Army Gen. Douglas MacAthur, at left, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adm. William D. Leahy and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz (standing) discuss strategy against Japan during a July 1944 meeting in Honolulu. (U.S. Navy)
There are no rows of white crosses along the Satsuma Peninsula or victory memorials dotting Kagoshima Bay. No markers at beaches on Kyushu bearing names of American car brands — Buick, Cadillac, Stutz, Zephyr. And no aging veterans gather with military and political leaders to recall the grinding battle that would have brought 100,000 troops ashore.
More than 14 U.S. Army and Marine divisions never landed on X-Day of Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan to end World War II.
This photograph discovered by Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum officials at the Library of Congress in 2016 is believed to have been taken from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay after it dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. 6, 1945. (Library of Congress Archives)
None of it happened because of two shattering flashes of light and heat: the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. More than 150,000 Japanese citizens died from the blast and radiation; some estimates say the toll is nearly twice that.
Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and it was made official on Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The invasion scheduled for November 1945 — 80 years ago this month — became just old maps and battle plans to file away, relics of an extended war that never was.
How much longer and more deadly is still debated. The invasion would have meant millions more Americans serving in the war, marching afterward on Veterans Day. Thousands more would be mourned on Memorial Day.
“I think an invasion would have been incredibly bloody and awful,” said historian Jonathan Parshall during a webinar in September hosted by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. “American casualties would be horrific. Millions of Japanese civilians would have died. It would have been an absolute bloodbath.”
Guadalcanal, North Africa, Italy, Tarawa, Saipan, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima and Okinawa were all preludes to final victory. Italy and Germany were defeated. But Japan still held a massive swath of Asia and the Pacific.
Until mid-1945, U.S. planners expected the war to continue well into 1946.
The Pentagon estimated it needed 900,000 replacement troops — 600,000 for the Army and Army Air Forces, 300,000 for the Navy and Marines.
Norman Polmar, co-author of “Code-Name Downfall,” about the plans for the invasion, said American military leaders had to deal with an enemy that increasingly used suicide as a strategy.
“Beginning with the American invasion to take back the Philippines in 1944, the Japanese employed a large number of kamikaze aircraft to sink ships and kill large numbers of Americans. The threat was unexpected and difficult to counter,” he said.
As the invasion’s time frame approached, American planners were factoring in higher casualty numbers.
A Japanese kamikaze plane explodes on the American carrier USS Cabot in November 1944. (U.S. Navy)
“Kamikaze planes, kamikaze small craft, kamikaze submarines, even kamikaze civilians with explosives or just spears,” Polmar said. “Kill as many Americans as possible, no matter the cost to them.”
Downfall had two phases. Operation Olympic would launch from Okinawa to invade Kyushu in November 1945. Operation Coronet in March 1946 would invade the central island of Honshu and push across the Kanto Plain to capture Tokyo.
In the initial phase, 250,000 American troops supported by land and carrier-based aircraft would face 700,000 Japanese defenders on Kyushu. The U.S. Army’s 25th and 33rd Divisions would land at Miyasaki; the 1st Cavalry and 43rd Divisions at Ariake Bay. The 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Marine Divisions would target Kagoshima. The 18 landing beaches all were to be named after American car brands.
By Thanksgiving, 816,000 Americans would be on Kyushu.
Occupying the southern portion of the island would allow Americans to use captured airfields and build new ones. Round-the-clock bombing raids would use both heavy bombers against cities and factories, and tactical aircraft would harass rail lines, command posts and communications centers.
Japan was preparing desperate defenses under Operation Ketsugo, or “Final Battle.” Troops would face fanatical resistance.
A U.S. Marine rifleman advances during the battle for Okinawa, April 1945. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Japan planned to replicate Okinawa’s “Operation Ten-Go” — Ten-Go meaning “heaven.” The tactics called for suicide attacks. Japan’s Army and Navy had as many as 10,000 aircraft ready by July 1945, most of which were used for one-way trips.
Suicide attacks would come by sea, too: Shinyo motorboats; Kaiten crewed torpedoes and 400 midget submarines; more than 1,000 Fukuryu — meaning “crouching dragon” — divers trained to swim at landing craft with contact mines.
Civilians were urged to become “100 million shields of the Emperor.” Official propaganda urged the Japanese that death was preferable to defeat and capture.
The second phase of the invasion, Operation Coronet, would be launched on Y-Day in March. Eight Army divisions, including two armored, would land at Sagami Bay near Kamakura and push past Yokohama. Three Army and three Marine divisions — including the 1st, 4th and 6th — would land at the Boso Peninsula and move east toward Tokyo.
Planners expected to have 1.17 million American and allied troops on Honshu within 60 days. For the first time in the Pacific, the flat expanse of the Kanto Plain leading to Tokyo would allow for the use of armored divisions for the final drive on the imperial capital.
Even when told of the atomic bomb that had been detonated in July at Alamogordo, N.M., many American planners did not expect the nuclear bomb would push Japan into surrender.
“In my opinion, there should not be the slightest thought of changing the Olympic Operation,” Gen. Douglas MacArthur said.
After the bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the invasion plans became moot. Emperor Hirohito spoke on the radio — his voice heard by citizens for the first time — to announce surrender.
Estimates of the cost in lives of invading Japan remain controversial. MacArthur thought American casualties would be about 23,000.
Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby projected 200,000 casualties on Kyushu, and 510,000 more to capture the rest of Japan — 400,000 for Honshu alone.
Former President Herbert Hoover, asked by President Harry Truman to draft post-war plans, estimated up to 1 million Americans dead and wounded.
“Half a million American casualties is realistic,” Polmar said. “Millions of Japanese, military and civilian, would die.”
One grim calculation: the U.S. had built up a stockpile of nearly 500,000 Purple Hearts, the medal given to those wounded and the families of those killed. The post-World War II surplus meant there were enough in warehouses run by the Defense Supply Center to last through Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War and more minor conflicts. New medals weren’t pressed until 1999, during U.S. operations in Kosovo.
The medal given to U.S. troops who are wounded and to families of those killed. (U.S. Army)
