I have written a great deal about myths and legends, as well as conspiracy theories but in all my writing I have largely side-stepped the most obvious for people that know me. I have a fear of Bigfoot. It started when I was a child. Although I have not been a child for a long time, I still have much of that fear; rational or not. Most of the time, it’s dormant. Some of the time it is a curiosity. Occasionally it is very real.
I know the shows and the industry of it all. It’s one hell of a business. It is BIG business. I won’t watch the shows that focus on bigfoot. One series addressed it in one series of episodes and did ok, for a while. I liked Survivorman. I respect Les Stroud. There was footage in the series of shows about Bigfoot that were just silly. It was not what I expected from his body of work.
One TV show is the origin of all this interest for me. ‘In Search Of‘ was a show based on exploring myths and legends that were, well, mysterious. The staples were all there. Loch Ness, Bermuda Triangle, Pyramids, and of course, Bigfoot. Also, Leonard Nimoy, narrating only made it even more creepy. I saw this one episode, when I was young.
Here is the gist of it all. I am scared of bigfoot. Since I am scared of bigfoot, it must be real. The fear is real so the animal must be as well. It’s simple as that for me.
So, leaving that child behind, is there any truth to Bigfoot? Let’s look at the information.
The pool of information on Bigfoot is vast and comes in ever increasing broad and disconnected ideas. This in and of itself is not a good sign there is understanding of the creature. There are no definitive edges of the information on Bigfoot. It is all over the place from the ubiquitous footprints to claims of scat and even skeletal remains, recordings of vocalizations, photos of nests, claims of woodland structures built by BF, claims they are aliens, shape shifters, time travelers, a CIA conspiracy or CIA protected, able to sense electronic devices, Skinwalkers, bent trees as territorial markers, celebrity presenters and of course, the more modern version of footprints, video/images/film from big and comic book super hero shaped and simple distant shapes but by the most ubiquitous and most recent are blurry and out of focus images needing circles and arrows and paragraphs to describe the larger portions of the beast.
We’ll start with the most ubiquitous over time; footprints. There are so many people that have admitted to faking them that it is a great example of how evidence has been faked. It also shows how easily they can be faked, by so many. If many have done it, it cannot be hard to pull off. The propensity of even reputable people who have stated that they have faked footprints brings all into question. Most I have seen are themselves pretty questionable.
Just as a fun point of reference, some humans have some pretty big feet. Not many! But they are out there…
The other very common body of evidence is photos and video. Ironically as we all know, they are blurry. There is a great skeptic that addresses all such manner of things that refers to these blurry images be they video, movie, photo, film or digital, as blobsquaches. There are even T-shirts you can buy that make jokes about it. I may buy one.
Let’s get real about the images offered. There are almost no images that show much of anything. There are a lot of out of focus images. There are many videos that look as if they were shot while doing jumping-jacks. In an age of ubiquitous cameras of high quality, auto focus and image stabilization, clarity seems to be lacking. Clarity seems to be almost impossible. Think of the UFO thing; same issue.
Growing up, after my days in Illinois, my family had a cool collection of photos just pinned to a corkboard. They overlapped and most were just snapshots. One of them was taken when we were camping in the Rockies. One of those images, I always swore, contained a Bigfoot. My father denied it. Some friends agreed but I assume they agreed to support me more than believed it.
Belief isn’t proof. Here is a simple example to that point: An image or direct witness of a man looking Like Elvis in 2003 does not prove his death was faked, and he was working in a Dairy Queen in Schenectady, New York. Proof must be plausible and fit in with known information that is supported by known truths. I have a friend who claimed and still believes today that claim. She is sure. She cannot be convinced otherwise.
The previously mentioned Les Stroud showed some halfway decent images, both still and video in his series about Bigfoot. He also showed some amazingly clear claimed images of Bigfoot faces and that was where he lost me. They looked TOO good. I felt they were faked and that’s when I left since I didn’t want to believe he would fake them.
There have been other compelling images I have seen over the years as well. One that always stood out to me, was video of what appeared to be a family or group of Bigfoot that were walking through a clearing on the far side of an interstate, taken from a traffic cam. It was also as can be assumed, distant. It didn’t offer proof as much as it simply seemed compelling. Ironically, I cannot find it anywhere anymore. Maybe it was disproven but that usually doesn’t slow down these videos.
There are also many, many, many witnesses and stories. A big percentage of these witnesses are not direct, but second hand or more. All those must be dismissed. Those that are firsthand, who can say if they are accurate or honest. I’d like to assume and usually do that the report is honest to the best of their knowledge. I have witnessed things others would not believe so I have only told them to a few. My seeing is not proof of anything. I even witnessed a ghost with another person seeing the same thing at the same time. Still doesn’t prove anything.
Were horrible witnesses. We SUCK. I will simply say that I believe that people believe what they have seen. I believe what I saw. But I know that doesn’t mean it existed then or now.
When we talk about Bigfoot there is often claims of experts. There are no experts on bigfoot. You cannot be an expert on something not available to you for study. When we study something, we are determining it scientifically by observation. When considering just the given physical information we have on Bigfoot the range of information doesn’t define anything. Foot casts differ a great deal, as would be expected from a large population of animals but there is no consistency over time other than more and more consistency with known primates as the technology to make such prints has come available.
