Invading Japan
Studying different ‘what if’ scenarios or actual plans which were not put in action provides valuable opportunity to broaden military officers’ scope of thinking. Familiarizing with different military operations both materialised and not materialised prepares officer to be more flexible enabling him or her to understand better contemporary highly volatile environment and adapt his or her behaviour according to the changes happening. The aim of the paper is to give brief overview of U.S. plan to invade Japanese archipelago, and how the Japanese were planning to repel U.S. attempts to attack Kyushu Island. The Essay endeavours answering the following research question – would the U.S. had been successful invading Japan? Initial research indicates that even when the U.S. plan is a good example of joint operation and included sufficient resilience to be successful, it is difficult to claim that U.S. would prevail over
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For example, Japanese expected the invasion to home islands in October 1945 or after (Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, 1945 p. 1); United States had planned to invade Southern Kyushu on 1st of November 1945 (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945, annex 3a). Japanese precise prediction of U.S. invasion was based on various strategic information that Imperial Headquarters had access to. From these information deductions were made (Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, 1945 p. 2). The significant event that happen which supported Japanese making valid deductions was the fall of Okinawa Island. Battle of Okinawa tuck place from 24th of March 1945 to 22nd of June 1945 (Alex, 2014). After the loss of Okinawa Island South from Kyushu Island logical sequel would be invasion to Japanese main Islands. Imperial Headquarters presumably had to calculate the feasible time for operational pause needed to make the necessary