Another alternate history post:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This one asks but a simple question: what would happen if the United States did not drop Fat Man and Little Boy in August 1945? A delay might be simpler by simply moving the start of the Manhattan Project down a year to 1942 so that the USA is required to invade Japan in 1945 where it did not in the real world.

The way I see it is that the Japanese leadership was not at all likely to surrender, and without the atomic bomb the USA will be hitting the Imperial Japanese in an Allied version of Operation Citadel: the landing zones are known for both sides and they've both made extensive preparations for it. I do think in the event of such a scenario that the Soviets would have done a lot more in Manchuria, probably gained all of Sakhalin and started blitzing through Hokkaido at the same time as the USA's punching through the Kanto Plain.

One thing that's always been an interesting hypothetical is what would happen assuming the IJA tries banzai charges right into the Soviet army of 1945 where it had enough firepower and callousness about human life to make good sport out of that kind of tactics. I see absolutely no reason that banzai charges right at the Soviet military are going to work any better than they did at the US military. The USA at the time was quite peachy keen on Axis civilian deaths, and the Soviets after 4 brutal years of warfare against Nazi Germany are hardly inclined to fight and die any more than they have to. If anything the situation might well end up reversed, the US Army making headlong attacks without real sense to and the Soviets accepting surrenders of cities that allow for it, using firepower to annihilate any that refuse.

Your thoughts? In this case the A-Bomb would probably be available by 1946 and for a real nightmare might have been used by both sides in whatever happens in the Korean peninsula.

Comments

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

"if the United States did not drop Fat Man and Little Boy in August 1945?"

My mom's brother would have gone straight to the Pacific invasion after having spent years fighting in Italy and Europe. We did drop it; he didn't go - and we had him for ten years until he died of physical and mental suffering related to his service.

I'm OK with that.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

When someone goes off on a rant about the use of the atomic bombs at the end of WWII, I usually ask him or her if the past 65 years of Japanese history would have been better or worse with Hokkaido and possibly Honshu as far south as Yokohama behind the Iron Curtain.

The question usually gets a blank stare.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

what would happen if the United States did not drop Fat Man and Little Boy in August 1945?

We'd have a lot more dead American soldiers.

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

In preparation for any major action (like D-Day, or the prospective invasion of Japan), the Armed Forces have made a practice of stocking up on things they'll need, including stuff like body bags and Purple Hearts. In 1945, they made sure to have enough Purple Hearts to go around for those whom they expected to get wounded and/or killed in the invasion.

They ran out of Purple Hearts made for that invasion, a few years ago in Iraq. Yep. Korea, Vietnam, all the brushfires here and there, and Gulf War I didn't add up to the body count they anticipated in '45. It took Iraq and Afghanistan to finish off the stash.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

japan would have become another cuba, with a 1960s japanese missle crisis as well as a cuban one

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

I think if the atomic bomb wasn't used, there really wouldn't be a Japan existing today.

Think about it. The Japanese of 1945 were jumping off of cliffs and committing ritual suicide so they wouldn't have to face the American barbarians (who were, in some cases.)

If we invaded and put boots on the ground, I fear that the Japanese may have just fought or suicided themselves to near obliteration. I'm sure something would survive--not everyone would kill themselves--but a whole lot more would have died. Japan might not have even been a state post-WW2; in our timeline, it regained sovereignty in 1952 (IIRC), but if this state of affairs happened, it might not have regained sovereignty until 1972. Shit, it could have just remained a US protectorate until now!

As odd as it sounds, I think the atomic bomb saved many more Japanese than it killed. It shocked the Japanese leadership into accepting defeat, and without that shock they may have kept banzai-ing in the futile hope of victory.

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

I can't help but connect it personally to my father-in-law who was part of the coming invasion fleet made moot by the bomb. They were expecting 80% casualties, so it's likely he would have died at age 17. His four sons and five grandsons would never have been born. That's a huge impact to the world just from one ordinary life right there.