If we only take video, there is also little consistency other than general color and appearance. Behavior is all over the range as well as physical appearances. Again, this is consistent with a large group of animals over a great range but the appearnces of them have also paralleled the evolition of technology.
If we return to the Patterson/Gimlin film, the range of suits available at the time were consistent with the one in the film. The ones in Planet of the Apes were not the epitome of the product then, they were made for ease of repair, easy on/off and to ‘breathe’ as much as possible as well as a mind to cost.
The images of Bigfoot in the few videos people offer have usually gotten better, as technology and broadly available video editing has improved. This is a telling reality.
As I have said, I WANT to believe even though proof would spell the demise of the big guy. They would become the most hunted animal in the world, immediately. The field of study that is bigfoot, must try and be consistent with science but it is an outlier and flaunts science until someone claims ‘scientists’ have claimed or stated this or that. My father was a scientist. He used economics, engineering and math to make national security studies. I knew someone who was a neuroscientist. I also knew a pioneering asphalt engineer with a degree in geology from an elite school. Scientists all, and none could determine anything about Bigfoot. Scientist is a trash term.
Let me put it bluntly… I could show my father the P/G film and he say it was obviously fake. There you have it folks, a scientist with a PhD said nope, its fake. I did just that, and he said just that. Case closed, right?
Information must not only at least loosely support a claim to be considered proof but also must start to link with other evidence. It also must exclude other explanations. If I leave three apples on a log in the woods, them disappearing is not evidence of Bigfoot. A camera showing them disappear in the night, is also not evidence of Bigfoot. It is evidence something took them. Or someone. Maybe Bob the cameraman was hungry. You get my point.
The leaps of logic in the search for bigfoot and in reality, the fight for the belief of bigfoot do not help the argument or search. 90% of those showing a search or even proof are absurd on the face of it. They offer anecdotal evidence and then ridicule those who don’t believe. I want PROOF, not anger, exclusion and elementary research. Yet, the claims continue.
People claim you could parade a live Bigfoot down Broadway, and many would not believe. I agree.
The best thing about the Bigfoot phenomenon is the fun of it all. Like any child soccer game, there are many who take it entirely too seriously. We cannot prove there is no bigfoot. As of yet, we cannot prove there is. That is the long and short of the issue.
I have been to a few facilities that claim to offer evidence of Bigfoot or at least show what evidence there is. I have enjoyed some of them. I have been impressed by only one of them. Expedition Bigfoot in blue Ridge, Georgia is impressive. It doesn’t really offer any evidence, although it claims to. A line of scat in their DNA lab is clearly as fake as the DNA lab it is in. To my knowledge there has never been any discoveries that offer DNA. Even incomplete or unknown DNA does not mean, Bigfoot anymore than it means a peach.
The beauty of the Bigfoot story is there is room for everyone until you become insecure in your belief. if you are confident and comfortable in your belief, either way, you are comfortable in others having their own belief. Thise who become aggressive or more often demeaning about someone else’s belief, tells me they are insecure in their own.
I’ll address the gold standard in the study of Bigfoot, Patterson-Gimlin.
The best known and among the most profitable pieces of evidence is the famous film of Bigfoot crossing a creek in the Pacific Northwest in the US. It is impressive. It has been scrutinized, digitized, stabilized and either vilified or anointed.
It has been claimed to be proven real. It has also been claimed to be proven fake.
The best investigation of it is a crappy book by Greg Long. The Making of Bigfoot, is a strain to read but not because it is poorly researched but poorly written by not only an amateur , but someone who apparently refused an editor. The story as told by many who were there or were direct relations with Patterson tells a very different picture than the frequent story heard.
I’ll give an example that is documented in this, and many other books:
Roger Patterson for all his failings as a provider and man of character and integrity, (these are well documented, so this is not an indictment) was determined to make some money for his wife and give her a better life. He had tried to get a movie made about bigfoot and failed in his efforts with Hollywood fell through. He made a short film himself as an example of the possibility. The stills are well known.
After a failed attempt at a movie, he was determined to make his own of the real deal. There was not any film of bigfoot known to exist. He only had reports of tracks and plans to go. He rented a camera, brought horses and at least two men set off to California and within days, came back with the film. In a Kodachrome canister he had what would become for the next 50 years at least, the only accepted footage by many, of bigfoot. None before or after had done what Roger Patterson had done in days. In the days that followed what is reported is that the film was flown to a processing lab and by the time the men got back home, the film was developed and ready for viewing and marketing.
Although no one could recall where the special film that could only be processed in a few locations in North America was processed, it has been done over a weekend when none were open after being flown from the area even though there are no records of the flight. The camera rental time and location is known due to the camera shop having to sue Patterson for its return. The suit has many holes in the story as claimed in the day. There is no shortage of stories in the town where Patterson lived to go along with the effort to make the film.
But again, if the suit were paraded own Broadway, many would not believe.
