Japan: The Final Agony

This is a paperback that is extremely well done, with lots of information and pictures.

Main points of interest

During the first two months of B-29 attacks on Tokyo, 23 of 25 wards (city sections) were bombed. 1500 civilians were casualties in January alone, with 6,400 left homeless. For February, 1945, 2,000 citizens were killed or injured and 82,000 made homeless.

On April 14th, 160 B-29's attacked Tokyo, dropping 754 tons of incendiaries. 641,000 people became homeless, and 11.4 square miles of the city were burned out. Leaflets were later dropped warning the Japanese civilians that the war was the fault of the militarists in Japan.

On May 24/25th, B-29s attacked and dropped 119,000 bombs in a two-hour period. Bombs fell near where the Emperor was housed in his special bunker.

In relation to attacks in general, 225 tons of incendiaries per square mile, or 700 pounds per acre.

According to Japanese data, 241,309 civilians were killed, and over 8,000,000 were left homeless.

Vice Minister of War Shibayama admitted that it would be impossible to protract the war past spring 1946, in view of the worsening food crisis.This was said on June 10th, 1945. Apparently the food situation in Japan was going beyond the crisis stage and wasn't going to get any better. The 1945 rice harvest was the worst since 1909. Vegetable production was down 81%. A health survey found that 30% of workers were suffering from beriberi. While all this was going on the number of doctors and nurses was falling severely in Tokyo.

The Japanese plan for their defense during the projected invasion was fairly complex. Civilians would help in construction of defenses. The plan also involved four separate phases:

1. Submarines would disrupt enemy communications before the attack, and subs that carried airplanes would use those to attack.

2. Long-range bombers and more submarines would attack as soon as the invasion force came into range. When the force was within 200 miles of Japan, a massive kamikaze attack would be carried out with planes and midget submarines.

3. When the invasion force got near, midget-submarines, human torpedoes and suicide boats would be used. Artillery would attack forces the moment they landed on the beach.

4. More kamikzee attacks would be carried out, and infantry forces would attack. All of this was opposite what the Japanese had been doing, which was to allow landings and then try and ambush the soldiers as they tried to move out of the beachheads.

The book refers to the underground structures that were being built but were not yet ready.

An alternative headquarters for the Emperor and others was being built near Nagano city.

The Japanese put a lot of emphasis on their suicide forces, making the assumption that they would be the main means of attack on the invaders. They estimated that 500 American transports could be destroyed by kamikaze planes, and another 125 by other kamikazee attacks. The hope was to neutralize 1/3 of enemy forces while they were still on the sea. Some planners though they could destroy half the invasion force using kamikazee attackers.

Other planners, though, thought that 10 to 15% destruction of attacking forces was a more realistic possibility. The effectiveness of aerial suicide attacks had been going down steadily, and the group that would be manning the plans for this attack were almost untrained pilots and their success ratio would very probably have been even lower.

There were around 6,000 suicide boats ready to be used.

The quality of troops was decreasing sharply as much younger and much older males were being drafted. There weren't enough guns to go around, much less ammunition. In addition, the quality of the military goods being produced was going down sharply, also. New planes, for example, were given at most 30 minutes of flight practice time to see if they were suitable for use, and sometimes even less than that.

The public was still being manipulated and lied to by the Japanese military authorities.

The idea that civilians would use bamboo spears against US forces was ..a psychological conditioning device to inculcate national willingness to fight and die.The idea might have been taken from Churchill when he gave his 1940 speech about defending England in event of a Nazi invasion.

Although the Emperor announced Japan's surrender, some die-hard units didn't surrender themselves until later.

Pictures

This is the invasion plan as anticipated by the Japanese who, through basic logic and skill, anticipated with a high degree of accuracy where the US forces would land if Japan itself were to be invaded.

Japanese plans for jet fighters, etc. As with so much else in World War II, if the Axis powers had waited a few years and gotten such devices perfected, then the war might have had a different end.

Various suicide craft that would have been used mainly in attacking US forces as they launched the invasion of Japan. The idea was that, if enough American soldiers could be killed, the US might agree to an end to hostilities that was more favorable to Japan.

A very basic boat that would have carried a bomb. The idea was to go right up to a US ship and set the bomb off. This could have had a very devastating effect against landing craft carrying troops.



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