Read “Hell To Pay” by D.M. Giangreco. Talks all about the decisions leading up to the dropping the bombs. Some eye opening take aways:
West coast hospitals were told to be ready to received 70,000 to 110,000 causalities a month from the Japanese home island invasion.
England wanted to wait a a year or more to “train” for the invasion.
US told England, they would be under US command using US equipment.
Australia who had been fighting Japan did not want to be under British command for obvious reasons.
For Operation Cornet and Olympic the Japanese had over 700,000 well armed and well defended soldiers who had 7 months to get ready for the first home island invasion. Imagine if the Germans had 7 months to get ready and be ready on the Normandy beaches.
LeMay wanted to use the nukes tactically, Truman agreed to drop them on Japanese cities.
Truman authorized 700,000 Purple Heart medals that are still being used today.
I’m not sure of the exact year but I believe they said the entire US male birth population of 1926??ish would have been wiped out if the home island invasions had gone ahead,
My biggest take away from this book was that after the Japanese took almost two days to respond after the second bomb was dropped, Truman authorized I believe 9 more bombs to get readies and they would have been ready in November 1945.
You never see photos of American and British troops going into Berlin. Not because they couldn’t get there before the Russians but because they were being held back and transfers of Engineers were already starting to move to the Pacific. The Japanese were betting they could hold out for a peace deal and that we wouldn’t have the stomach for total take no prisoners warfare. They were probable correct. They also had a bunch of fuel, weapons, manpower, and aircraft in reserve.
No one thought the US would be up for another 4 to 5 years of war in Japan after the Germans surrendered.
It’s a long read and very detailed but give it to any nuke nay sayer and it will change their outlook. It did for my lib sister who was an anti nuke believer,. After the finishing the book, she got it.
