Comments by "Arthur Mosel" (@arthurmosel808) on "Japan's INSANE Plan to Defend their Home Islands - The LARGEST Planned Kamikaze Mission of the War" video.

You covered the invasion, but starving Japan out was the third option. If the invasion was almost genecidal, this option was truly genicidal. While the official standard for civilians was 1500 calories per day, the actual in many areas was under 1000. The US bombing and naval gunfire had broken much of Japan's rail and road nets, meaning moving supplies around the country was difficult to impossible(my wife's mother survived Hiroshima because the family was out in the ountry side that day bartering for food). We had also been destroying coastal shipping (transport) and fishing vessels (food). You mentioned no one was left to work in factories; but we had destroyed almost the entire industrial capacity of Japan including that manufacturing medical supplies. Various diseases were endemic, and the death toll from starvation and disease would have been as great or greater than the losses of the invasion. As an aside, while radiation injured many from the A Bombs; many of those who died might have survived if they weren't malnurished and diseased. Radiation reduce immune response, so infections, burns and diseases that a healthy well nurished person would have survived proved fatal (My wife's family had goods that they could trade for food, and were healthier, and did not suffer (to my knowledge) from radiation affects despite helping clear rubble and bodies) . Additionally, many died from the uncontrolled and uncontrollable fires. Besides destroying gas mains and the water systems, blast damage caused building collapses or knocked down wooden panels and paper screens in homes. Since open fires existed since breakfast had recently ended, these plus straw mats common in Japanese homes made for great fires. Also killing people who might otherwise survived. These results would have been magnified by a prolonged siege and been fatal to far more.
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