Book Review: 'Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire'

American military history - as well as that of our adversaries - is full of controversies. And even though the Second World War is a rare case where the morality of the Allied cause is indisputable, the nature of the conflict and the fateful decisions made by the Axis and Allies still stir up heated debates about how it was fought - and how it was brought to an end.

As historian Richard B. Frank writes in his introduction to Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, "[h]ow World War II ended in the Pacific remains one of the great controversies in American - and Japanese - history. At the center of this controversy is the atomic bomb. Indeed, almost all accounts of this period position atomic weaponry as the hub around which other considerations orbit. This approach, however, profoundly fails to recreate history as it originally unfolded."

As a result of this fixation with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a mythology has been created in both the U.S. and Japan regarding the necessity to use atomic bombs in the summer of 1945 at all. This mythology - which has been embraced by both well-meaning liberals and anti-American revisionists that seek to recast the Allies as the villains of World War II - states that Japan was ready - even eager - to surrender by July of 1945 and that the A-bombs were dropped to scare the Soviet Union into accepting American hegemony in the postwar world.

However, as Downfall illustrates, this version of events is not accurate. In the summer of 1945, the militarist regime led by Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki knew that Japan was losing the war, yet they refused to accede to the Allied demand for an unconditional surrender. General Korechika Anami, the War Minister, and his colleague Yoshijiro Umezu were convinced that when the American invasion came, Japan's military and civilian population, including women and children, would resist to the death.

Thus, even as a "peace" faction in the Suzuki government attempted to entice a still-neutral Soviet Union to act as a middleman in any negotiations between Tokyo and the Anglo-American Allies, Umezu and Anami, aided by other Army generals, conceived Operation Ketsu, a detailed plan to build up the defenses of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four Home Islands. Its geographic location made Kyushu the most logical invasion site for Allied forces in the Pacific.

Meanwhile, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz were in the midst of planning Operation Downfall, the amphibious invasion of Japan. Conceived with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the spring of 1945 (even as American soldiers and Marines were locked in a life-or-death struggle for Okinawa), Downfall was intended to end Japanese resistance and end the war in the Pacific, with or without the use of nuclear weapons.

In a riveting narrative that includes information from newly declassified documents, acclaimed historian Richard B. Frank gives a scrupulously detailed explanation of the critical months leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Frank explains how American leaders learned in the summer of 1945 that their alternate strategy to end the war by invasion had been shattered by the massive Japanese buildup on Kyushu, and that intercepted diplomatic documents also revealed the dismal prospects of negotiation. Here also, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of how Japan's leaders were willing to risk complete annihilation to preserve the nation's existing order. Frank's comprehensive account demolishes long-standing myths with the stark realities of this great historical controversy. - Publisher's blurb, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

My Take

Of course, we know that the two invasions of Japan that comprised the Downfall plan - Olympic/Majestic and Coronet -  were never carried out. Olympic (later renamed Majestic) was the code name for the invasion of Kyushu and was scheduled to begin on X-Day, November 1, 1945. The U.S. Sixth Army, commanded by Gen. Walter Kreuger, would have fielded 12 Army and Marine Corps divisions. As Frank notes, "Olympic's projected commitment numbered 766.700 men, 134,000 vehicles, and 1,470,930 tons of material. To lift the twelve divisions in the assault, CINCPAC projected the use of armada of 1,315 major amphibious vessels. Southern Kyushu would become a huge air and naval base, and the air garrison would number forty air groups with approximately 2,794 aircraft." Coronet, Frank adds, would have involved a larger force, including Army troops redeployed from newly-liberated Europe.

As a long-time student of World War II, I have never agreed with the fanciful argument that President  Harry S Truman made a bad decision by authorizing the use of the Bomb against Japan. Critics of that decision often cite intercepts of Japanese diplomatic cables that indicate Tokyo's willingness to end the war without either an invasion or a naval blockade of the Home Islands. They also claim that Truman was aware of Japan's intentions to seek peace, but dropped the Bomb anyway to deter Soviet designs in East Asia and prevent a repetition of what the Red Army was doing in Eastern Europe.

Furthermore, the Truman-was-wrong crowd has constantly said that the Japanese military was on its last legs and that an invasion of the Home Islands would not have been as costly as the President claimed in his memoirs.

But, as Frank shows in Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, the critics and naysayers are wrong. The Japanese Army was badly depleted, but it still had several million men under arms, including 900,000 soldiers on Kyushu alone. Allied intelligence indicated that the ratio of attacker to defender in the Olympic invasion area would be roughly 1:1; the formula for a successful invasion called for a 3:1 ratio. The evenness of both forces would have resulted in heavy casualties for the American soldiers and Marines; the rough estimate that Truman cites in his postwar writings about the use of nuclear weapons is 1,000,000 men would have been killed, wounded, or missing.

Japan, of course, would have fared worse had an invasion taken place. Millions of soldiers, airmen, and civilians would have been killed or wounded, disease would have ran rampant on Kyushu and Honshu, and reconstructing the devastated nation would have cost countless billions of dollars. As horrible as the death toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were, they pale in comparison to the butcher's bill that Olympic and Coronet would have extracted from the invaders and the defenders.

I enjoyed reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Richard B. Frank is a meticulous researcher and a gifted writer. He explains in clear and crisp prose what the realities on the ground were for both sides. At the same time, he dissects each element of the invasion vs. blockade strategies that the Allies had in 1945, as well as the true position of the Japanese government regarding peace before and after the use of the atomic bombs and Russia's entry into the Pacific War.