Hell to Pay; Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2009. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. xxiii, [1], 362, [10] pages. Oversized book, measuring 10-1/4 inches by 7-1/4 inches. Includes 18 black & white photographs, and 39 black & white maps. Top edge of book and inside DJ stained. Includes a Foreword by Stanley Weintraub, as well as Preface and Acknowledgments. Notes. Index. Chapters include The Maximum "Bloodletting and Delay," Spinning the Casualties; The First Army and Kwantung Redeployments; The Pacific Build-up and Berlin Decision; "Not a Recipe for Victory"; The Decision; Japanese Defense Plans; "Victory Might Be Salvaged"; The "Manpower Box"; Mistakes and Misperceptions; What Is Defeat"; The Amphibious Operation; One the Ground; Unexamined Factors; A "Target-Rich Environment"; Half a Million Purple Hearts; and "Punishment from Heaven." Also includes Notes, Index, and four appendices: G-2 Estimate of Enemy Situation on Kyrushu, U.S. Sixth Army, August 1, 1945; G-2 Analysis of Japanese Planes for the Defense of Kyushu, U.S. Sixth Army, December 31, 1945; Proclamation Defining Terms or Japanese Surrender Issued at Potsdam (Potsdam Declaration); and Extract from a letter Written by James Michener. In this impressive work of military history, D. M Giangreco brilliantly examines not only the military planning of the United States for the anticipated invasions of Operation Downfall, but also the unrelenting defensive preparations of Japan in its Ketsu-Go campaign. The book is filled with crucial insights and details about the strategy and tactics of each side as they moved towards a bloody & costly culmination of their fierce conflict. D. M. Giangreco, served as an editor at Military Review, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for 20 years. Giangreco has lectured widely on national security matters. An award-winning author of 12 books on military and sociopolitical subjects, he has also written extensively for various national and international publications and news agencies. He was awarded the Society for Military History's 1998 Moncado Prize for his article "Casualty Projections for the US Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications." Giangreco also won the Gerard Gilbert Award (1988, France and Colonies Philatelic Society) for his book Roosevelt, de Gaulle, and the Posts on US Army Civil Affairs operations in World War II France, and his article "The Truth About Kamikazes" was the principal nomination of US Naval Institute, Annapolis, for the Association of Naval Aviation's award for Best Article of 1997 on Naval Aviation. His Hell to Pay was the recipient of the New York Military Affairs Symposium's Arthur Goodzeit Award for Best Military History Book of 2009. Giangreco's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Russian (pirated), Japanese, and Chinese.

Hell To Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 is the most comprehensive examination of the myriad complex issues that comprised the strategic plans for the American invasion of Japan. U.S. planning for the invasion and military occupation of Imperial Japan was begun in 1943, two years before the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In final form, Operation Downfall called for a massive Allied invasion--on a scale dwarfing "D-Day"-- to be carried out in two stages. In the first stage, Operation Olympic, after the dropping of multiple atom bombs the U.S. Sixth Army would lead the southern-most assault on the Home Island of Kyushu to secure airfields and anchorages to support the second stage, Operation Coronet, a decisive invasion of the industrial heartland of Japan through the Tokyo Plain, 500 miles to the north, led by the First and Eighth armies. These facts are well known and have been recounted-- with varying degrees of accuracy-- in a variety of books and articles. A common theme in these works is their reliance on a relatively few declassified high-level planning documents. An attempt to fully understand how both the U.S. and Japan planned to conduct the massive battles subsequent to the initial landings was not dealt with in these books beyond the skeletal U.S. outlines formulated nine months before the initial land battles were to commence, and more than a year before the anticipated climactic series of battles near Tokyo. On the Japanese side, plans for Operation Ketsu-go, the "decisive battle" in the Home Islands, have been unexamined below the strategic level and seldom consisted of more than a rehash of U.S. intelligence estimates of Kamikaze aircraft available for the defense of Kyushu. Hell To Pay examines the invasion of Japan in light of substantial new sources, unearthed in both familiar and obscure archives, and brings the political and military ramifications of the enormous casualties and loss of material projected by trying to bring the Pacific War to a conclusion by a military invasion of the island. This ground breaking history counters the revisionist interpretations questioning the rationale for the use of the atom bomb and shows that the U.S. decision was based on very real estimates of the truly horrific cost of a conventional invasion of Japan.

Operation Downfall was the proposed Allied plan for the invasion of the Japanese home islands near the end of World War II in Asia. The planned operation was cancelled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet declaration of war and the invasion of Manchuria. The operation had two parts: Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet. Set to begin in November 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Ky sh , with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. In early 1946 would come Operation Coronet, the planned invasion of the Kant Plain, near Tokyo, on the main Japanese island of Honshu. Airbases on Ky sh captured in Operation Olympic would allow land-based air support for Operation Coronet. If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in history.

Japan's geography made this invasion plan quite obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to accurately predict the Allied invasion plans and thus adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsug , accordingly. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Ky sh , with little left in reserve for any subsequent defense operations. Casualty predictions varied widely, but were extremely high. Depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians would have resisted the invasion, estimates ran up into the millions for Allied casualties.