japanese surrender seemed a long way off. [24] This was rejected by U.S. commanders and even the initial plans for Coronet, according to U.S. historian John Ray Skates, did not envisage that units from Commonwealth or other Allied armies would be landed on the Kant Plain in 1946. Kyushu 900,000 [57] The United States Strategic Bombing Survey subsequently estimated that if the Japanese managed 5,000 kamikaze sorties, they could have sunk around 90 ships and damaged another 900, roughly triple the Navy's losses at Okinawa. "[87] To sustain the campaign on Kyushu, planners estimated a replacement stream of 100,000 men per month would be necessary, a figure achievable even after the partial demobilization following the defeat of Germany. This also includes Soviet losses from the planned Soviet invasion of Hokkaido. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu at the Kant Plain south of the capital, was to begin on "Y-Day", which was tentatively scheduled for 1 March 1946. In the Pacific, Japanese expansion had been checked by US forces in a costly island-hopping campaign. But tempering Marshall's personal commitment to invasion would have been his comprehension that civilian sanction in general, and Truman's in particular, was unlikely for a costly invasion that no longer enjoyed consensus support from the armed services.[76]. The G-7 consists of the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. But the war in the east still raged on and Japanese surrender seemed a long way off. The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan's Decision Background Using Okinawa as a staging base, the objective would have been to seize the southern portion of Kysh. [34] From the Battle of Saipan onward, Japanese propaganda intensified the glory of patriotic death and depicted the Americans as merciless "white devils". Japan's rejection of the demand led to final order to proceed with atomic bombing. Manchurian Strategic Offensive. It referred instead to the Japanese foreign office's attempt (under the suspicious eyes of the military) to persuade the Soviet Union to broker a negotiated peace that would have permitted the. [25] The first official "plans indicated that assault, followup, and reserve units would all come from US forces".[25]. [34] The main message of "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million" campaign was that it was "glorious to die for the holy emperor of Japan, and every Japanese man, woman, and child should die for the Emperor when the Allies arrived". Set to begin in November 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kysh, with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. In 1944, early planning proposed a force of 5001,000 aircraft, including units dedicated to aerial refueling. [43], The Navy trained a unit of frogmen to serve as suicide bombers, the Fukuryu. (U.S. Army) The assault on Japan was expected to take 18 months, starting with an intense blockade and air bombardment of Japan. Stalin's War on Japan - Army University Press As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the . [54] By the time the war ended, the Japanese actually possessed some 12,700 aircraft in the Home Islands, roughly half kamikazes. Part 8, pp. [86][pageneeded] In April 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff formally adopted a planning paper giving a range of possible casualties based on experience in both Europe and the Pacific. Opposition from the United States and doubts within the Soviet high command caused the plans to be cancelled before the invasion could begin. At the Tehran Conference in Nov 1943 and at the Yalta Conference in Feb 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had agreed declare war on Japan three months after Germany would be defeated. "[87] This assessment included neither casualties suffered after the 90-day mark (US planners envisioned switching to the tactical defensive by X+120[88] ), nor personnel losses at sea from Japanese air attacks. Then in February 1945, US Marines assaulted the tiny island of Iwo Jima, midway between the Marianas and Japan. While decolonisation across South and South East Asia seemed inevitable, the territory of the British Empire was at its apogee in 1945 and the journey to independence for countries in this region was not simple. Nimitz planned a pre-invasion feint, sending a fleet to the invasion beaches a couple of weeks before the real invasion, to lure out the Japanese on their one-way flights, who would then find ships bristling with anti-aircraft guns instead of the valuable, vulnerable transports. [46] Although the Japanese were able to muster new soldiers, equipping them was more difficult. Plan 2 has the Japanese invading the West Coast of America via Pearl Harbor and then California. [26][27] He also recommended that the corps be organized along the lines of a U.S. corps, should use only U.S. equipment and logistics, and should train in the U.S. for six months before deployment; these suggestions were accepted. During the Soviet-Japanese War in August 1945, the Soviet Union made plans to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan 's four main home islands. A unified command was deemed necessary for an invasion of Japan. The rise in . At Potsdam the Soviets informed their Allied counterparts that they would be ready to move against Japan in mid-August. The battle resulted in 72,000 US casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing (this figure excludes the several thousand US soldiers who died after the battle indirectly, from their wounds). [4], At the time, the development of the atomic bomb was a very closely guarded secret (not even then-Vice President Harry Truman knew of its existence until he became President), known only to a few top officials outside the Manhattan Project (and to the Soviet espionage apparatus, which had managed to infiltrate agents into, or recruit agents from within the program, despite the tight security around it), and the initial planning for the invasion of Japan did not take its existence into consideration. [citation needed]. Operation Downfall - Wikipedia Allied command was divided into regions: by 1945, for example, Chester Nimitz was the Allied C-in-C Pacific Ocean Areas, while Douglas MacArthur was Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area, and Admiral Louis Mountbatten was the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command. Soviet Invasion of Manchuria: Finishing the Japanese Army The Chief of the Army Operations Division thought them "entirely