US casualty estimates were over a million soldiers
Those estimates have actually grown enormously as the years have passed, not surprisingly in parallel with the growth in criticism of the US for using the atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Estimates at the time were in the neighborhood of 50,000 allied casualties (where “casualties” include wounded and captured as well as killed); Truman at one point started throwing out 500,000 dead as a round number, and now in modern times we have “over a million” as a common estimate. In reality, who knows? One of the options being considered at the time as an alternative to invasion was just to continue the conventional firebombing as well as the submarine-based blockade of all of Japan’s shipping, and starving Japan into eventual surrender without incurring a very high number of allied casualties in the process.
It’s worth noting that a three-day firebombing campaign against Tokyo in March 1943 (using conventional ordinance) produced more Japanese casualties than did the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings combined.
In reality the USSR was planning the invasion of Japan and was strongly prepared for it, no American lives would have been lost and Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t actually a factor in Japan’s surrender anyway.
Those estimates have actually grown enormously as the years have passed, not surprisingly in parallel with the growth in criticism of the US for using the atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Estimates at the time were in the neighborhood of 50,000 allied casualties (where “casualties” include wounded and captured as well as killed); Truman at one point started throwing out 500,000 dead as a round number, and now in modern times we have “over a million” as a common estimate. In reality, who knows? One of the options being considered at the time as an alternative to invasion was just to continue the conventional firebombing as well as the submarine-based blockade of all of Japan’s shipping, and starving Japan into eventual surrender without incurring a very high number of allied casualties in the process.
It’s worth noting that a three-day firebombing campaign against Tokyo in March 1943 (using conventional ordinance) produced more Japanese casualties than did the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings combined.
In reality the USSR was planning the invasion of Japan and was strongly prepared for it, no American lives would have been lost and Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t actually a factor in Japan’s surrender anyway.
… Jesus give me strength.