Quite different in topic and theme from the posts typically appearing at this blog, History Undone’s (with James Hanson) video, “Operation Downfall: What If The US NEVER Dropped The Atomic Bomb & Invaded Japan?” is a fascinating, well-thought-out, and persuasive exploration of a still-debated and contentious topic. Uploaded on December 6 of this month (it’s December 23 as I type this…) it’s thus far received over 56,000 views.
Highly recommended!
Long a subject of scholarship and polemic, the overlapping topics of the use – or non-use – of atomic weapons against Imperial Japan, and the consequent and inevitable invasion of that nation using “conventional” weapons and tactics, has also, inevitably, been central to works of fiction. Very brief thought brings two such works to mind: Alfred R. Coppel’s The Burning Mountain: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan, and, Cyril M. Kornbluth’s short novel “Two Dooms“, which was published in the July, 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction; also see GoodReads. The latter is the subject of a discussion at Classics of Science Fiction.