History WorldWarII / WarInAsiaAndThePacific

Of course, all of this information stays confined to the top brass of the IJN; the official tally of the battle was one Japanese carrier lost with the Americans totally defeated. To maintain the propaganda, thousands of Japanese sailors are quarantined and quietly moved into South Pacific bases without any opportunity to see their families. Mid-level naval officers begin to realize around this time they were not on the winning side--not because they had suffered a defeat, but because the IJN was so politically fragile it could not risk the Japanese people knowing it had suffered even a single defeat. This fragility had already been hinted at in the aftermath of the Doolittle raid--despite the Imperial Japanese propaganda machine doing its damnedest to dismiss the raid as strategically ineffective, it had broken the illusion that the Japanese Home Islands would remain impervious to direct attack during this war, [[note]]A fact which would be compounded later by the American strategic bombing campaign against Japan in 1944-1945.[[/note]] and this scared the ''shit'' out of Japanese civilians, who culturally held all but but the highest reverence for their government and the Emperor, who may as well be ''God Himself'' in the eyes of his imperial subjects given how much deference he commanded; for the Emperor to all but guarantee that Japan would decisively win this war, only to be almost ''instantly'' proven wrong by such a direct attack on the Japanese Homeland as the Doolittle Raid, scared the ''shit'' out of a lot of Japanese people, so one can only imagine the hysteria which would result from finding out just how ''badly'' the IJN had lost Midway.\\\

Of course, all of this information stays confined to the top brass of the IJN; the official tally of the battle was one Japanese carrier lost with the Americans totally defeated. To maintain the propaganda, thousands of Japanese sailors are quarantined and quietly moved into South Pacific bases without any opportunity to see their families. Mid-level naval officers begin to realize around this time they were not on the winning side--not because they had suffered a defeat, but because the IJN was so politically fragile it could not risk the Japanese people knowing it had suffered even a single defeat.\\\

* Acting ostensibly upon his commitments at the Yalta Conference (that the USSR would help liberate the occupied territories of mainland East Asia within three months of the end of the war in Europe), Stalin orders the Red Army to perform the "Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation", which it does on August 8th, one day from the deadline set on the nineth by Germany's surrender on May 9th[[note]]May 8th in Europe, May 9th in Moscow[[/note]]. The Red Army had been building up the invasion force even before the end of the western front, and quickly overran the exhausted and lightly equipped IJA. In response, High Command once again calls a meeting on August 9th, this one focused entirely on the invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the meeting on August 9th marks no shift in the position of either the Peace or War factions as the meeting concludes at around 6 PM. The Soviet invasion accomplishes nothing... except to enable Soviet land grabs in the far east, including the still-disputed Southern Chishima islands, and to allow the Soviet Union to set the Communist Chinese on the road to victory, which were Stalin's true goals all along.

Planned for October, there is no attempt to disguise the planned invasion's timing or purpose&mdash. Christened Operation '''Downfall''', it consists of a two-stage attack. The first stage (Operation '''Olympic''') aims at capturing about a third of the southern island of Kyushu to use as a staging area for the second stage (Operation '''Coronet'''), a strike at Tokyo with the ultimate goal of capturing the capital and the Emperor. Operation '''Downfall''' will also be a true Allied operation, including a significant contingent of British and Australian forces. It is expected to more than ''double'' the total number of Allied military casualties[[note]]By double, they mean for the ''entire course of the war in all theaters'' incurred by the U.S. Some estimates put the potential number of American casualties as high as 1.25 million, with over 350,000 fatalities. The Americans made enough Purple Heart medals for such an enormous number of casualties, but Japan's surrender before Operation '''Downfall''' was implemented meant that the surplus was unnecessary; even nowadays, there are more than 100,000 Purple Hearts from this time in stock. And if the relative casualty rates seen on Okinawa held true, this would have meant more than ''seven million'' Japanese fatalities[[/note]]. After the war these estimates become considered optimistic as the Japanese plan of defense (Operation '''''Ketsugō''''') is pretty much a worst case scenario for the Allies. It banks on an all-out defense of Kyushu--pretty much predicting exactly where and when the Allies would attempt their landing--and aims to create a defensive system that would make the cost of victory too great and force an armistice instead of an unconditional surrender.\\\

Saipan (and nearby Tinian, captured soon after) are close enough to allow U.S. bombers to strike the Japanese Home Islands. This is initially of limited effectiveness, as strong winds and the intensely crowded nature of Japanese urban-industrial areas makes precision bombing nigh-impossible. But once someone suggests using [[KillItWithFire incendiary bombs]] to set the cities ablaze, the bombing becomes highly effective and the war has in a sense come full circle: the second-most vocal country to decry Japanese "terror bombing" in China--next to the Chinese themselves, obviously--is now deliberately targeting civilians themselves. Like contemporary Chinese construction, most Japanese buildings were then made of cheap but highly flammable materials--wood, bamboo, rattan, rice paper--and arranged in densely packed warrens. The fire-bombing campaign--exemplified by [[TheTokyoFireball The Great Tokyo Fire Raid]] that destroyed a third of Tokyo to the tune of 100,000 civilian deaths-- it's ''super'' effective, razing entire towns overnight and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. More economically damaging still is Operation '''Starvation''', under which the majority of Japan's domestic inter-island ports and shipping lanes are mined from the air, isolating the Home Islands (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido) from one another but for underwater Honshu-Kyushu railway line.\\\