too high" under "our present plan of campaign. Their surrender was caused by the dropping of two nuclear bombs by the United States on Aug 6 and Aug 9, on the cities of . Yet the conflict did not end on this day, particularly in Asia. Casualties were high, but the island provided another useful staging post for the bombers. ", Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb" p. 11, "Okinawa: The Final Great Battle of World War II", "The Final Months of the War with Japan. Widespread chemical warfare was considered against Japan's population[65] and food crops. In the Battle of Shumshu (1823 August 1945), the Soviet Red Army had 8,821 troops that were not supported by tanks and without back-up from larger warships. The provinces of Henan, Hunan and Guangxi were taken and by October 1944 Sichan was the last large province still held by the Chinese Nationalists. Initially, they were concerned about an invasion during the summer of 1945. Further blockade and urban destruction would have produced a surrender in August or September at the latest, without the need for the costly anticipated invasion or the atomic bomb. Gradually, intelligence learned that the Japanese were devoting all their aircraft to the kamikaze mission and taking effective measures to conserve them until the battle. [33], While Japan no longer had a realistic prospect of winning the war, Japan's leaders believed they could make the cost of invading and occupying the Home Islands too high for the Allies to accept, which would lead to some sort of armistice rather than total defeat. The Cold War Notes. A destroyed hotel in Kyiv after a . [20] (The Overlord invasion of Normandy, by comparison, deployed 12 divisions in the initial landings.) Kawata, then 11, remembers understanding only two. President Harry Truman received news of itwhilst at the Potsdam Conference. Chapter 14: Japan's Surrender - United States Army Center of Military The task of strategic bombing fell on the United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific (USASTAF)a formation which comprised the Eighth and Twentieth air forces, as well as the British Tiger Force. There is strong evidence that Marshall remained committed to an invasion as late as 15 August. Russia Planned To Attack Japan in 2021: Leaked FSB Letters - Newsweek Ukraine war dashes hopes of elderly Japanese on returning to Kuril NEMURO, Japan Soviet soldiers barged into Hirotoshi Kawata's home on Sept. 4, 1945, searching for hidden Japanese soldiers and valuables. Truman's Options Instead, at the Quebec conference, the Combined Chiefs of Staff agreed that Japan should be forced to surrender not more than one year after Germany's surrender. This implied a total of 70,000 American casualties in the battle of Kyushu using the June projection of 350,000 Japanese defenders. On June 22, 1941, more than 3 million German and Axis troops invaded the Soviet Union along an 1,800-mile-long front, launching Operation Barbarossa. Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the . A devastating typhoon in October 1945 would have delayed Allied invasion preparations, while bad weather in the winter and spring of 1946 would have hampered operations and logistics. If not checked, this threatened "to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory. Inside her were over 500 sailors of the Soviet Navy. [35] During the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese officers had ordered civilians unable to fight to commit suicide rather than fall into American hands, and all available evidence suggests the same orders would have been given in the home islands. Background War against Japan, 1945 In South East Asia, by late 1944, British and Commonwealth, US and Chinese forces had begun the reconquest of Burma (Myanmar). p. 43. [49][50] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. Japan's Plan | American Experience | Official Site | PBS Asada argues that the atomic bombs provided a greater shock to Japanese policymakers than the Soviet entry into the war because (1) the bombing was a direct attack on the Japanese homeland, compared with the Soviet Union's "indirect" invasion in Manchuria; and (2) it was not anticipated. The same day, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. They and their soldiers had endured three years of harsh captivity. The US had successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico 10 days earlier. "It is an awful responsibility that has come to us," the president wrote. The Soviets, however, had fewer than 400 ships, most of them not equipped for amphibious assault, when they declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945.[81]. If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in history, surpassing D-Day. The defending forces of 77,000 troops (and 20,000 Okinawan militia) largely hid in the caves during the bombardment which withstood all but a direct hit to the entrance, with the resulting raising of Japanese morale. Why were Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 2,500 Army aircraft (conventional as well as suicide), together with 2,900 Naval trainers for, 2,000 Army and Navy "air superiority" fighters to escort the. [53] The Okinawa experience was bad for the USalmost two fatalities and a similar number wounded per sortieand Kysh was likely to be worse. [73], The Joint Staff planners, taking note of the extent to which the Japanese had concentrated on Kysh at the expense of the rest of Japan, considered alternate places to invade such as the island of Shikoku, northern Honshu at Sendai, or Ominato. On 14 August Japan surrendered. One of the. On 6 August the lead bomber of three B-29s, Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibits, commander of 509th Composite Group, dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Soviet soldiers in front of Harbin railway station. The invasion was not intended to conquer the entire island, just the southernmost third of it, as indicated by the dashed line on the map labeled "general limit of northern advance". ", "Are New Purple Hearts Being Manufactured to Meet the Demand? More than seventy years after the end of World War II, the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains controversial. China respects sovereign state status of ex-Soviet Union countries [25] Following negotiations, it was decided that Coronet would include a joint Commonwealth Corps, made up of infantry divisions from the Australian, British and Canadian armies. Plan Your Visit Current Exhibitions Calendar of Events . The Soviets