The original film, which would have the processing location and date in it, is missing. The only known film are duplicates, all in Ektachrome duplication film which can be processed much more easily. Great efforts were made to profit from Bigfoot by Patterson, with very mixed results.
In short, there is far more information to support it being fake than real. Since Bigfoot has not been proven to exist and does not fit into known and accepted academic information, the burden of proof is on the ‘real’ community rather than the ‘false’ community. There is almost nothing that strongly points in a true direction.
I love the bigfoot mythology. I am but one voice with a skeptical eye but wanting heart. I find very little to hang my emotional heart on other than my childhood fear. But we all have fears and create and cherry pick information to justify that fear. The bump in the night cannot be in my head because that makes me crazy so it must be a monster, or mouse, or the wind or a ghost … We will cherry pick what we want to be true in the lack of any real proof. I find very little to connect that fear to. I emotionally wish the big guy was real but can find nothing to help me think he is. Other than my childhood fear.
I had the honor one day of meeting a man I never expected to meet. Those are the best meets.
I take notes on many things and didn’t expect to, but I found my notes on this encounter. I found them and finally wrote the best version of this discussion I can make. I wrote this carefully to honor his words. Honor his experience. Honor this man.
I met Roxy in my father’s nursing home, usually in a wheelchair near the doors leading to the pavilion. He was friendly, and always had a near toothless smile on his face when I arrived. Early in my dad’s days there I introduced myself, he shook my hand and needed me to say my name very close to his ear. He was almost deaf.
This became our routine, me shaking his hand when I saw him, asking how he was. He returned the nicety and sometimes talking about the weather or current events. I liked talking with him but usually didn’t linger as talking to him strained my voice. I needed that voice to talk with my similarly hearing-impaired father. For months, once a week or more, I did this. On Christmas I brought him soft chocolate because he said he missed it. He smiled and shook my hand again. I never saw anyone with him in the many months I saw him there. His story became his gift to me, even if he would never see it that way.
One day, he had a new hat. Dark blue with gold embroidery reading WWII Veteran. I hadn’t known.
When he was sitting in the sun alone one day out by the pavilion, I sat and asked him about his service. His usual smile disappeared, and he took off his hat to look at it. I immediately wished I hadn’t asked.
He said he wasn’t really a veteran. He put the hat on his lap, the sun then shined on his weather weary head. I wasn’t sure where to go with the conversation. I wasn’t sure how to help the problem I had caused. “It seems that was a horrible war, with lots of untold stories. “ was all that I could muster.
He nodded, “I was already on ships crossing the Atlantic when the war started. I was a North Atlantic Veteran, just not a war veteran.”
The therapist in me came out, “That sounds like an amazing experience. I’d like to hear more.”
He told me he started crossing the Atlantic in 1939, ‘underaged’. The east coast of the US to England, and return; again, and again. Even before the war started officially for the US, they stood watch for submarines and German ships.
When the US part of WWII officially started, he tried to enlist. He wanted to serve. He was denied. His hand had been broken badly before and he was already losing his hearing. He blamed his height for being turned down. He tried several times with different doctors. He was broken again and again when he was turned down each time. He was destined to not wear a uniform, returning to what he could do. He went back to where he was a veteran already; North Atlantic freighters running the now official, gauntlet.
When he returned, he saw the war firsthand. He called them walking freighters because they were so slow, you could walk to England faster. They had no defense then, and almost no support. He watched as other freighters were struck, broke, and sunk. He helped collect men from the water using ropes and hooks. They pulled bare handed on rough rope, with a life on the other end.
He told me there were times that the entire crew were called to the rails to watch for periscope, or people in the water. He did his job, knowing that even if they did see a sub, there wasn’t anything they could do unless the escort, if they had any, could get there fast enough. They were somehow supposed to be comforted that the sub would likely surface first and use the deck gun. They were also told the sub would let the crew get off first.
As time often dictates, eventually it was his ship’s turn. They watched as a German sub surfaced and unpacked its gun. It was his turn. His own walking freighter was sunk before he could get to the lifeboat. He went into the water. He became the man on the end of the rope, hoping and knowing, the men on the dry end of the rope would pull with all their strength.
He told me he was soaked like a greasy dog but that he wasn’t in the water long. Then he told me that was the first time he went in the water. He told me the second time he was thrown in the water from the blast. The sub didn’t surface first. He had no warning. No one did.
When he told me that, his eyes drifted off to the distance. The formerly white part of his eyes, long since turned gray, got thick with moisture. I sat in silence with him as he likely went back to those cold gray waters. I could not. I cannot, imagine what he was remembering. Few could. To have your ship sunk out from under you not once, but twice; and live. I cannot imagine the odds.
Maybe he was one among few in his crew that survived the blast. Maybe he was one of few who survived the water. He didn’t offer details, and I didn’t ask. He only stated that the North Atlantic was no place to be in the water long.
After he came back from the cold hell he was remembering, he smiled.
He returned to his job again and continued. He returned to his walking freighters even after death pulled on his elbow. He returned because it was what he could do, and others could not. “I did what I knew I could do. That’s all I could do. I wasn’t good enough to serve.”
