5. The Alternative to the Atomic Bombing of Japan
Japan also held hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners of war, and subjected them to barbaric treatment every day, beating, starving, withholding medication from, or murdering them. Casualties from continued fighting and from Japan’s atrocious treatment of POWs would have continued to mount every day the war continued. There is an even more important reason, however, that explains why the narrative that the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary is untrue. The alternative was a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands, which the Japanese government was determined to resist via national suicide.
Scheduled for November 1945, Operation Olympic was to be the first stage of an Allied invasion of Japan. Its goal was to secure the southern third of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s main home islands. The seized territory would provide airbases for land-based aircraft, and serve as the staging area for an even bigger invasion. That was to be Operation Coronet in the spring of 1946, directed at Honshu, the largest and most populous of Japan’s home islands. The operation was to commence with amphibious landings on three Kyushu beaches. Unbeknownst to planners, the Japanese had accurately predicted US intentions and landing sites.
