While writing, Camel Red, the story of hero and survivor, Larry Heron, it was my good fortune to have held interviews with many soldiers who had served in World War II. Most of those interviewed have since passed away, but fortunately some of their stories were written down and will live on, including some that came from a historian who kept meticulous records of the war.
From him I learned that buried somewhere in the National Archives in Washington DC, are the 1945 plans for the invasion of Japan marked "TOP SECRET" and codenamed Operation Downfall, conceived in two major parts. The preliminary strike, scheduled to take place on December 1, 1945, was called Operation Olympic, the assault of Kyushu, the southernmost portion of Japan. Once in Allied hands, Kyushu was to become the springboard for the second part of the invasion, codenamed Operation Coronet, the planned attack on Honshu, the major portion of Japan where Tokyo is located. Olympic was expected to continue for four months, so the launch for Coronet was set for March 1, 1946. Downfall would have been the most spectacular operation in modern history, involving the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet, the largest naval force ever assembled on Earth; the deployment of thousands of ships; tens of thousands of planes; and an invasion force of five million. The number of estimated American casualties was expected to reach one million.
For obvious reasons, Operation Downfall was not wildly embraced, not only because of the loss of lives, but also for the sheer magnitude of the operation. But in the end, it was deemed necessary because of the suicidal resistance already demonstrated by the Japanese at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Surprisingly, throughout the war not a single Japanese unit had ever surrendered.
An intensified naval blockade and air bombardment might have resulted in a negotiated peace at best but it would take far too long and excessively difficult to maintain. America was sick of war and wanted it to end quickly and decisively. Downfall would proceed against two million well-fed, highly-equipped, and extremely-motivated Japanese troops, a 10 million civilian guerrilla force, thousands of kamikaze pilots, and hordes of planes stockpiled for just such an emergency. Then there was the awful terrain to deal with, an invader's nightmare of jagged ravines riddled with fortified caves and dugout tunnels.
The goal was to lessen these dangers by striking fast, surgically, and with a force built on a scale that would dwarf the prior year's Normandy landings. Twenty-eight divisions, including hundreds of thousands of Marines and Sixth Army infantrymen would storm dozens of beachheads along a 250 mile perimeter of Kyushu's southern shore with the hope of winning the war by the end of 1946.
President Truman shared the fears of many military top leaders that it would go down as the most horrific campaign in the history of warfare. Troops scheduled to move from where they had been fighting in Europe directly into jungle warfare and the bloodiest fighting of the war, felt their number was up. Word about the million casualties had spread, and it struck fear in the hearts of millions that they'd never return home alive.
Then when Commander of the Third Fleet Admiral William "Bull" Halsey met in Pearl Harbor with Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific, Gen. Douglas MacArthur to coordinate the effort, a dispute erupted.
MacArthur saw his role as the overall Commander of Operation Downfall but the Navy was not about to place its celebrated amphibious force in the hands of an Army general, so the controversy raged for months until it was finally agreed that MacArthur would take charge of the invasion, but complete control over the amphibious landings belonged with Admiral Raymond Spruance.
On May 25, 1945, the Joint Chiefs ordered Olympic to proceed. But seven weeks later, a miracle happened at Alamogordo, NM. The world's first atomic device was detonated. The Army kept the test a secret by announcing that an ammunition dump had exploded on the Alamogordo bombing range, so as incredible as it may seem, no one in the Pacific, from private to top general, would learn that the bomb even existed until two weeks prior to Hiroshima. The American public would not know anything about it until after the drop took place. It took a second bomb dropped on Nagasaki for the Japanese to surrender unconditionally, negating the need for Operation Downfall, would then be buried in the National Archives as nothing more than a plan written down on pieces of yellowing paper until becoming unclassified nearly four decades later.
The argument will perhaps rage on forever that dropping bombs on urban centers was not necessary, but at the time, against a fanatical society willing to fight to the last and take a million American soldiers with them, others will argue just as strongly that it was the only alternative, and the least costly in terms of human life.
A 21 year-old 2nd Lieutenant of the 104th Division once wrote, "When the atomic bombs were dropped and the news circulated that Operation Olympic had been canceled, that we would not be obliged to run up the beaches near Tokyo, assault-firing while being mortared and shelled, for all the fake manliness of our facades, we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live!" Then he added, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb!"
Greg Page, West Point graduate, soldier, historian and author of books and screenplays, wrote Camel Red the true story of Larry Heron, World War II's most severely wounded soldier and hero, including the untold heroism of surgeons, including the Nobel Prize winner who performed the world's first successful organ (kidney) transplant.
View his web site and blog at: http://www.camelred.com/
View his LinkedIn profile at: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/greg-page/14/554/859
Copyright 2010 Gregory David Page.
