“the invasion of Japan would cost 1.7-4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities”
“the half-million American death toll routinely bandied about is, to put it lightly, inflated. To put this ridiculous claim into perspective, consider the fact that for the estimate of a half-million American deaths to be accurate, the invasion of Japan would have had to cost more American lives than the total number of US combat fatalities in all theatres of World War II. The reality, as Stanford historian Barton Bernstein has documented, is that the actual worst-case government estimate for a full-scale US invasion of Japan was around forty-six thousand lives lost — more than ten times less than the figure often set forth in American schoolbooks. This fact aside, the bomb-or-boys myth is completely punctured by the conclusion of the US government-sanctioned 1946 Strategic Bombing Survey, which — after conducting interviews with US and Japanese military personnel — found that Japan would have surrendered by the end of 1945 “even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
from https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/08/james-r-lawrence-iii/rethinking-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
Lew Rockwell is an idiot.
We now know from recently declassified military intelligence documents that Japan had been withholding their forces in preparation for a homeland invasion. Those Kamikaze pilots were their B team. They had been training and supplying their A team, waiting for our invasion. They had a larger Army than we did, and they were prepared to fight to the last man. We would have suffered greater than 1 million casualties.
The bomb was the right call.
I disagree with the numbers. Look at how many were killed on a tiny island - battle of Tarawa. Imagine Japan with millions of people and their fanatical death culture. 46,000 is way too small.
The Bloody Battle of Tarawa, 1943
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tarawa.htm
Betio measuring less than 3 miles in length and 1/2 mile in width
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa
35,000 troops
1,696 killed
2,101 wounded
U.S. Marine Corps:
1,009 killed[1]
2,101 wounded[1]
U.S. Navy:
USS Liscome Bay, sunk 23 November 1943
687 killed[1]
BTW Eddie Albert (actor) was at Tarawa. His wiki page.
On September 9, 1942, Albert enlisted in the United States Navy and was discharged in 1943 to accept an appointment as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat “V” for his actions during the invasion of Tarawa in November 1943, when, as the pilot of a U.S. Coast Guard landing craft, he rescued 47 Marines who were stranded offshore (and supervised the rescue of 30 others), while under heavy enemy machine-gun fire.[6]