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By Root 1425 0

empire had been crushed around the edges, then crushed in the vicious campaigns that drove closer and closer to Japan. But every American commander who faced them saw for himself that the Japanese tactics and strategy had never seemed to change at all, no matter how much might and how much superiority in arms they had faced. No, he thought, if they won’t even give up some pissant little island in the middle of nowhere, how can we expect them to lay down arms to give up their whole damn country, emperor and all? That one’s pretty simple. Their losses have been staggering, and yet they’ve shown no hint of any willingness to accept defeat. Truman had been as baffled by that as the men around him. Okinawa had been a perfect disaster for the Japanese, and surely the Imperial High Command would know that mainland Japan was the next target. And yet the rhetoric from Tokyo had not changed at all. Truman had heard some of the Ultra intercepts, the Japanese communications codes broken early in the war. The code breakers had done the same with the German codes, which had given the Allies in Europe an outstanding advantage. Most of the Japanese communications had now become so primitive that the code breakers were hardly in use at all, since most of the bases far from Japan had been crushed or cut off. But Truman had heard some of the pronouncements, had been astounded that the Japanese people were being told of ongoing victories against the enemy, including their magnificent triumph at Okinawa. The Americans knew of food shortages, and that, for Japanese civilians, gasoline and many basic staples were nonexistent. And their men, he thought. Their sons and husbands and fathers are simply gone, and no one there sees a problem? So, no, we cannot expect that a demonstration of some new powerful weapon, no matter how dramatic, is going to change that.

The second argument was more straightforward. What if the bomb didn’t work? Yep, that would be a good one. We tell Tokyo, hey, bring your emperor and half your army and come on out to Yokohama Beach, and watch this. And so they gather out there, with half the world’s newspaper reporters, just to watch us drop a big damn steel ball into the ocean. Sploosh. I can just hear MacArthur, or even Nimitz. Uh, never mind, boys. And excuse us, but we’ve gotta go back home and help the president beat the crap out of every damn physicist we can find. As for the war, yeah, well, we’ll get back to you on that one.

No, it’s not funny. Not even close. The military says we need this, and it’s hard to argue against that. Already we’re mobilizing hundreds of damn transports, and gathering up every healthy GI for a beach party that will make Normandy look like a rainy day in Miami.

The noise that came from the Japanese High Command was as militant as ever, defiantly anticipating that the Americans would make their next move against the mainland itself, which was exactly what was planned. The invasion was scheduled for November 1, a massive surge into the harbors and across the beaches at several points near key Japanese targets. The operation had been given a name, Olympic, and Truman had been briefed by the joint chiefs that the first phase of the invasion would involve more than a half-million American ground troops, with that many more to follow close behind. George Marshall and the other planners assumed the operation would carry on through the spring of 1946. Despite the most optimistic estimates, it was apparent that the war would last for another year, possibly longer. As for casualties … Truman pondered that, all those estimates of American dead, some far more optimistic than others. Some of those boys think that if they feed me baby food, I’ll give my okay to their plans without a second thought. Sorry, but no general has to tell me what a ground war looks like, because I’ve seen one. I know exactly what will happen to our boys. If I thought the Japanese could be convinced they ought to quit, fine, show me how to convince them. Nothing, not a damn thing has worked so far. We’ve been busting up their