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Last hope for Japan ...

Japanese Home Defence Volunteers in weapons training, propaganda photo, 1945. Roughly the Japanese equivalent of the Volkssturm, this force was very numerous, since it could effectively involve any man or woman capable of taking the field in any shape or form. Even workers in essential industries could take part in their free time. However, they had been "mobilized" late, training officers were in short supply, and weaponry was, generally, pathetic. Apart from discarded, shot-out, redundant and obsolete firearms, the volunteers were armed with pikes, swords, kitchen knives, cleavers, clubs and bamboo spears. Also, while this armed citizenry seems to have been assumed by the Allies to be possessed of fanatical loyalty to Emperor and country, morale was actually pretty uneven at this stage, fractured by the terrible losses of the war to date and by the progressive destruction of the Japanese cities by US bombing. They may have loved their Emperor, but whether many of them were really willing to fight to the death was distinctly questionable. Would this ragtag home army have been capable of inflicting massive casualties on a US invading force ? Looking at the resistance of the Japanese Army across the Pacific, US planners seem to have answered, "yes". Consideration of the reality suggests otherwise. This was not the Japanese Army. A scenario at least equally likely is that a US invasion force would have been assailed by the home volunteers in the early stages of the invasion, but that it would have been the volunteers that would have been slaughtered. Continued attacks would have resulted in further slaughter. In this scenario, it is likely that it would have quickly become very difficult for the Japanese authorities to organize effective defence, and the Americans would have achieved their key strategic objectives (probably with considerable further slaughter) without very much difficulty. A vast, messy cleaning-up operation would, no doubt, have been necessary; nonetheless, most of the deaths would have been on the side of the Japanese. No reason here to invalidate the US decision to bring matters to an end as quickly as possible, if only because, not the US, but the Japanese casualties could have ended up a substantial multiple of the deaths in the nuclear attacks in the event of an invasion. That having been said, this alternative perspective is at least worthy of contemplation. Best regards, JR.