A bright flash of light illuminates the sky of Hiroshima.
The Atomic bomb has been dropped, killing tens of thousands of people instantly.
The emperor of Japan watches as his lands burn, the mushroom cloud of destruction reflects
in his eyes.
He has made his decision; the Allies will pay.
Japan will not surrender, they will not give up, if the Allies want the country, they will
have to pry it from his cold dead fingers.
As history has shown, this is not what happened after the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki
and Hiroshima.
Instead, Japan surrendered, and World War II came to an end.
But what if Emperor Hirohito had not surrendered?
What would have happened next?
Regardless of what the United States and the Allied forces decided to do, there were going
to be enormous amounts of casualties.
But could Japan have won the war?
In this what if scenario the odds are against them, but what Japan had planned, and the
hatred that filled the nation for their enemy, was going to lead to a bloody fight for survival.
After the atomic bombs are detonated destroying two entire cities, the emperor, military,
and citizens are now ready to fight until the last Japanese falls.
There will be no surrender, there will be no mercy.
The nation responsible for the mass execution of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians
must be crushed.
The Emperor restates his original plan.
Everyone must fight.
Men, women, and children must be ready to lay down their lives for their country.
And at this time, most of the citizens of Japan would gladly do just this.
In fact, Japan is already training every able bodied person to be a soldier in the fight
against the United States.
The Allies need to end the war in the Pacific quickly.
Every day that goes by the casualties on both sides will go up.
The United States has already lost so many lives in the Pacific that it is hard to justify
sending tens of thousands more to their deaths.
If Japan doesn’t surrender, the war will rage on and on and on.
So, what will the United States do next?
Unfortunately, what military leaders have planned is terrifying.
Japan is ramping up their training programs.
They are assembling more aircraft and vehicles to fight off the Allied forces.
The United States now knows that atomic bombs will not be enough to force the Japanese to
surrender, but a previous bombing campaign proved to be even more devastating.
So, the next move for the United States is to cause more destruction from the air.
And the best way to do this is through firebombing the Japanese homeland.
On the night of March 9, 1945 Allied forces had unleashed hell on Tokyo.
2,000 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped over 48 hours.
It is estimated that between 80,000 and 125,000 people were burnt to death by the bombing
run.
It also took out many “shadow factories,” that were basically peoples’ homes and shops
used to prefabricate war materials before they were shipped to Japan’s main factories.
Regardless of whether the fire bombs destroyed military targets or not, one thing is for
sure: the first firebombing of Tokyo was devastating, and likely killed over 100,000 civilians.
The carnage that ensued as people tried to flee the flames caused even more casualties.
Reports stated that the smell of burning flesh was so bad, pilots on the bombing runs had
to put their oxygen masks on to keep from vomiting all over their flight consoles.
Since the first firebombing campaign was so successful in creating devastation, the United
States now plans to carry out more of these missions.
The atomic bombs were catastrophic, but the firebombs seemed to strike even more fear
into the enemy.
The United States begins conducting more and more firebombing runs in cities that are manufacturing
materials for the Japanese war effort.
At this point Japan needs to ramp up their anti-air capabilities.
They pour countless resources and men into creating AA guns and planes.
The Kamikaze pilots target aircraft carriers and air bases where Allied planes can reach
the Japanese mainland.
The deployment of new U.S. aircraft and ships into the Pacific to replace those being destroyed
by Japanese fighters and kamikaze pilots are far away.
The United States has burnt entire cities to the ground, and they have unleashed more
atomic bombs which have irradiated the Japanese soil.
But now the entire nation, and everyone in it, is hell bent on defeating the United States
even if it costs every Japanese life on the planet.
As Europe tries to stabilize itself, the other Allied countries are hesitant to send more
forces into the Pacific.
They do not want to leave their countries vulnerable to a resurgence of war on the continent.
The United States slowly realizes that it is now on its own to subdue Japan.
The closest Allied nation to the conflict is the Soviet Union.
But they’re still recovering form the Nazi campaign into their homeland and getting ready
for the next war.
On the other hand, if the United States is eventually defeated by Japan, it will leave
the country almost defenseless, which would allow the Soviet Union to be in an even greater
position of power.
Knowing that they can’t rely on anyone but themselves, and that they need to end the
war with Japan as soon as possible, the United States makes a drastic decision.
They must conduct a land invasion in order to end the war once and for all.
For all intents and purposes, World War II is over at this point.
The Allies have reclaimed Europe and signed The Paris Peace Treaties.
Even though Japan hasn’t surrendered, Europe starts to rebuild after the devastation of
the war.
