ITYM Operation
OLYMPIC (and CORONET).
As to the decision. RAdm Dan Gallery (of
U-505 fame, then a Captain) was serving as an alternate member of the Logistics Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the invasion plan came before it. He questioned whether it was necessary to
invade Japan. In his words:
However, there was one interesting possible knock-on (which the Allies didn't know about). By this stage in the war, even the most fanatical Japanese militarists had given up hope of winning the war. But they wanted at all costs to avoid Japanese unconditional surrender. That would mean their own apprehension and punishment for war crimes, and also the disbanding of Japan's armed forces and the end of Japan as a Great Power.
Their final fantasy notion of how to avoid this was:
- American troops land in Japan.
- The Japanese army, reinforced by civilian militia, overwhelms the Americans by mass attack, inflicting heavy casualties.
- The Americans, stunned by their losses, abandon the conquest of Japan and accept peace terms that would exclude Allied occupation of Japan and the dissolution of the Japanese military.
Note that the first stage in the plan requires American cooperation, so to speak. If Americans don't land in Japan, the Japanese can't get at them. Thus it is
remotely possible that deprived of their last fantasy of resistance, the militarists give up.