Yes, the severity of our casualties “convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like..”
Forget the Kai Bird version of events, and that of other leftist fake historians.
People forget that the Japanese Imperial Army in China, according to at least one item I read, numbered up to 2,000,000 men and held a lot of Chinese mainland territory.
We could not have fought them on the ground to defeat without paying a truly horrible price (the same for the British/Indian/Burmese and Kuomintang Chinese Nationalist forces. The Communists under Mao were not going to waste their men fighting the Japanese, just like Ho Chi Minh DID NOT wage total warfare against the Japanese in Indochina (he held his main forces back so that they could take over when the Japanese surrendered and before the French could come back).
We did not have another ready nuke to take out any Mainland China army as an example of what awaited the rest of them (the next A bomb being worked on was at least 3 months away, if not 6 or more and there were no more plans for additional ones).
By nuking Japan and inflicting terrible but well known casualties on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we forced the Japanese Imperial leadership to realize that would could systematically destroy their homeland without an invasion.
That is what brought about their “unconditional surrender”.
My father-in-law, a veteran Army soldier (75th JASCO) of 4 Pacific Island landings including Tinian, Saipan and Iwo Jima told me that he knew he wasn’t going to come back.
My father was on standby orders with the Chemical Warfare Service to go to Australia to help oversee our Chemical weapons already prepositioned there in case the Japanese resorted to them in their final homeland stand.
Another friend of mine, a medic, was onboard a ship sailing for Japan when the big ones were dropped. He said once they got the word what happened, the ship turned around to another destination.
We are here today because our fathers/relatives/in-laws and complete American soldier/sailor and Air Force men and women did not have to go “in” to Japan.
Never let the Left tell you that using the atomic bomb was immoral. It was the most “moral” thing Pres. Truman could do to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of American, Allied forces, and Japanese soldiers/civilians lives.
No regrets. Only wish he had more A bombs to take out the Mainland Japanese armies.
Indeed. In the end it did save a lot more Japanese lives than American lives.
Another thing, it also avoided the Soviet Union getting involved and getting their share of Japan, which most likely would have led to a Civil War, like Korea.
“My father was on standby orders with the Chemical Warfare Service to go to Australia to help oversee our Chemical weapons already prepositioned there in case the Japanese resorted to them in their final homeland stand.”
I would love to learn more about that. WWII. in the Pacific especially, has always fascinated me.
I understand the focus of your post but point out a technicality.
By 1945, the Kwantung army was just a shell of it's former self having had it's best units stripped from it and sent to fight the allies.
In August 1945, the battle hardened Red Army did take on the Kwantung army and cut through it like a hot knife in warm butter.
Even at full strength, I don't believe the Kwantung army could have put up much resistance against the Soviets since it never had the sort of heavy weapons required to deal with red armour.
I knew a guy who served in the artillery in the ETO, who was on a train headed for Nice, France, and eventually to the Pacific to take part in the invasion of Japan when the news came out that a wonder weapon, a giant bomb had just been used against Japan and it destroyed a whole city.
I read a book about events leading up to Pearl Harbor that had an epilogue called (IIRC) After The Bomb.
One of our diplomats was talking with his Japanese equivalent and the guy said they had to surrender for fear of more bombs. Our guy said we only had two. The Japanese said "If we had known that . . ." and let it drop, but it gives you an idea about how suicidal their leaders were.
[sidebar] I wrote this before but it seems appropriate here. Early 1950s some liberal outfit sent reporters around Asia, asking their opinion about the atomic bombing of Japan. (There was a big "Lay a Guilt Trip on America" then,)
They got some 'tsks tsks" from those who weren't involved, but they cut the trip short when they started asking those who suffered under Japanese occupation. Their reply was "Why did you drop only two?"