The debate still goes on...

[Trailrider #896]

Although I have read some reference to what follows, I have just read a new book, "Bridge To The Sun", by Bruce Henderson (Alfred P. Knoph, NY, 2022), which tells the story of Japanese-American U.S. Army soldiers in WWII who, because of their personal experiences before Pearl Harbor, education in both Japan and the U.S., served in the Pacific as interpreters, intel analysts, and translators, which saved the lives of many of their fellow soldiers, sailors and Marines, on Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Burma (Merrils' Maurauders)!

 

What is absolutely fascinating...and potentially terrifying...is an interrogation of a Japanese Air Force POW, done in China by Sgt. Grant Hirabayashi, prior to the end of the war! (Pages 308-311) The POW was not a flier, but an engineering type. During the interrogation, the POW pushed a box of matches across the table at Grant.  The man told Grant he had been working on a project that could turn uranium into a bomb the size of the matchbox that could destroy a city!  The sergeant knew nothing about nuclear physics, but thought the information should be passed to his superiors in his written report. He also approached his boss, a major, who ignored the information, and he also told another officer, who blew him off!  Hirabayashi finally threw the report out!  Not long afterward, of course, Little Boy exploded over Hiroshima.  The mechanism was just what the Japanese POW described...the gun-type uranium bomb! 

 

Japan lacked only two things that prevented her from developing a nuke...enough uranium ore and time! (We got our uranium from the Belgian Congo.)  In point of fact, a German submarine, carrying something in lead kegs, plus a disassemble Me-262 jet fighter was enroute to Japan, when Germany surrendered!

 

Had Japan developed a nuclear device, it would have been fairly easy for them to deliver it to an invasion fleet by, say, a kamikazi boat.  If you want to understand what that would have done, check out the post-WWII Bikini Test Baker!

 

BTW, Fox News is reporting that Iran

[Chantry]

Yes

 

Read the final chapters of John Toland's The Rising Sun details the plans of the various Arm & Navy officers to continue the war.  There were even plans to take Hirohito into "protective custody" to prevent him from having Japan surrender to the Allies.

 

Also see Fading Victory which is the diary of Admiral Ugaki, who was a very senior admiral.  He refused to accept Japan's surrender and was killed while trying perform a kamikaze attack after Hirohito had announced Japan's surrender.

 

Allied casualties for the actual invasion of Japan was estimated as 500,000 dead & wounded.  Japanese casualties would have exceed 1,000,000 people.

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

I read somewhere they tried to set one off, in what is now North Korea, but it was a fizzle and didn't go nuclear. 

[Trailrider #896]

2 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

I read somewhere they tried to set one off, in what is now North Korea, but it was a fizzle and didn't go nuclear. 

According to another source (which I can't find in my library right now, but recall reading), Japan had a research site in northern Korea, at the Chosin Reservoir (for the hydroelectric power available there). When the first bomb went off over Hiroshima, the program director knew exactly what it was! 

[Dantankerous]

Yes.

[Pat Riot]

Yes, absolutely. 
 

I

[Henry T Harrison]

I’m truly sorry that we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.

It should have been two hundred. The Japanese Islands should still be uninhabitable smoking ruins 

[Subdeacon Joe]

There's a raft of us that wouldn't be here if the Allies had to invade the Home Islands.    There's tens of millions of Japanese that wouldn't be alive now if the Allies had invaded the Home Islands.  Estimates I've seen are between 3.5 million and 5 million Japanese would have been killed in an invasion.

[bgavin]

Yes

[Trailrider #896]

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

There's a raft of us that wouldn't be here if the Allies had to invade the Home Islands.    There's tens of millions of Japanese that wouldn't be alive now if the Allies had invaded the Home Islands.  Estimates I've seen are between 3.5 million and 5 million Japanese would have been killed in an invasion.

Another thing to think about in the calculations: How many people in several generations since, from both Allied and Japanese families who wouldn't have been born had the troops on both sides been killed during an invasion?  Instead, both survivors gave birth to multiple descendants now alive, and yet to come in the future!

[The Original Lumpy Gritz]

Japan poked the Bear 

[watab kid]

i believe that both germany and japan were trying to develop a bomb , we got there first and by whatever means needed at the time delivered it at the right point to end the way , my father watched these flights take off and return , he swore that they saved more lives than any could imagine including his , i grew up believing this , had either germany or japan -let alone both- have gotten there first i dont think they would have stopped where we did ,