Customer Reviews

Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After watching a TV documentary on the end of the war with Japan I felt that I wanted to know more than what the show covered. This book and Downfall by Richard Frank were mentioned in the show, so I ordered them.

It was surprising that these two books covered the same general subject but that there was little repetition between them. They covered the subject from different points of view. I recommend both.

Had this book been written in 2008, it would have been considerably different, at least one would hope so. In 2005 the report of the interrogation of the Japanese officers responsible for the defense of Kyushu became available to the public and we now know what they actually had available and what their defense plans were. Consequently, this book is now out-dated and refuted. For instance, Japan only had 800 kamikazes, not "thousands" and they had no underwater obstacles off of the beaches at Kyushu. Nor did they know exactly where the landings were to take place and their troops were not positioned to defend the right beaches. Even without the newly declassified information, this book would be inadequate. Nowhere do the authors refer to General Douglas MacArthur without referring to him and his reports and estimations in derrogatory terms. An entire chapter is spent on Japanese atrocities with the implication that they are somehow connected to what would have happened had the invasion taken place. There are numerous references to intercepts of Japanese plans to fight to the death but the intercepts of the messages regarding surrender are downplayed. Basically, this is just one more book that follows the myth that Japan was prepared to fight to the death and that millions of Americans would have been killed had Truman not dropped the bomb.