Japanese Death Squadron(You Tube)

This starts off with the battle of Okinawa. The narrator says the American people were told the kamikaze were not an effective weapon which was, of course, a lie. He then goes on to talk about 34 ships being sunk by them, and around 300 ships suffered severe damage. More than 10,000 American sailors were killed or wounded.

The cost to Japan was more than 2500 pilots and planes. Still, they were unable to stop the American advance on Okinawa or the American bombing of Japan. Then it talks about civilians who 'chose death over surrender,' but that's not right. It was the Japanese propaganda that had convinced the civilians that the Americans would rape and pillage them and treat them horribly, and that's why so many chose to kill themselves; it had nothing to do with surrender.

Then it talks about the idea of an invasion of Japan, and how that could cost a million U.S. casualties, and how this influenced Truman to use the atomic bomb on Japan.



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