The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb

While scholars and non-scholars alike have debated the ethics of dropping the atomic bomb for more than half a century, rarely have they questioned the decision not to invade Japan as a means of ending World War II. Widely held beliefs about the strength of Japanese forces and the projected loss of American lives have justified the course of action taken by the United States. John Ray Skates, how ever, argues that the invasion plan, code named Operation DOWNFALL, has never been adequately studied to draw such a conclusion. In The Invasion of Japan, he remedies that oversight and, in doing so, disputes many myths that have grown up around the invasion strategy. Beginning with a brief overview of DOWNFALL, Skates analyzes the evolution of the invasion plan. He describes in detail the two phases of the plan, Operations OLYMPIC and CORONET; he assesses the strength of Japanese defenses; and discusses other topics that would influence an invasion - redeployment from Europe, Allied participation in the invasion, and the possible use of special weapons, especially gas. Among other revisionist findings, his research reveals a weaker state of Japanese preparedness than historians have commonly presumed and he demonstrates that the joint chiefs never objectively compared the bombing and the invasion. Significantly, Skates finds no evidence suggesting that military strategists projected casualty figures as high as those cited after the bomb's use. Rather than attributing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the supposed shortcomings of the invasion plan, Skates contends that the Allied policy of unconditional surrender was at the heart of the decision to drop the atomic bomb.