In a message dated 11/24/2001 1:20:04 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Dehede011@aol.com writes:
<< I believe at that time the best estimates were that the American
casualties in an invasion of the Japanese homeland would run about one
million. The Japanese casualites at that time were supposed to be running
about ten to our one >>
Weighing in:
As a regular viewer of The History Channel, I know consider myself to be the
foremost expert on WW2 (breaking into uncontrollable laughter) on this list!
That aside, here are some factoids I have loined, or learned:
1) The Japanese had still a couple of million soldiers and imperial marines
distributed across Asia. These people, though distributed would still have
been a troubling fighting force, if they had a chance to re-gatrher into a
full fighting unit.
2) The Japanese Manhattan project was their version of Dachau, in Camp 777 in
Manchuria. The Japanese army tested bubonic plague, anthrax, botulism,
smallpox, tularemia, etc., on the Manchurian populace and murdered perhaps
80-100k Chinese civilians. The Japanese were planning to use such weapons on
Los Angeles and San Francisco, in order to prevent an invasion of the home
islands and perhaps win the war.
The Japanese had stored 5000 zeros in caves around Japan, and would have used
them not only for kamikaze strikes against American troops landing, but were
also equipped to loosen phosgene gas upon the American invaders.
Note: This was something Churchill also planned if Operation Zee Lion was
enacted (invasion of the UK).
The Japanese had already been working on their own nuclear bomb projects, but
were not close to developing a successful bomb-so they consider the
alternative: The radiological weapon. The rad weapon was to be used on Los
Angeles, and to kill with detonated radioactive U-235 enriched uranium. The
German U-boat U-234 surrendered in the Atlantic on May 10, 1945, to the US
Navy--a choice by the sub captain. The sub carried the uranium as well as a
disassembled ME-262, and plans and parts for the V2, and modified V1's (used
against invading yanks).
The Japanese had already improved on the design for the nazi Jets and their
rocket-plane; which the later was considered to be an excellent kamikaze
weapon. The delivery system for the attack on the West coast of the US, was a
submarine that carried a single fighter/bomber to deliver Germans or
rad-dust. These were actually built and tested, much in the same fashion that
the nazi's 6-engine intercontinental bomber was tested (flying within 12
miles of Long Island New York in Nov 1944).
Summing up: They had germs, radiation, poison gas (no nerve gas yet) and the
will to employ such goodies, in a fight that they provoked. They were such
bastards to people all over Asia, that I wonder how we were so nice
afterwards.
Maybe because they were so vicious to others is the reason they feared
surrender? At any rate, some real historians say that the CCCP under Stalin
terrified the Japanese (whom they had sign a nonaggression pact with in
1942). The Russians apparently made quite an impression on their (Japanese)
army leaders, who saw them as implacable and invincible. I think it may have
been because the Japanese leadership suspected that once the commies dug in,
they would never let go? Whereas those imbecile Yankees with their Mickey
mouse ways.
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