For the next six months, the IJN and the allies fight a brutal land, sea and air battle for the uncompleted Japanese airbase on the island of Guadalcanal. This would expand into the fight for control of the entire Solomon Islands chain, lasting until November 1943. Much of the momentum of the southern offensive is lost due to the unanticipated effect of [[LaResistance partisan and guerrilla resistance]], particularly in the Philippines, while the Guadalcanal campaign turns into a six-month meat grinder of horrific foot-slogging battles and fierce nighttime naval engagements that consumes ships, airplanes and men Japan can ill afford to lose and lacks the resources to replace. Another issue the Japanese faced was that their armies were woefully outclassed in terms of equipment: Most Japanese soldiers sported the Arisaka rifle, a tried-and-true but slow firing bolt-action infantry rifle with a capacity of just five rounds, fed by stripper clip. Conversely, American infantrymen had the M1 Garand, a newer and more mechanically complicated design, but capable of a much higher rate of fire and fed by an eight round en-bloc clip[[note]]Ironically, the US Marines that formed the first wave in Guadalcanal are still armed with the World War One-vintage Springfield which, like the aforementioned Arisaka, runs in a bolt-action system of five rounds. It's not until the later landing of Army troops that the M1 would make its presence know sufficiently to Japanese troops[[/note]]. Additionally, in an interesting inversion of its weaknesses on the European Front, where it struggled against the heavier-armed and armored German Tiger and Panther tanks, the Sherman tank actually enjoyed a comfortable advantage over Japanese armor, which were both too lightly armed to penetrate the Sherman from the front, and too lightly armored to deflect the Sherman's 75mm cannons[[note]]American tank crews in the Pacific actually started requesting more High Explosive ammunition over armor-piercing ammunition, because the 75mm AP rounds would actually go ''straight through'' the Japanese tanks without disabling them[[/note]]. Even then, however, the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal continue to be a serious threat to the airfield—now named "Henderson Field" by its new owners—and surrounding forces; artillery concealed in the jungle and caves on the nearby mountainside take every opportunity to rain shells upon Henderson Field, disrupting airfield operations and generally making life hard for the occupants, and it wouldn't be until February 1943 that the Guadalcanal Campaign would be officially concluded.\\\

For the next six months, the IJN and the allies fight a brutal land, sea and air battle for the uncompleted Japanese airbase on the island of Guadalcanal. This would expand into the fight for control of the entire Solomon Islands chain, lasting until November 1943. Much of the momentum of the southern offensive is lost due to the unanticipated effect of [[LaResistance partisan and guerrilla resistance]], particularly in the Philippines, while the Guadalcanal campaign turns into a six-month meat grinder of horrific foot-slogging battles and fierce nighttime naval engagements that consumes ships, airplanes and men Japan can ill afford to lose and lacks the resources to replace. Another issue the Japanese faced was that their armies were woefully outclassed in terms of equipment: Most Japanese soldiers sported the Arisaka rifle, a tried-and-true but slow firing bolt-action infantry rifle with a capacity of just five rounds, fed by stripper clip. Conversely, American infantrymen had the M1 Garand, a newer and more mechanically complicated design, but capable of a much higher rate of fire and fed by an eight round en-bloc clip. Additionally, in an interesting inversion of its weaknesses on the European Front, where it struggled against the heavier-armed and armored German Tiger and Panther tanks, the Sherman tank actually enjoyed a comfortable advantage over Japanese armor, which were both too lightly armed to penetrate the Sherman from the front, and too lightly armored to deflect the Sherman's 75mm cannons[[note]]American tank crews in the Pacific actually started requesting more High Explosive ammunition over armor-piercing ammunition, because the 75mm AP rounds would actually go ''straight through'' the Japanese tanks without disabling them[[/note]]. Even then, however, the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal continue to be a serious threat to the airfield—now named "Henderson Field" by its new owners—and surrounding forces; artillery concealed in the jungle and caves on the nearby mountainside take every opportunity to rain shells upon Henderson Field, disrupting airfield operations and generally making life hard for the occupants, and it wouldn't be until February 1943 that the Guadalcanal Campaign would be officially concluded.\\\

The IJN's Mobile Force, now reduced to two large fleet carriers and whatever light/escort carriers and other conversions it could muster after the disastrous Battle of Midway, nonetheless made a good showing at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, managing to severely damage the ''USS Enterpise'' in the first battle despite being forced to withdraw and then forcing the American Navy to retreat in the second. By the end of the year, Japan had even succeeded in its objective of neutralizing the U.S. carriers—air and submarine attacks had sunk 4 of the [=U.S.'s=] 6 large fleet carriers, leaving only the badly damaged ''Saratoga'' and ''Enterprise''. However, the Japanese were in no condition to exploit this turn of events, as the loss of aircraft (worsened by the low survivability of their fighters and lack of effort in rescuing their own downed pilots) meant a full half of their Pearl Harbor aircrew had already perished. By the end of 1942, with both U.S. and Japanese carrier forces having worn each other down to nubs, both sides retired to repair and rebuild their carriers and air wings. It would be another 18 months before the U.S. and Japanese carrier fleets engaged each other[[note]]Which gave full advantage to the U.S. with its industrial capacity and GDP 10 times that of Japan; while the USN was able to build a dozen full-sized fleet carriers over that time, Japan could build only one[[/note]]. Making matters worse for the Japanese Navy is the fact that their pilot training & retention doctrine was starting to become a major problem. Japanese Pilot Training was ''incredibly'' selective and rigorous that led to some of the best pilots in the world, but they were also kept on-duty & in front-line service indefinitely (typically until they were killed). This approach meant that over time Japan began to lose its vital pilots but could not replace them, made worse by the fact that (unlike other nations' programs) Japanese Aces were never sent to aviation schools share their expertise & knowledge with the next generation of pilots, which only exacerbated the drop in quality of pilots as the war continued. \\\

-->-- '''UsefulNotes/IsorokuYamamoto''', in a statement to the Japanese cabinet regarding their military's prospects of victory were they to declare war on the Allies.