TO RC, I am including a small portion of a paper I wrote two decades ago. I also am including a few resources should you desire to delve more deeply. The estimates of potential allied casualties vary tremendously. However, one question that is rarely asked, is: How many more Japanese, civilian and military, would have died if the bomb had not shocked the Japanese into surrendering? This number would have been well above 300,000, and quite possibly over one million. I was happy to see you posit it.
More recent publications have made the argument that the Japanese were about to surrender and did not need the impetus of atomic bombs. All of the original resource material that I used led me to conclude that they were not on the verge of surrendering. This is what American policy makers concluded. One needs to carefully scrutinize the Japanese response to the Potsdam Ultimatum. Then add to this 4 years experience of suicide before surrender. I do not see how American policy makers could have come to any other conclusion. A side note: The original target list included Kyoto. It was removed from the list because of its cultural significance.
There were three different invasion plans submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The plan that was finally accepted was an attack on Southern Kyushu, followed by an invasion of the Tokyo plain. Estimates of casualties differ tremendously. The Joint War Plans Center estimated casualties at 40,000 dead, 150,000 wounded, and 2,500 missing. (1)
Secretary of War Stimson writes that he “was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties to American forces alone.” (2)
Truman says that “General Marshal told me that it might cost half a million American lives.” (3)
1. Bernstein, A Postwar Myth, p. 39.
2. Stimson, The Decision To Use The Atomic Bomb, p. 102.
3. Truman, Year of Decisions, p. 417.
Bernstein, B.J., ‘A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June/July 1986.
Compton, K.T., “If The Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used”, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1946.
Stimson, H.L., “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”, Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 1947.
Alperovitz, G., Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1965.
Feis, H., Between War and Peace, Princeton,, New Jersey, 1960.
Feis, H., Churchill. Roosevelt. Stalin, Princeton, New Jersey, 1957.
Feis, H., The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War Two, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966.
Mandelbaum, M., The Nuclear Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Morrison, E.E., Turmoil and Tradition, Boston, 1960.
Smith, G., American Diplomacy During the Second World War
1941-1945, Yale University, 1965.
Truman, H.S., Mr. Citizen, Random House, 1960.
Truman, H.S., Of f The Record, New York, 1980.
Truman, H.S., Year Of Decisions, New York, 1955.
