Pearl Harbor Day: Ceremony marks 70th anniversary of attack – latimes.com

Posted by deslava27 |

Pearl Harbor Day: Ceremony marks 70th anniversary of attack – latimes.com. A recap of some of the events that lead up to and the inital attack on Pearl Harbor almost 70 years ago. WWII was one of the bloodiest wars fought in US history, and the only war where 2 atomic bombs were used over the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on  December 7, 194 “a date which will live in infamy.”

However the use of the atomic bombs was the only swift way to end the war with Japan, without its use the US would have had to use plan B  ”Operation Downfall.”

The operation had two parts: Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet. Set to begin in October 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū, with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. Later, in spring 1946, Operation Coronet was the planned invasion of the Kantō Plain, near Tokyo, on the Japanese island of Honshū. Airbases on Kyūshū captured in Operation Olympic would allow land-based air support for Operation Coronet.

Japan’s geography made this invasion plan obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to predict the Allied invasion plans accurately and thus adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsugō, accordingly. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū, with little left in reserve for any subsequent defense operations. Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high for both sides: depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties and several times that number for Japanese casualties.

The Military was so certain things were about to go very badly for U.S. soldiers that 500,000 Purple Hearts were made in preparation, a number so large that the medals have been used to supply every single war since, including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and Iraq II, with about 100,000 still left over.

In hindsight it looks like the use of Nuclear force was justified once looking at the amount of casualties predicted on both sides.  Yet Pearl Harbor will always be remembered as the catalyst for one of the darkest moments in US history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
Read more: 5 Backup Plans That Would Have Changed Modern History | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19487_5-backup-plans-that-would-have-changed-modern-history.html#ixzz1fsLGNcs2