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.
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.