A blessing for Dad: "Operation Downfall" not needed

The late Ralph E. Williams, founder of UMM music, is at right, serving as lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He was my father. Wouldn't we love to know the names and hometowns of the other guys in photo! They sort of look like the guys from "McHale's Navy," don't they?

The world descended into insanity in the mid-20th Century. It's hard to fathom how the human race diminishes life to where so many can be killed for political objectives.
My late father survived his service in the Pacific Theater in World War II. The atomic bomb helped enable him to survive that smoking mess.
The grim reaper had his scythe out, ready to accept legions more war dead, had we not succeeded with the two big bombs. Speculation has always been wild about how the invasion of mainland Japan would have proceeded. We braced to accept so many more casualties. Was Japan a bottomless pit in that regard? Were the Japanese people so totally brainwashed, they were prepared to sacrifice everything? What goal could possibly have made this toll worthwhile? The explanation would be one word: insanity.
There is evidence that the U.S. was preparing for massive casualties, had we been forced to stick with conventional weapons. Our military ordered the production of half a million Purple Heart citations in 1945. Then the miracle happened: the atomic bombs that brought hostilities to a close, albeit with a terrible price for Japan. It was "The Empire of Japan" back then.

Lt. Ralph E. Williams, U.S. Navy

The U.S. military put this huge reserve of medals into storage. It has drawn from this stockpile ever since. We can assume they were passed out during Vietnam when the American public became less reverential toward war honors. Perhaps the medals were a means by which grieving families could be mollified or pacified some, making them less inclined to be skeptical about war aims? Certainly there was nothing passive about our young generation back around the year 1970.
We learn that as of 2012, there were still 100,000 Purple Hearts in U.S. inventory. They were leftovers from the invasion that would have been called "Operation Downfall." I presume the reference is to the downfall of the Japanese Empire. Still the name has a somber tone to it. "Jap" might have been substituted for Japan contemporaneously. I'm told there's a reason why we don't see re-runs of the sitcom "McHale's Navy" very often. The Navy men such as Tim Conway and Ernest Borgnine tossed around terms like "Nips" (for Nipponese, a degrading reference).
"Japs" and "Nips" were hostile and pejorative for a reason: it is important in war to dehumanize the enemy. Thus the enemy becomes easier to kill.
My mother, now age 93, grew up in Brainerd MN where the National Guard was sent to the Pacific Theater early-on. It was an immensely tragic story. Those Brainerd men were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese in the Philippines. I'm surprised we left our servicemen so vulnerable there. My mom Martha played with the high school band for ceremonies at the group's departure and the later somber return. A few years ago there was a visiting author at our Morris Public Library who'd written a book giving primary attention to the Brainerd group. The book as a whole was about the home front during WWII. He seemed particularly interested in what Brainerd experienced. It was one of the better attended author events at our library.
My father Ralph E. Williams joined the U.S. Navy and spent the next three years and eight months as a gunnery officer in the Pacific. He told about the war's immediate aftermath in a "Sunspots" feature compiled by Liz Morrison: 
 
In November, 1945, my ship stopped in Japan for a day. I took the electric train into Tokyo. For 20 miles, between the port and the city, there were no houses standing. But there were thousands of tepees made of corrugated tin, with a column of smoke rising from each one. I took a long walk through Tokyo in the dark. In every doorway, there were homeless families - mothers, fathers and children, sleeping in the entrances.
 

Drawing of Lt. Ralph Williams

My father told me various stories, always impressing on me the total humility exuded by the Japanese as he and the other officers observed, amidst all the rubble. Haunting memories to be sure for this Glenwood High School graduate of 1934 (the time of John Dillinger). My father came home and ended up as a founding faculty member at our University of Minnesota-Morris. He started the music department here and was the only music faculty the first year. Previously he taught at the U of M's St. Paul School of Agriculture.
Yours truly created the Ralph and Martha Williams Fund at UMM to ensure that the memory of Mom and Dad is always honored in the richest way possible. What better way than to invest in the future?

"Downfall" left on drawing board, thank the Lord
The Manhattan Project was responsible for preventing Operation Downfall from being deployed. "Manhattan" was so secret, few involved in the "Downfall" planning even knew it existed. Once word spread, planners initially thought the terrible bombs would be used as ground support in the invasion. The Pentagon planned for up to seven nuclear bombs to be available in the campaign. We dropped two of course, in lieu of any horrible land invasion. Those bombs fell nearly four months before the invasion was to begin.
The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cost the lives of upward of 250,000 Japanese civilians. A protracted ground campaign would have killed millions. I can only ponder how my father might have been drawn in. Our military was bracing for resistance from a "fanatically hostile population." We were prepared to experience between 1.7 and 4 million casualties with up to 800,000 dead. For the "Japs," between five and ten million would die. Astonishing.
But instead we got the atomic bombs, dispatched on the orders of Harry Truman. The Japanese had their own term for the defense they would mount vs. Operation Downfall. It was "Ketsugo" ("decisive"). The outlook for the emperor was grim. Japan had six carriers left. The U.S. had major success at Midway but it was not a knockout punch, though it might have looked that way in the Charlton Heston movie.
The Japanese were ready to thrust its Kamakaze pilots at the invading Allies. The Kamakazes were responsible for the death of Stevens County native Floyd Lange. The estimate is that more than 10,000 such pilots were ready to be mobilized, mostly against troop transport ships. Was there any limit to the extent of casualties that the U.S. civilian population would accept?
The Empire of Japan knew it couldn't "win" but the hope was for war weariness to cause the Allies to negotiate an end to the hostilities. Just like Robert E. Lee and the Confederates with the Gettysburg campaign. It didn't work in the Civil War and it wouldn't work in 1945 for Japan. The U.S. indeed seemed ready to accept a staggering price for the invasion of Japan, an invasion that would have dwarfed D-Day.
What possessed the human race in the mid-20th Century? We failed to learn all the lessons we might, as shown with our subsequent disaster in Vietnam. Korea presented lots of questions too. But our military was so built up for World War II, was it liberally employed just for that reason? My generation was fanatic in opposing war in the '60s and early '70s. We wanted swords to be beaten into plowshares.
But we still had the ample stock of Purple Hearts left over from "what might have been": Operation Downfall. Thank the Lord it was left on the drawing board.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com