Surviving Armageddon

From World War II magazine, July/August 2006 issue.

This is an article about a Japanese plan that, if it had been put fully into effect, could possibly have allowed Japan to continue fighting World War II in spite of the atomic bombs that the US had. I will point out only some major points of the article.

There was an underground tunnel complex in Nagasaki for 2,500 Mitsubishi factor workers. The complex was hardly touched by the atomic bomb, damage limited to outer doors and some partially caved-in tunnel entrances. If enough of these complexes had existed, to build war weapons, then it is possible that Japan could have kept on supplying their military in spite of the use of atomic weapons against them.

An underground complex was well under way in which the Emperor, his family, and various government officials could have fled Tokyo and been protected against attack. The article notes that, by August of 1945, “200 strategic underground facilities of substantial size and scope were either planned, under construction or operational.” Further, the allies had no idea that such underground complexes existed.

Some of these facilities also were well constructed and had good ventilation, supplies, and protection against biological weapons attacks, and efforts were underway to get more of them in shape.

The Japanese government's plan was to move 172 manufacturing plants to underground sites, plants that could produce aircraft and aircraft equipment.

Many of the sites in process, though, lacked ways to properly handle ventilation, or were very hard to get to, or had other problems but, given enough time, these could probably have all been fixed.

The article says that, if the Japanese underground construction program had gotten under way in a serious manner six months earlier, then by August of 1945 “the majority of its underground facilities could have been fully operational.”

This would have resulted in numerous problems for the allies. Any actual invasion of Japan would not have taken into consideration continued, and maybe even increased, production of weapons by these factories, and that would have increased allied casualties without any doubt. The ability to keep producing the weapons could also have led the Japanese government to keep its war effort going despite the atomic bombs. In that case, Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet would have had to have been used, and that would have resulted in many, many more casualties on both sides since, from what I've read, there was a plan to use 9 atomic bombs during the Operation Olympic invasion, the bombs to have been used against Japanese troops rather than Japanese cities.

It's a really interesting article and covers some material on World War II that isn't common knowledge.

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