He told me that later in the war his ship carried guns and he spent a couple hours being trained how to load them. He wanted to fire them. He wanted a bigger gun. That training was pressed into service in the dog days of the war in the Atlantic. Roxy told me his story, head down.
He told me, “Some of us fired those guns, I’m sure we weren’t qualified. When I fired the gun, I know I wasn’t qualified. I was gonna get yelled at and my pay docked. I wasn’t supposed to. But no one was there.” He shook his head while looking at his lap. “It sure was good. That gun got hot.” He raised his head and with a toothless smile he said, “I got to give em back some hell. I got to help send some of them into that … water.”
He smiled while rubbing the brim of his hat still in his lap. He looked at me, then off into the distance again. I smiled. I sat with him in silence.
Finally, I said, “Roxy. You are a veteran of World War II. Most veterans would say so. The government finally, said so. I say so.” He smiled a little, but I could tell my words could not wipe away decades of denial. His hat was clean blue with bright gold. His hat remained on his lap, while I shook his hand and thanked him.
As you can see, he was a Merchant Mariner. He crossed the Atlantic more times than he could recall, but he remembered going into the water. He remembered having guns on the ship and returning fire. I don’t know if Roxy was his real name, but it was the name I knew him by. I considered changing his name for the story but as written, I never saw family with him, so changing his name seemed to take his story away.
The last time I saw Roxy he was asleep in his bed he had become unable to escape. His hat was on his nightstand. His service had ended.
Fair winds and following seas, Roxy.
Veterans come in many uniforms. Service lasts a lifetime.
This one, is the realistic casualty estimates regarding the invasion of Japan.
The closing act of WWII would land squarely on the shoulders of the US. What was coming was a battle, that the US had never seen. Japan and Germany turned a generation into high achievers, but the task before the Americans when circling the islands of Japan was unlike anything they had undertaken. That closing act of WWII would be bloody. The choices made by relatively few men, determined how much blood, and whose.
The end was partially brought about by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That seems clear to me and is accepted or credited by most I have read on the topic. However, if those had not worked, what would the future have looked like? Some say we would have kept dropping nuclear bombs until Japan did surrender. Others say the ones we dropped were the last two we had. Some say conventional bombing that had been so effective, would remain the order and likely bring about the end. All are valid except that I can find no evidence that there was more than one more nuclear bomb in the works, and that would not be ready for about a month after Nagasaki.
I believe that conventional bombing as we had done to great effect already, would have continued. This along with the near complete embargo of the island, would lead to many issues inside the Island, not the least of which is starvation, eventually. But this whole scenario is not about eventually. This is about 1945.
The other force that would dictate the planning was attitudes at home. The war in Europe was over and Americans were tired of war. They were tired of being told causality figures. They were tired of hearing about estimates in months to years and 10s of thousands. The American people had grown weary of their sons not coming home, alive or dead. They had also grown weary of enemy deaths; starting to feel as if the war had become a waste of human life.
In a wonderfully ambiguous contradiction though, the public wanted a swift end of the war. When polled, the American people did not want the Emperor of Japan to remain in power. Most saw him as the reason for the war. Many wanted him tried as a war criminal. Many wanted him executed. Unconditional surrender was the only option. Unconditional surrender is what Japan was trying to prevent. Politically, the end of the war was a mess.
The home front was a mess of political and personal contradictions. The most obvious, was that the allies were celebrating a victory. Yet America largely, but not exclusively were not only still fighting in the Pacific but had just fought the deadliest campaign of the Pacific. The war in the Pacific was escalating, not ending. As I said, the home front was a mess.
When we consider the path of deployment there is also another reality; many men had been fighting in the pacific much longer than any of the men in Europe. Many men who had returned fire at Pearl Harbor, were still doing so. Many of those same men and new recruits to the Pacific, were concerned the men returning home from Europe would get the jobs, homes, stability and their girl. The men were anxious to end the war: They didn’t want to hear months.
The press was showing the end of war changes, and the return home of many soldiers in the allied nations. Meanwhile, military planning was facing the deadliest US campaign of the war. The public didn’t want to hear about it. But since the press was not being told any official projections regarding casualties, they were printing their own. They were dramatic. There were many ideas and concerns regarding the invasion of Japan. There were many camps of thought. Most eyes turned to the king of the pacific. It was largely MacArthur’s show. It would be a Navy landing of Army divisions. It would be MacArthur that would lead the final drive to victory.
It would be his plan but not his estimates. Behind the public scrutiny, many experts were weighing in on the cost of human life and limb that would be involved in such an invasion. Okinawa and its cost were still fresh in everyone’s mind. The cost WAS the discussion. There seemed no way around it. I have heard wildly broad estimates of the cost in American casualties. The lower numbers I find wishful. The larger numbers I find absurd. Even in discussions with others I have seen wildly impossible scenarios regarding Japan’s plans and intentions in the war.
My intent in my work here is to get a realistic view of the cost in American casualties of a final invasion of Japan, had one happened. I’m not looking for a hard number but to narrow down the range of the wildly broad estimates. More importantly, I’d like to get a feel for if the estimates were well based.
