Iwo Jima from the Japanese Infantryman's Perspective

[ABNAK]

Iwo Jima was one large, interconnected underground bunker complex. You take out one pill box and 15 minute later new guys are running it again.

Yeah if you had a way to pump the CS gas into the tunnel system, like forcing it in and through instead of a grenade version, it would've caused problems for them and not violated any Geneva Convention stuff regarding "chemical" weapons. We used CS in Vietnam, and probably the GWOT.

What we had planned for the invasion of Japan itself would make even most hard-core military types blush. Nukes (what we would nowadays consider "tactical nukes" due to yield) were planned for the invasion beach AO's, no doubt due to little knowledge of what radiation exposure was like even after-the-fact. Poison gas (I don't recall which one) was also planned for, but met with some resistance from the higher-ups. The invasion of Japan would've been textbook "no holds barred" warfare; what the Russians did to the Germans while defeating them would've paled in comparison.

[SteyrAUG]

Yeah if you had a way to pump the CS gas into the tunnel system, like forcing it in and through instead of a grenade version, it would've caused problems for them and not violated any Geneva Convention stuff regarding "chemical" weapons. We used CS in Vietnam, and probably the GWOT.

What we had planned for the invasion of Japan itself would make even most hard-core military types blush. Nukes (what we would nowadays consider "tactical nukes" due to yield) were planned for the invasion beach AO's, no doubt due to little knowledge of what radiation exposure was like even after-the-fact. Poison gas (I don't recall which one) was also planned for, but met with some resistance from the higher-ups. The invasion of Japan would've been textbook "no holds barred" warfare; what the Russians did to the Germans while defeating them would've paled in comparison.

If you watch "Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie" it's astonishing how close we had people working near open air tests. We had to have taken decades off of their lives. We really didn't understand what we were dealing with and they also didn't care enough.

The invasion of Japan would have been the biggest thing we ever did. So many purple hearts were manufactured for the event, we still had them in inventory for the first Gulf War. We would have needed to kill nearly every person in the Japanese population until there just weren't very many left.

And Russia would have immediately invaded Hokkaido from the north, probably resulting in a partitioned Japan. Only "the bomb" and our demonstrated willingness to use it kept Russia out of Japan. A lot of people would not have had grandfathers who made it home.

[Artos]

So it's just a movie but, "Letters from Iwo Jima" does get into this stuff just a little bit. It's the companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers" told from the Japanese perspective. It's probably more than a little idealistic in portraying their humanity and misunderstood culture but it does give some insight into Japanese thinking at the time.

If you haven't read Fly Boys, get it...same author as Flags of our Fathers & gets into the weeds about how gruesome the japs really were towards their prisoners.

Mainly about how owning the air won the war...the design / manufacturing of new planes introduced to the war in the short amount of time is insane.

[ABNAK]

If you watch "Trinity: The Atomic Bomb Movie" it's astonishing how close we had people working near open air tests. We had to have taken decades off of their lives. We really didn't understand what we were dealing with and they also didn't care enough.

The invasion of Japan would have been the biggest thing we ever did. So many purple hearts were manufactured for the event, we still had them in inventory for the first Gulf War. We would have needed to kill nearly every person in the Japanese population until there just weren't very many left.

And Russia would have immediately invaded Hokkaido from the north, probably resulting in a partitioned Japan. Only "the bomb" and our demonstrated willingness to use it kept Russia out of Japan. A lot of people would not have had grandfathers who made it home.

Absolutely. Also the most costly in lives of any single endeavor.

[flenna]

Absolutely. Also the most costly in lives of any single endeavor.

Operation Downfall, the invasion of mainland Japan, predicted a million Allied casualties and 10 million Japanese casualties. To say dropping two atomic bombs saved a lot of lives is a huge understatement.

[Artos]

We killed way more japs with all the incendiary than we did w/ the two little & fat bombs...we roasted the mainland.

[SteyrAUG]

We killed way more japs with all the incendiary than we did w/ the two little & fat bombs...we roasted the mainland.

And it didn't stop them.

Only two things did.

The BIG ONE was the realization that the glorious mainland invasion may never come, that the US would just continue to drop these new science bombs on Japan until nothing was left alive. That really wasn't how they wanted to go out.

And behind the scenes they had been hoping Stalin might help them get a "conditional" surrender, which is why the Japanese fought so brutally, in an effort to convince the US that "some terms" were better than staggering losses. Instead on August 8, 1945 Russia declared war on Japan and began snatching up territory in former Manchuria. When Nagasaki was bombed the next day, the Japanese saw the writing on the wall...except of course for a few hardliners who wanted to go down with the ship.

[lowprone]

Glory , Glory , Glory , the Marine Corps near bled out for that piece of shit island !