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Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
Both King and Nimitz opposed any landings in Japan and wanted to continue a naval and air blockade. Both admirals wanted to attack Taiwan or Korea or stage landings on the Chinese mainland.
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MacArthur was one of the biggest proponents for invading the Home Islands. The same bloody-minded fellow who needlessly wasted thousands of lives retaking the strategically unimportant Philippines just to fuel his own ego.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
Civilian experts predicted much higher losses. But the original briefing documents for Operation Downfall predicted about 370,000 casualties in the initial fighting.
As for wikipedia and its Downfall link, some of the sources quoted have been under fire for some time concerning their conclusions.
The Rand Corporation gamed out Downfall in the 1980s. The Allies were able to secure the ground objectives and suffered about 392,000 casualities. Japanese losses were quite a bit higher, running around 630,000 military and civilian.
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Those Rand figures are close to the figures cited in the Wiki article for what the JCS came up with in mid-1945. I don't put a lot of weight on "some of the sources quoted have been under fire for some time concerning their conclusions" when some of the folks debating such things still persist in believing that the atomic bombs won the war when the preponderance of evidence points otherwise.