THE STUDY
I focused my study on the closing months of the war. The whole point of the island-hopping campaign, was to secure bases for bombing Japan with B-29 bombers. The cost was high in human life, but the plane was also the most expensive project ever developed to that time, even exceeding the Manhattan Project. The bomber was intended to lead the way to the end; and so it did.
The fire-bombing campaign was very successful. It also had a relatively low cost. Once the bugs were worked out of the planes themselves, there were many missions where crew loss was below that of training. The effects for the low cost, were dramatic.
Most cities targeted were direct military targets. Some were targets that could be rationalized as a military target. The primary area targeted was not the factories in many cases but the homes of the workers. Fire storms became common. Great human cost had become common in the start of this campaign. This campaign was also mechanically effective disabling many factories, refineries, and small manufacturers. It also held great psychological value in showing the citizens of the cities that they would also pay the price for the Japanese war abroad.
While the Army Air Corps was largely operating autonomously from its Army master, the Navy did its job while enjoying almost complete Naval superiority. Halsey’s Navy was shelling shore installations and facilities with impunity. He was sending missions into smaller inland water-masses using Destroyers and Cruisers only. They weren’t attacked.
Meanwhile subs were operating in the Sea of Japan having passed through the highly mined waterways leading to the Sea. They and B-29s had mined some harbors and ports while leaving others open which funneled the few ships from China and Korea into desired areas where they could easily be torpedoed.
As this was going on, B-29s bombed railways in Korea and China lowering the flow of supplies and men from that region. Japan was being isolated from the outside world and its natural resources it started the war for. As bombing became more efficient and the bombers were unopposed, a new tactic was initiated that would challenge the Japanese views of Americans. The bombers started dropping fliers before they dropped bombs. 10-12 cities at a time were targeted with pamphlets and 4 of those were bombed. The pamphlets were written by Japanese prisoners, teaching the Japanese people that the Americans desired and end of the war and do not wish to kill civilians. The pamphlets urged evacuation and gave dates for the bombings of the cities.
The campaign was so effective, that pamphlets would lead to mass evacuations of cities. Even near complete destruction of a city by fire, would sometimes lead to relatively few lives lost. Those workers who evacuated, had nowhere to return to. So, they didn’t. In the cities that were not bombed, but often warned, the populous started to leave for good.
This counters the idea that the Army leaders who ran the nation expected a million-person civilian Army. Laws had been passed in March 1945, essentially conscripting the entire population between broad ages; men and women. The Japanese Army was depending on 45 year old ladies to kill a soldier with a shovel or pike. Many, after years of lies and manipulation, starvation and living without coal for heat, just walked away. The threat of arrest or execution no longer seemed the real threat.
Japanese leaders had stated at the onset of war, no harm would ever come to their home island. Those words still echoed as citied burned and shifted the public opinion of the war and their deaths.
In this context, the end of the war was being planned on multiple fronts. Part of that planning was numbers. Among those numbers was estimates for casualties; Japanese and Allied. Here is the origin of the first part of those causality numbers over time. Many who repeat these numbers today and then, do not understand that the word ‘casualty’ means both wounded and killed. The total casualty estimate is often reported as death estimates. This is obviously wrong no matter what the number.
The internal numbers also varied to a significant degree, but not nearly as much as the press and public were starting to throw around. There was a divide. The Navy had their numbers. The Army, specifically MacArthur’s team, had their own. Those who were decoding the Japanese code had theirs and then internal intelligence had theirs. Among all that was the photo reconnaissance that the newly almost independent strategic bombing campaign was finding. None agreed because few were talking to one another.
The fictional numbers in the press that many still quote today, were in many cases wild. The more concerning thing is internal numbers weren’t agreeing either. This was a mess.
MacArthur’s staff generated numbers that reflected ONLY the army. With the Kamikaze issue only rising at that time of the war, Navy casualties was a very real issue and had to be accounted for. MacArthur didn’t account for that, nor care to.
The photo reconnaissance work was contradicting the decoding work. The Japanese were also playing games with their designations of armies in their communications. The oddity was that their efforts almost seemed to indicate they suspected that the allies had broken their code. So, either they were deliberately falsifying the numbers, or they were overly trusting in their code. History later showed the second. Regardless, no one’s estimates were consistent with one another.
Another major issue in generating numbers was different ways of accounting for percentages. MacArthur usually accounted for causalities as percentage of combat personnel. This ONLY accounted for: infantry, armor, artillery, and engineers. So, this percentage when erroneously applied to the number of total soldiers deployed made a much larger but inaccurate number.
As an example, he could estimate that 1/3 of all combat troops would become casualties and was using 100,000 combat troops among 300,000 soldiers in the battle. The press and public when getting whispers of predictions, often applied the 1/3 casualties to the entire 300,000. So instead of an estimate of 33,000, that number erroneously became 100,000.
The other confusing issue I found is that some numbers reflected total causalities of the battle. Some were discussing Allied casualties and still others were only predicting US casualties. The difference is massive. Total casualties included Allied and Japanese soldiers, Japanese citizens, allied POWs who die in captivity during the duration of the battle and all lost due to accidents supporting the battle, even out of the battle zone. Sticking to that same 1/3 casualty prediction, which is not official, applied to each of those numbers renders an impossible range of numbers and thus predictions. Some of those numbers survive today and are compared when they are not measuring the same thing, and almost always wrong.
