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The prospect of a home invasion of Japan was nothing short of terrifying to the United States military. The Japanese had proven to be a formidable enemy throughout the war in the Pacific, and the thought of taking the battle to the mainland was very real in the mind of the soldiers. Truman was left with the decision to either use the atomic bomb or invade Japan. The use of the atomic bomb is justified by the unwillingness of the Japanese to surrender, the amount of death sure to ensue, and the fact that the United States and Japan were in [|total war].

**Bushido**
The Japanese concept of //[|bushido] ,// or the way of the warrior, was seen by the American troops throughout every battle in the Pacific Islands. The Japanese were willing to put everything on the line in order to protect their home land. At the time of the bombings, the Japanese still possessed "some 2,000,000 troops and over 9,000 planes in the home islands" (Nitze). The then Undersecretary of State and a former ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew said, "I knew that when the time came for Japan's surrender, the Emperor was the only one who could bring it about" (Wainstock 49). Japan's emperor, Hirohito, had no intentions of accepting the United State's terms of surrender, and this left America with little choice but to invade the homeland or use the atomic bomb. America had given Japan one last chance to surrender with the Potsdam Declaration, but this offer was ignored yet again. General George C. Marshall said that "it is a grim fact that there is not an easy, bloodless way to victory in war" (Wainstock 52). The American troops had seen how the Japanese could fight with the examples of Okinawa and Luzon as grave realities. A soldier kneeling in a graveyard on Okinawa

**Death and Total War**
Operation Downfall: the invasion of Japan

Operation Downfall was the plan devised for the United States military to use in order to invade the island of Japan. Estimated casualties for the Japanese soldiers and civilians range from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 and for American soldiers they range from 125,000 to 1,000,000. Needless to say, both figures are far more staggering that the number of lives taken by the dropping of the atomic bomb. The entire country of Japan was prepared to fight the United States in the case of a homeland attack, and it is felt by proponents of the use of the atomic bomb that nearly every Japanese citizen would have laid their life on the line to win the war.

The following passage helps to give a sense of what the American soldiers had seen and were looking forward to if the mainland was to be invaded: "The places they had left and to which they were going were a progression of obscure islands that were stepping stones across the Pacific to defeat Japan. The bloody fighting on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Tinian, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and other outposts confirmed the hatred and reinforced the images that Americans held of the Japanese. With inevitable loss of life among the members of their combat units and harrowing individual risk, they were forced to flush soldiers from caves, pillboxes, and other defenses, endure suicidal banzai attacks, and conquer an enemy that refused to surrender. The Japanese, it seemed, were not only ruthless and brutal but also fanatical in fighting to the death. The unwillingness of Japanese soldiers to surrender in a lost cause reflected in part their samurai code, devotion to the emperor, and belief that death in battle ensured a glorious destination for their spirits. But their refusal to surrender was also motivated by more mundane considerations, particularly their conviction that death was preferable to the treatment they would suffer at the hands of their American captors" (Walker 23). Troops that participated in the Pacific battles often came out "haggard, with jaws hanging open and the expressionless eyes of men who had left nowhere and were going nowhere" (Walker 23).  This type of battle was to be experience on an entirely new level if the war was to be taken to Japan itself, and this war would have lent civilian and military deaths far more than the number of civilians that were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The refusal of the Japanese soldiers and leaders to surrender made it difficult for the Truman to find an alternative to using the atomic bomb. Truman included the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the total war that had waged between the two countries since Pearl Harbor. Even Japan had committed its number of war crimes. The "[|Bataan Death March] " of 1942, during which "tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops were starved, beaten, left for dead, or executed during a grueling march to a prisoner-of-war camp" did nothing but give Americans a view of the Japanese as "cruel, barbarous, and deserving of annihilation" (Walker 21). Japan had declared war upon the United States, at the time a neutral country, and had thus relinquished its right to decide what was acceptable or not for America to achieve victory. Japan had been inhumane and violated human rights throughout the course of the war, and it was willing to continue this in order to avoid defeat. Truman was well aware of this and factored it into his decision to use the atomic bomb. media type="youtube" key="LIOqL86jfg4" height="385" width="480" BBC Documentary with reenactments and actual footage