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over forty years ago, and not latter day speculation, show quite clearly that the battle for Japan might well have resulted in the biggest bloodbath in the history of modern warfare.

At best, the invasion of Japan would have resulted in a long and bloody siege. At worst, it could have been a battle of extermination between two different civilizations.

Far worse would be what might have happened to Japan as a nation and as a culture. When the invasion came, it would have come after several additional months of the continued firebombings on all of the remaining Japanese cities and population centers. The cost in human life that resulted from the two atomic blasts would be small in comparison to the total number of Japanese lives that would have been lost by this continued aerial devastation.

If the invasion had come in the fall of 1945, with the American forces locked in combat in the south of Japan, who or what could have prevented the Red Army from marching into the northern half of the Japanese home islands. If "Downfall" had been an operational necessity, the existence of a separate North and South Japan might be a modern-day reality. Japan today could be divided down its middle much like Korea and Germany. The world was spared the cost of "Downfall", however, because on September 2, 1945, Japan formally surrendered to the United Nations and World War II was finally over.

Almost immediately, American soldier, sailors, airmen and marines in for the duration were now discharged. The aircraft carriers, cruisers, transport ships and LST's scheduled to carry our invasion troops to Japan, now ferried home American troops in a gigantic troop-lift called "Magic Carpet."

The soldiers and marines who had been committed to invade Japan were now returned home where they were welcomed back to American shores. All over America celebrations were held and families everywhere gathered in thanksgiving to honor these soldiers who had been miraculously spared from further combat and were now safely returning home.

In the fall of 1945, with the war now over, few Americans would ever learn of the elaborate top-secret plans that had been prepared in detail for the invasion of Japan. Those few military leaders who had known the details of "Operation Downfall" were now preoccupied with demobilization and other postwar matters, and were no longer concerned with this invasion that never came.

In the fall of 1945, in the aftermath of the two thermonuclear

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explosions that triggered the Japanese surrender, and with the war a fading memory, few people concerned themselves with the invasion plans for Japan that had been rendered obsolete by the atomic age. Following the surrender, the classified documents, maps, diagrams and appendices for "Operation Downfall" were packed away in boxes where they began their long circuitous route to the National Archives where they sill remain.

But even now more than forty years later, these plans that called for the invasion of Japan paint a vivid description of what might have been one of the most horrible campaigns in the history of modern man. The fact that "Operation Downfall", the story of the invasion of Japan, is locked up in our National Archives and is not reflected in our history books is something for which all Americans can be thankful.

[[image - cover of Operation Downfall Strategic Plan, reading "GENERAL HEADQUARTERS U. S. ARMY FORCES IN THE PACIFIC "DOWNFALL" STRATEGIC PLAN G-2 ESTIMATE OF THE ENEMY SITUATION COPY NO. 13 EDITION NO. 1 OFFICER ONLY"]]

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