On August 15th, 1945, Japan's Emperor Hirohito spoke to his people at noon for the first time via a taped radio broadcast:
To our good and loyal subjects....After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided … [on] an extraordinary measure. Japan would endure the unendurable and suffer what is unsufferable and surrender.
With Nazi Germany's surrender four months earlier, World War II was finally over.
Since then historians, and some of us, have pondered the "what ifs" of WWII. Following Nazi Germany's surrender, Japan refused to follow suit and capitulate to the Allied forces in the Pacific. Given Japanese martial proclivities --justified as an almost religious adherence to the Bushido Code--as evident in the various brutal hard fought campaigns throughout the Pacific from Burma to Okinawa, the Allied side was justified in its concerns over a mainland Japan campaign.
Given the Japanese mentality based on incessant universal martial indoctrination, whose shame based ethos often precluded surrender on the Japanese side, conquest would be a hard fought bloodbath on both sides to force a unconditional Japanese surrender. One didn't need to wargame the outcome to clearly understand the grave ramifications of a full scale mainland Allied campaign.
The dead toll would have been in the millions, with the bulk of the dead on the Japanese side (mostly civilians).
Thus, notwithstanding revisionist history, the historical record up to that point provided clues as to what horror lay ahead for all sides with an inevitable allied invasion of mainland Japan to force the surrender of Imperial Japan.
In early 1945, my father, Hamidullah Khan Burki, had participated in the Arakan Campaign. In March of 1943, he'd volunteered to transfer from the Royal Indian Army (RIA) to the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) when the RIN sought volunteers from the Army infantry as crew for their few landing crafts. Given the Burmese terrain, with its lush jungles and many waterways, with non-existent roads, along with air drops (of supplies and men), these landing craft were pivotal
In the coastal province of Arakan, Allied amphibious landings secured vital offshore islands and inflicted heavy casualties, although the Japanese maintained some positions until the end of the campaign.
My father was slated to participate in Operation Zipper. They were trained up for this mission. With the two nuclear strikes, and the war at an end, my father and his fellow warriors never embarked on this next mission which may have led to his death, and the death and maiming of his fellow warriors. For this I am eternally grateful.