invaded Japan-held Manchuria on Aug. 9. [93] The estimated casualty figures later became a crucial point in postwar debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some 1,200 suicide divers had been trained before the Japanese surrender. The planned operation was canceled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet declaration of war, and the invasion of Manchuria. [86][pageneeded], In evaluating these estimates, especially those based on projected Japanese troop strength (such as General MacArthur's), it is important to consider what was known about the state of Japanese defenses at the time, as well as the actual condition of those defenses (MacArthur's staff believed Japanese manpower on Kyushu to be roughly 300,000). [62] The total strength of the Japanese military in the Home Islands amounted to 4,335,500, of whom 2,372,700 were in the Army and 1,962,800 in the Navy. The US Sixth Army, the formation tasked with carrying out the major land fighting on Kyushu, estimated a figure of 394,859 casualties serious enough to be permanently removed from unit roll calls during the first 120 days on Kyushu, almost enough to outstrip the planned replacement stream. Initially, US planners also did not plan to use any non-US Allied ground forces in Operation Downfall. [citation needed], The Japanese had kamikaze aircraft in southern Honshu and Kyushu which would have opposed operations Olympic and Coronet. At Kysh, because of the more favorable circumstances (such as terrain that would reduce the Allies' radar advantage, and the impressment of wood and fabric airframe training aircraft into the kamikaze role which would have been difficult for Allied radar systems of the time to detect and track), they hoped to raise that to one for six by overwhelming the US defenses with large numbers of kamikaze attacks within a period of hours. [3] More than 10,000 aircraft were ready for use in July (with more by October), as well as hundreds of newly built small suicide boats to attack Allied ships offshore. Figures for Coronet exclude values for both the immediate strategic reserve of 3 divisions as well as the 17 division strategic reserve in the U.S. and any British/Commonwealth forces. [2], Japan's geography made this invasion plan quite obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to accurately predict the Allied invasion plans and thus adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsug, accordingly. [citation needed] The Australian government had asked at an early stage for the inclusion of an Australian Army infantry division in the first wave (Olympic). 5:03 a.m. Soviet forces invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria) under the command of Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky with 1.6 million soldiers. The first firebombing attack was on Wuhan, the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters in China, on 18 December 1944. It consisted of more than 120,000 people working on 37 different sites across 19 states in the US and in Canada, at a cost of more than $2 billion. ", "The Final Months of the War With Japan: Signals Intelligence, U.S. The race to produce the first atomic weapon before Germanywas headed by the Manhattan project. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson stated "We shall in my opinion have to go through an even more bitter finish fight than in Germany. The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. [69], In addition to use against people, the U.S. military considered chemical attacks to kill crops in an attempt to starve the Japanese into submission. 100 transport planes carrying 1,200 commandos for a raid on the US airbases on Okinawa, following the success of earlier smaller-scale operations. As president, it was Harry Truman's decision if the weapon would be used with the goal to end the war. They hoped that at least 15 to 20% (or even up to a half) of the US transport ships would be destroyed before disembarkation. And it was, indeed, the death blow U.S . Dropping or spraying the herbicide was deemed most effective; a July 1945 test from an SPD Mark 2 bomb, originally crafted to hold biological weapons like anthrax or ricin, had the shell burst open in the air to scatter the chemical agent. On 5 Apr 1945, the Soviet Union informed Japan that the Soviet Union would . The war cabinet met to consider peace terms for the first time the next morning, learning. As with the fact that it was the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany at Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that crushed Nazi Germany, not D-Day which came when Hitler's defeat was already inevitable, the truth about World War II against Japan is also gradually being admitted - even if it took 70 years to do it. President Truman authorized the use of the atom bombs in an effort to bring about Japan's surrender in the Second World War. Giangreco 7/19/2017 Daunting terrain and fanatical resistance threatened to take a horrific toll on GI invaders. So fearful were the Japanese leaders that they planned to ignore isolated tactical use of gas in the home islands by the US forces because they feared escalation. The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan - The Soviet Union Did. Important analysis About 1.5 million Japanese in Manchuria, Korea and northern China became prisoners of the Soviets, many of whom spent years in prison camps. When these figures were questioned by General Marshall, MacArthur submitted a revised estimate of 105,000, in part by deducting wounded men able to return to duty. One compound designated LN-8 performed best in tests and went into mass production. Outside the government, well-informed civilians were also making guesses. By one estimate, the forces in Kysh had 40% of all the ammunition in the Home Islands.[48]. What Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Portends for Japan's Northern Territories Tokyo appears to have finally realized that Putin has no intention of ever handing any of the disputed islands back. Conflict in Asia began well before the official start of World War II. ET, April 24, 2023 China respects sovereign state status of ex-Soviet Union countries, foreign ministry spokeswoman says. The capture of the Mariana Islands in November 1944 meant that air bases could be established to bomb Japan. At this juncture, the key interaction would likely have been between Marshall and Truman. Meanwhile, the Japanese had their own plans. Proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido | Military Wiki | Fandom