The final issue in predicting causalities was that there was little consensus on how many soldiers would be deployed. There was the designed number. There was the number that was available, in theory. And finally, the number realistically expected. Some of the ships and soldiers in the plan, were still on the other side of the world.
All of this shows that the numbers were the problem. The numbers were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. No one was facing the fact that we really didn’t have a good idea what we were facing.
It is also complicated by the fact that for all the disparaging remarks we as victors like to throw at those who did not win, the Japanese predicted the allied battle plan very well. They predicted where we would land and had a decent window for when. Their own Army planners were doing very well predicting what the allies would do.
All of this meant that when the war ended, the Japanese had a better idea of the battle coming than the allies did. This is when the issue becomes far more informed. After surrender, we could examine what their planning really showed and what they had done. We also interviewed their planners and leaders.
THE PSYCHOLOGY
There is a significant problem in so many of the discussions I have heard, explaining why invading the homeland would have been a massive disaster for the allies. It has been said over and over the people themselves would fight. The people of Japan would be a deadly force. No.
When we look back in time to the start of the Japanese war, the military moved with impunity. They saw, attacked, won, occupied and dominated. This was true until 1942. It is generally agreed that the first major battle the Japanese lost was Midway. The home people didn’t know about this loss. They were not told.
As other losses came in the southern and middle islands of the Pacific, the news was not hidden from the Japanese people, but it was manipulated and limited. The Japanese people were told that the strategy was to bring the Americans in close so they could force a final grand battle, eliminating the US Navy. The people were sold that story for years as they lost ever closer. The people lost faith in the news and the leaders who were selling it.
Eventually, the bombers were launched from conquered former Japanese territory. Those bombers, showed the Japanese people that the war had arrived. The claims from their government that they would never be hurt, was seen as lies. The war had arrived on their doorstep. The returning soldiers were telling truths, countering the radio and press reports. The people, lost faith in their government. They had lost faith in the war. They wanted the war, to end.
You don’t tend to fight for people you don’t trust. You don’t tend to die for people that lie to you. You don’t tend to risk it all for people who have created the need for you to die. I do not feel the citizens of Japan would have been any signigigant force.
This also translated to some of the soldiers. Soldiers had three ways to die. In combat. In a suicide charge. Or by his own hand. Battles had shown all three. The psychology was slowly, defeating the common soldier.
This would not have lost the war for Japan. It does tell me though, the Japanese people did not figure into the equation.
THE NUMBERS
So lets look at the numbers that are out there so we know what were discussing. What is the debate I am referring to?
The numbers I have heard range from 100,000 casualties or sometimes reported as deaths, to 1,000,000 for the same. This upper number is actually what started this quest. The upper number is a product of either numbers drift over time as history plays a game of telephone, or a number taken from the previously mentioned total casualty number of all connected to the battle. The reason this number caught my attention over and over is that it was often used to state the number of US casualties expected for the invasion. The reason it caught my attention is that the US didn’t plan to have that many soldiers in the battle. Or even close. That’s why the number stood out to me. Often reported as a fact, the number was impossible.
In the walk-up towards the end of the war, more and more information was coming to light. This information changed predictions. These predictions went only one way, up. More soldiers. More planes. More deaths. When the Japanese surrendered, the real investigation started. As mentioned, the Japanese had accurately predicted the landing points and general plan the allies had developed. The other reality was, that we did not understand their goal of the battle, which inherently changes the battle.
We planned to land on the South Island of Kyushu. It is a large island. This was the first of two planned landings with the second one being near Tokyo approximately four months later. Japan planned to throw all their resources at the first wave of the first landings. The Japanese planned to lose. Their goal was to exact so many causalities from the allies that the public and press would push the President to the negotiations table and more favorable terms would be found for Japan.
We were fighting to secure a base to operate from for the final invasion. Japan was planning to lose as bloody as possible. These differences meant that the allies had no idea what they were walking into.
Japan was taking every plane they had to Kyushu. They knew the Kamikaze was one of the most effective weapons they had. The allies had originally expected about 1,500 planes being air worthy; about 40% of those would reach their target area. As intelligence came in, the aerial photos were showing that more planes were coming. The trainer planes and pilots were drafted as kamikazes. At that point the training of new pilots stopped completely. The trainer planes were wood and cloth. They were slow but an amazing threat since they didn’t show on radar and proximity fuses didn’t work on them. The eventual number of planes planned for the theater of battle was not 1,500, but closer to 10,000.
Similar percentages applied to the new number meant approximately 4,000 planes may reach their target area. Their planning and training also showed they had learned from Okinawa; they were planning on hitting the landing craft. The Americans were starting to see this and the cost predicted was becoming staggering.
