and the Marines conduct in Iwo Jima (burn every single hole and cave).
Honestly, I think Okinawa actually had far more of an influence than Iwo Jima did. It tends to get overlooked for some reason, but I would argue for Okinawa because it was the first major time the US had to deal with Japanese civilians in a significant way (the only possible other one before that being Saipan, and that was on a much smaller scale).
Not only do you have the same issue of the US have to burn the Japanese out of every hole and cave, you now add in the civilian population being utterly terrified and acting irrationally because of all the propaganda that they had been fed, like the Marines being cannibal psychopaths or the Air Force being more akin to a natural disaster than a military branch. And as such, the civilians either did hopeless attacks with improvised weapons because at least they will die swinging before a Marine eats their corpse, or they would just kill themselves so they didnt have to live with it. And no amount of sometimes literal begging from the US military stopped it.
So not only would you have the Japanese wanting to make that happen on a civilizational scale on the home islands, you had the US military traumatized by the fact that they would have to do it again on an even bigger scale than Okinawa. At least for me, it is absolutely no coincidence that a ton of the US high command that was in the know about the existence of the nukes went from "They are a nice backup option" to "They will be our first tool" after Okinawa.
I'm not going to deny that Okinawa may have had more of an impact than Iwo Jima. Okinawa was wetter, muddier, slower, involved more civilians, and may have even bloodier. I think that's also where Kamikaze attacks were highly successful. Even veterans of both battles have said they preferred Iwo over Oki. Which, given the context, is a fucking insane thing to say.
The strangest thing is, I think if Operation Olympic had gone through, the surrender rate would actually have been much higher. The US military basically assumed that not even 1% of Japan's civilians, let alone soldiers, would surrender, and that experience was driven home especially by Okinawa. The Japanese troops on those islands were heavily propagandized and reminded that fighting to the last man was an absolute imperative, because the trauma on the US military was a strategic objective. It also represents a terrible miscalculation. Instead of the Americans saying, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we should reconsider", they said, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we need more flame tanks". Big oof. Historically, I think that might have worked on the English, but the Americans are a more violent people than most Europeans, and even with all our Liberal sensibilities, our propensity for murder is shockingly high.
Had the invasion gone forward, I think the first year would have been the worst we'd ever have seen, probably increasing the dead to a full million on the American side, but by 1946 I think we would have been seeing mass surrender by Japanese civilians. Surrender isn't actually unheard of to Japanese society, it's just that Japanese militarism tried to pathologize it.
Honestly, I think Okinawa actually had far more of an influence than Iwo Jima did. It tends to get overlooked for some reason, but I would argue for Okinawa because it was the first major time the US had to deal with Japanese civilians in a significant way (the only possible other one before that being Saipan, and that was on a much smaller scale).
Not only do you have the same issue of the US have to burn the Japanese out of every hole and cave, you now add in the civilian population being utterly terrified and acting irrationally because of all the propaganda that they had been fed, like the Marines being cannibal psychopaths or the Air Force being more akin to a natural disaster than a military branch. And as such, the civilians either did hopeless attacks with improvised weapons because at least they will die swinging before a Marine eats their corpse, or they would just kill themselves so they didnt have to live with it. And no amount of sometimes literal begging from the US military stopped it.
So not only would you have the Japanese wanting to make that happen on a civilizational scale on the home islands, you had the US military traumatized by the fact that they would have to do it again on an even bigger scale than Okinawa. At least for me, it is absolutely no coincidence that a ton of the US high command that was in the know about the existence of the nukes went from "They are a nice backup option" to "They will be our first tool" after Okinawa.
I'm not going to deny that Okinawa may have had more of an impact than Iwo Jima. Okinawa was wetter, muddier, slower, involved more civilians, and may have even bloodier. I think that's also where Kamikaze attacks were highly successful. Even veterans of both battles have said they preferred Iwo over Oki. Which, given the context, is a fucking insane thing to say.
The strangest thing is, I think if Operation Olympic had gone through, the surrender rate would actually have been much higher. The US military basically assumed that not even 1% of Japan's civilians, let alone soldiers, would surrender, and that experience was driven home especially by Okinawa. The Japanese troops on those islands were heavily propagandized and reminded that fighting to the last man was an absolute imperative, because the trauma on the US military was a strategic objective. It also represents a terrible miscalculation. Instead of the Americans saying, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we should reconsider", they said, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we need more flame tanks". Big oof. Historically, I think that might have worked on the English, but the Americans are a more violent people than most Europeans, and even with all our Liberal sensibilities, our propensity for murder is shockingly high.
Had the invasion gone forward, I think the first year would have been the worst we'd ever have seen, probably increasing the dead to a full million on the American side, but by 1946 I think we would have been seeing mass surrender by Japanese civilians. Surrender isn't actually unheard of to Japanese society, it's just that Japanese militarism tried to pathologize it.