Which raises the question - if blockading and cutting Truk worked for Truk - would it not work for the Home Islands?
Japan does not have the natural resources to sustain herself. Japan relied, then as now, on importation. The folks in the garrison were Japanese soldiers. Do you think that the people of Japan would have been able to hold it together in a blockade? I don’t see it.
The options were not ‘invasion’ or ‘atomic weapons’. There was a third option, blockade.
“Do you think that the people of Japan would have been able to hold it together in a blockade? I don’t see it.”
Conversely, I can absolutely see it. Japanese patriotism was (and is) very high. I could see them starving and using their last breath to attack an “invading” army.
(Sorry late to the thread. It is long with many excellent posts.)
That third option would not have gotten Japan to the surrender table on August 15, 1945, if ever. A blockade also meant keeping millions of conscripts in uniform for years waiting for Japanese capitulation. Note that Truk was a postage stamp sized installation with no fresh water other than from rain fall. The Japanese home islands have been continuously cultivated for thousands of years. Meanwhile, on the Asian mainland, Allied troops, POW and civilian slave laborers were dying every day that a Japanese surrender was not forthcoming.
Yes, there was a third option - blockade.
In fact, Curtis LeMay in “Mission with LeMay” says it “might” have been possible to starve Japan into submission with a blockade.
But it would have killed tens of millions of Japanese, mostly the women/children/elderly civilians the the no-nukes dreamers get their panties most in a twist over.
The principal target of a blockade is civilians. If they starve to death that's just? If they are killed by another means that's unjust?