Similar to the Kamikaze, they had built many suicide manned torpedos; kaitens. These would be very effective although they were limited by a very real factor. They were not fast nor reliable. When tested after the war, as many sank as did not. They were also intended to go a relatively short distance. They had been intended to be transported by ship or boat to the area, then launched. Although the allied ships were close to shore, that was not an advantage. They would need to be staged close-by which makes their staging area an easy target. These were a very real threat but not nearly as much a threat as Kamikazes.
Their targets as mentioned would be troop ships. The defenders of those would also be numerous. The USS Enterprise CV6 was slated to return and be one of 35 fast carriers. There would be over 20 battleships. The HMS Illustrious was slated to appear with three escort carriers and the Canadians were sending their night carrier HMCS Ocean. Destroyers and destroyer escorts would number in the 100s.
The blue blanket scheduled to cover the fleet would consist of nearly 10,000 planes from sea and land bases. The most impressive step forward was that for the first time, both the Navy and USAAF would be fielding early warning radar aircraft in the form of modified Avengers and B-17s. As mentioned, the Canadians were sending their night operations carrier and CV 6 had also been modified for night operations. The nightly blue blanket would be supported by P-61 black Widow night fighters from land bases supporting night fighter Hellcats.
This was a massive Navy to a scale never seen before. For the first time, the US Navy would have both Spruance and Halsey in command of separate carrier groups at the same time. RADM Ziggy Sprague of Taffy 3 fame would be in command of his own escort carrier group again. Had this battle taken place, it would have been the greatest naval force ever put to sea. It would consume more oil in a day of operations, than Japan had in total.
Opposing them was something also never seen. Along with kaitens and kamikaze planes, and suicidal frog men, Japan also had hundreds of midget subs and suicide boats. This would set up a naval battle never seen before. The Naval estimates by Nimitz office predicted 95 ships sunk, nearly 1,000 damaged and between 5,000 to 12,000 sailors dead. This was a massive operation and would have massive casualties compared to previous US operations.
The Japanese understood the strengths of the US battle plan. They understood what had worked on Okinawa, to a degree. They knew that the battle would exact a large cost, so they were ready to use suicide soldiers on armor and large groups of soldiers. The plan showed no regard to life because they expected their soldiers to die; all of them. Their battle plan reflected that clearly. They had planned on or already had in place, upwards of 700,000 combat troops. That was nearly a 1:1 ratio to allied soldiers. The allies desired a 3;1 ratio and would not be even close. The allied landing troops would be at a numerical disadvantage.
The psychology of Japan was a mess. The Army sought that one final grand battle the Navy planned for but never got. This would be it for them. But the leadership of the Army was not the man in the trench. The high Army leaders for Japan were almost inept. They commanded from far away and their basic plan was simple. Die with honor by taking as many enemy soldiers with you as you could. No help is coming. This is not a battle plan the common soldier and newly conscripted 14-year-old boy can understand easily.
Soldiers had started to surrender as the psychological war had become refined. I don’t think this would have happened in mass numbers on Kyushu, but I do feel that hopelessness is not always the great motivator we often think it is. It can make a person dangerous. More often, it renders them impotent. We usually only see the first. Again, I won’t claim that this would have been in mass numbers. I see this as downgrading the power of the Japanese Army, even in such numbers. Hopelessness is far more contagious than courage.
Another aspect to remember is that only one division of Japanese soldiers were considered to be top notch. Most were either depleted and weary and even more were poorly trained and filled out with newly conscripted young and old. These were not the battle-hardened soldiers of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. They had already died. Their numbers though, were daunting.
Although the US intelligence gathering was likely pretty effective, with no parties talking to one another three months out, it was unlikely the whole picture would ever be seen by the allies until the battle was born. Equally, I feel that the Japanese battle plan was closer to the last year of Germany rather than a well thought out one. Soldiers do not fight better when death is inevitable, they fight with fatality. This often leads to ineffective command and poorly executed plans.
When a soldier sees no future, they don’t tend to defend their life. They tend to take their own at a cost. Soldiers fighting to survive will kill all those who are a threat, if possible. A soldier who knows they will die, often want to get it over with. The longer they wait, the more desperate they become. Unlike Okinawa though, these soldiers had somewhere to run away to. Some would, although not likely a statistically relevant number.
The Allied plan was flawed.
The Japanese plan was also flawed.
This battle had no realistic plan from either side.
MY GUESS
As I stated, the numbers thrown around range widely from 100,000 to 1,000,000 dead or casualties. I am only trying to predict the casualties for the allies. No one else. The top end number is clearly impossible. Even half that number is likely impossible because if we were to approach 80% casualties of the combat deployment, we would have withdrawn. The range I arrived at is more realistic I feel but far from comforting.
Even if the most basic formula, the casualty rate of Okinawa, were applied to the pre-battle numbers for operation Olympic, were looking at 318,000 casualties. I find that number high. Not because it is uncomfortable, and it is VERY uncomfortable, but because although we were not as well planned as we thought, we still held the advantage that technology and supply provide.
Kaitens I feel were almost irrelevant. Midget subs were almost irrelevant. I do feel we would have been better at dealing with Kamikazes than we had been in the past, but they still would have exacted one hell of a toll. The ground battles would be a mess. Japan had no real plans to attack the first wave as they were landing. They planned to attack the first wave while they were staging in ships and after they landed, which I find flawed.