The war in the Pacific is too far away to worry about.
The continuation of violence between the United States and Japan develops into its own unique
war.
The United States knows that it will be American men who are sent to the slaughter by a land
invasion.
But there seems to be no other choice.
The Japanese people are resilient, and even after traditional bombings, firebombings,
and atomic bombings they continue to fight on.
The only way to end this war is by cutting off the serpent's head, and to do this, Japan
must be invaded.
This is actually what Japan has been hoping for.
They know that if the Americans step foot on Japanese soil, they have the advantage.
Every single Japanese citizen is willing to lay down their life to defeat the foreign
threat.
This includes women and children being used to overwhelm the enemy forces.
The casualties will be massive on both sides, but the end goal of the Japanese leadership
is to make taking Japan so difficult for the United States, that they will eventually give
up.
In fact, the Japanese know that the last thing the U.S. wants to do is conduct a land invasion.
They hoped that their resilience from all of the bombings would be enough of a deterrent
to send the United States packing from home, however, that’s not what happened.
The U.S. prepares the Navy to move in closer to the Japanese mainland.
The Japanese people move into position along the coast to fight off any land incursion
in their regions.
Like the kamikaze pilots in the sky, the average citizen is willing to lay down their life
for the emperor on land.
The Japanese people are not only soldiers, but human bombs as well.
As U.S. forces step onto the beaches of Japan they are met by wave after wave of regular
citizens who quickly overwhelm them.
Landing parties are fended off.
Sometimes the American soldiers can hold the beach for a few days, but eventually more
and more Japanese are sent to push them back into the ocean from once they came.
And it would seem that the Japanese people are not the only ones who are angry about
the invasion of their country, and the prolonged war that has now gone on for years after the
rest of the world agreed on peace.
Mother Nature also causes chaos for the American forces.
As the land invasion commences, a catastrophic typhoon strikes Japan.
The winds, waves, and rain cause Naval vessels to become shipwrecked.
Soldiers that are encamped on beaches drown in massive floods.
Due to sheer willpower, and the deployment of tanks and other armored vehicles, the United
States finally gains a foothold on the mainland of Japan.
Unfortunately, victory is still far from secured.
The Japanese people have retreated into the forests, mountains, and cities on their home
island, and have begun engaging in gorilla warfare.
The Japanese government has become destabilized as most of the trained military has been killed,
or is regrouping for a counter attack, but the regular citizens fight on.
This isn’t surprising since if the United States was ever invaded, every American citizen
would fight to the last person to defend their homeland.
The Japanese are only trying to fight off an invading force.
U.S. soldiers are ambushed in the thick forests by regular citizens using rifles, swords,
and improvised explosives.
American forces are repelled in the mountains by people held up in fortresses and castles
from the days of the Samurai.
In the remaining cities people hide in their homes waiting for an unsuspecting soldier
to walk by and then quickly dispatch him.
They are not being given orders by a general, or any military leaders, they are just trying
to defend their homeland from the invading force.
Between the weather, enemy military, and the Japanese people the United States has lost
between 500,000 and one million soldiers.
Reinforcements are still a long way away, especially those arriving by ship.
At this point, history could have gone two ways.
The first is that the United States gives up and returns back to North America to lick
its wounds.
If this happened, the Soviet Union may have taken advantage of the vulnerable state that
the country was in, and the Cold War may have became an all out battle with the Soviets
being victorious.
The other outcome might have been the United States continuously sending resources and
men to Japan until the population was finally subdued.
There would be no victory as the cost of human life would have been too great.
The United States would have needed to keep a military presence in the country to make
sure that it couldn't rebuild its military, and they would need to put a democracy in
place to run the nation.
Unfortunately, as history has shown, this is easier said than done.
If Japan had never surrendered in World War II the fighting would have continued on.
Surrender wasn’t an option, unless the populace was told by the emperor himself that it was
necessary.
So, although World War II may have ended, the war in the Pacific would have raged on.
The United States would most likely be fighting it alone, and the only way that it would have
come to an end was through a land invasion.
However, if the United States did invade the mainland of Japan the casualties would have
been astronomical.
Also, there is no way to know what other countries would do while Japan and the United States
were fighting with one another.
It is a real possibility that other countries like the Soviet Union would have jumped at
the opportunity to gain power while U.S. resources, men, and military vessels were tied up in
a war with Japan.
As the United States became weaker and weaker, other countries may have become stronger and
stronger.
Now watch “What if Kamikaze Pilot Survived?”
Or check out “What If: World Without the US - Part 1.”