Reddit reviews Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947
We found 5 Reddit comments about Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
NewMint ConditionDispatch same day for order received before 12 noonGuaranteed packagingNo quibbles returns
> From what I understand, Koreans really really don't like the Japanese
FIFY, they've long fought each other, most recently Imperial Japan annexed and occupied the whole country in 1910, and I shouldn't have to tell you about how poorly they treated the native Koreans. But here's some bits from Wikipedia:
> The banking system was consolidated and the Korean currency abolished. The Japanese removed the Joseon hierarchy, destroyed much of the Gyeongbokgung palace and replaced it with the Government office building.
That landmark building was demolished in 1995-6 and the palace is being rebuilt. They're also finding and digging up iron posts which per feng shui were placed by the Japanese to mess things up at a fundamental environmental level.
> [...] After the outbreaks of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and World War II Japan attempted to exterminate Korea as a nation. The continuance of Korean culture itself began to be illegal. Worship at Japanese Shinto shrines was made compulsory. The school curriculum was radically modified to eliminate teaching in the Korean language and history. The Korean language was banned, Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names, and newspapers were prohibited from publishing in Korean. Numerous Korean cultural artifacts were destroyed or taken to Japan. According to an investigation by the South Korean government, 75,311 cultural assets were taken from Korea.
> [...]
> [...] During World War II, Koreans at home were forced to support the Japanese war effort. Tens of thousands of men were conscripted into Japan's military. Around 200,000 girls and women, many from China and Korea, were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers, with the euphemism "comfort women". Previous Korean "comfort women" are still protesting against the Japanese Government for compensation of their sufferings.
There's lots more, including a whole Wikipedia article on the subject. Plus I'll add that by the end of WWII subjects of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere were being killed at a generally accepted rate of 250,000 per month, and per the recent and very good Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947, it was more like 400,000. And that's with our already having wrested the well populated Philippines from them, which if I correctly remember, /u/md1957 can tell us quite a bit about.
About as ready as it was possible to be.
There were very few places that the Allies (primarily the US) could invade and still be within comfortable range of Okinawa, the staging base for any invasion, AND have appropriate terrain for such a landing.
Because of this, it was relatively simple to figure out exactly where the invasion would be heading. Kyushu, the southermost of the home islands, would be hit in November 1945, and only the "bottom third" of the island taken. A number of major airbases would be built to support the invasion of the Kanto Plain around Tokyo in March of 1946.
While Japan didn't know exactly when the attack would come, they'd been moving troops to Kyushu for some time, and as the US came closer and closer, moved more and more troops and aircraft into position for the defensive of Kyushu, called Operation Ketsugo.
These were given plenty of time to dig into the terrain for cover, terrain that sometimes wasn't really as great as the Americans thought. What little armor they had was moved to the island and hidden away as a mobile reserve. Aircraft by the thousands for kamikaze missions were positioned in caves or well camouflaged, to be launched when the attack was just beginning. US Intelligence expected some 6500 kamikaze to be available; at the time of surrender, they were horrified to discover the actual number was closer to 13000. By August, 1945, there were close to 900000 troops on Kyushu as well.
Operation Olympic would almost certainly be won by the Allies. That's pretty much not in question. The question is, would the American public, tired of war and freshly victorious in Europe, be willing to pay the butcher's bill involved with just the first part of the invasion of Japan. The Japanese high command was betting on making the invasion forces bleed and the answer being "no."
Immediate sources:
US Army MacArthur Reports V1, Ch XIII: *Downfall: The Plan for the Invasion of Japan
DM Giangreco: Operation Downfall: The Devil was in the Details PDF warning.
DM Giangreco: Hell To Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945 - 1947
You're welcome. If your interest in the Pacific theater is broader, you may also consider "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. It revisits the battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective and is excellent.
Other extremely good works are John B. Lundstrom's The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Despite the appearance of these titles, they are not dry academic works, but full of interesting facts and quite fun reading.
Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-194 by D. M. Giangreco is an excellent work examining the end of the war in the Pacific, what the impact of strategic bombing was (nuclear and conventional), how the US and her allies planned to invade Kyushu and Honshu, how much the Japanese knew and how far developed their preparations were, and reasonable estimates of how events would play out if the invasions had actually been carried out. He examines how the details of each sides' plans would play out, the impact of nuclear weapons in the tactical role, how actual weather conditions and events would impact the land and sea portions of the campaigns and more.
I own all of the above and recommend them whole-heartedly.
A brief search also gave videos of several speeches/talks by Jon Parshall, but I haven't viewed them yet. Given the quality of his and Tully's work in Shattered Sword, I plan to watch each of them now.
D.M. Giangreco wrote an interesting book a few years ago detailing just how difficult it would have been for the American military to sustain an invasion of the Home Islands, and how that was a major factor in the decision to drop the bombs.
Archives for links in comments:
----
I am Mnemosyne 2.0, GG.^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^Website