The technological advantage was clearly on the allied side. As long as the Japanese intended to repel the first wave, they would likely be within reach of the Navy. They were always in reach from the air. They had no counters to either, other than Kamikazes. As mentioned, the kamikaze plan would be very effective, but not the answer alone.
The Japanese fell back to the most basic form of warfare; human bodies thrown into battle. They had no reinforcements once the battle started. They had no real air cover and no navy. They had far fewer machines of war and a shortage of artillery pieces and rounds. They were limited but not severely so with ammunition. They had an expiration date regarding supplies. The allies did not. The Japanese also had limited food supplies. The allies did not.
These factors and lessons learned from Okinawa would in my opinion have tilted the field of battle in the allies’ favor. That only predicts that the allies would win, but then again, Japan already planned to lose. So again, the debate is at what cost.
The death toll would have been massive. It would have been our greatest loss of life in battle ever. It also would have rendered D-Day to side show status, historically. The numbers of operation Olympic was massive.
The allies planned to land approximately 630,000 men ashore. They would face at least that many. This dwarfs Normandy.
I feel I cannot nail down the number of casualties to a single number. It is all theorical, but I feel the number of casualties would have been closer to 150,000 than to 500,000. Considering the poor planning, lack of communication between services and the pie in the sky estimates by the vary man that would lead the Army, I see that casualty number closer still to 250,000. I see that estimate as ‘if all goes as well as can be expected’. That is a massive number for US battle experience.
I also feel it would have brought about the Japanese objective and brought the allies to the negotiation table. Although in the end, I don’t feel the negotiated peace would have looked much different than it did after Nagasaki.
MY CONCLUSION REGARDING THE BOMBS
The numbers I have landed on as a range, are large. Very large for the US. If the battle had gone towards the high end of casualties, this one battle would add dramatically to the total casualties the US had incurred to that point in the war. The high end would have increased totals by 50%. I don’t see that number as likely, but many did. Most of the invasion force would have been American. Most casualties would have been American.
Realistically, no American would accept those numbers in a single battle. Realistically, no commander would want them. These numbers were unacceptable to Nimitz, and he said so. These numbers were unacceptable to King, and he said so. These numbers were unacceptable to Marshal, and he said so. Only MacArthur seemed to be accepting of casualty estimates. I feel he did so, because his group’s estimates were always the lowest and he never cared what the navy casualties were projected to be.
Truman was not comfortable with the estimates and the ones he heard were often among the lowest. It is well understood that it was the estimates he heard that prompted the use of the atomic weapons. The cost of life is more fitting on the nation of aggression. The unfortunate aspect is that the casualties were almost entirely civilian.
Although I know this is the part that drives the debate furthest, and rightfully so, it is hard for this writer to be very compassionate when it is more thoroughly understood what the Japanese Army did while occupying almost any nation it did. Victors must be more compassionate and understanding. I feel we were.
Many estimates that included all losses for Japan had the invasion of the homelands been completed, estimated 3-10 million Japanese lives lost. This includes all losses including combat, continued bombing (atomic as much as possible and firebombing), civilian losses as major cities were invaded including Tokyo and starvation/disease and Japanese losses in Manchuria/China as Russia advanced.
The atomic bombs were the more compassionate option and they saved lives.
The debate over what ended the war specifically cannot be resolved in my opinion as there is not one thing. There are at least three factors.
The atomic weapons showed that the US had progressed so far beyond Japan technologically that Japan had no idea how they could stop them. The Americans were bombing at will. Japan had no idea if the two bombs dropped were the only two, or the start of 20 bombers over 20 cities at the same time, each carrying an atomic bomb. Japan had no answer, and the US demonstrated the will to use the weapons.
Russia had entered the war and was overrunning the Japanese forces in Manchuria/China virtually at will. That meant that the mainland Japanese forces there would be annihilated at no gain and would not be available to defend Tokyo. It also meant there was no future at a bargaining table where Japan wanted to keep its conquered land in the mainland.
The concession of allowing the emperor to remain in place, even if only a figurehead, was enough for the emperor to accept defeat. Many see it as a compassionate move to end the suffering of his people. I see it as self-serving.
These factors and many more, brought about the end of the war. These factors were all self-serving, and that’s ok. They capitulated before more people died. Germany could not accept defeat until their leader was dead and several Armies were standing in Berlin. Japan may have learned something from Germany.
I feel the bombs DID help bring about the end of WWII. I do not think that the war would have ended as quickly had they not been dropped. I do not know what would have brought it to an end without the bombs, but Russia entering the war and a continued aggressive conventional bombing campaign likely would have.
The firebombing was more directly deadly than the atomic bombs. Likely over time the Hiroshima bomb was more deadly, but that isn’t the subject of this study. The atomic bombs in my opinion did help bring about the end of the war, and they saved lives; Japanese and Allied.
After this study, I find the use of atomic weapons over Japan, although an unfortunate, hastened the end of a war that never should have happened. I found the bombs to actually be the more compassionate option. I never expected that.
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