| Question | Answer |
| After Okinawa US estimated Japan had only 4,000 aircraft left to defend Japan. Japan lacked resources to build planes. |
|
Kamikaze missions depleted aircraft and aircrews. Loses from 1944 catastrophic. Missions also had had strike rate of only 18.6%. |
| By June 1945 US air losses down to 0.3%. |
| Historian Richard Frank states that on 14 July precision military attacks were the ‘most devastating single strategic bombing success of all the campaigns against Japan’ crippling coal supplies to mainland. |
| Sunk or disabled 27 Japanese aircraft carriers. After the battles of the Philippines Sea in Oct 1944 Japan no longer had a fleet that could mount an offensive as its navy was destroyed. A few suicide speedboats. |
| US naval blockade strangled Japans ability to make war. Max Hastings: the blockade was ‘the most critical single contribution to the American defeat of Japan.’ |
| US carriers, destroyers, aircraft, mines and submarines shot down or sunk anything in waters around Japan. Japan economy relied on trade with China and Korea. US mines closed the Shimonoseki Straits between the main islands of Honshu and Kushu in May 1945 naval repair yards cut off from remainder of ships. Naval block halved nations war production rate in 1944. Cut off food and resources. |
| Millions of Japanese troops cut off from homeland and surrounded. Kwantung army isolated and 600,000 cut off in Manchuria. |
| Main manufacturing relied on supplies from Manchuria. |
| Japan had lost its entire merchant shipping fleet. |
| US navy multiplied several times. Admiral Halsey task force – 38 carriers, 6 light carriers, and battleship and cruiser escort after Leyte Gulf on 1 July bore down on Japanese waters off Tokyo by 10 July 1945. |
| Admiral Leahy and War Secretary Stimson did not think land invasion necessary due to blockade and bombing. |
| Naval blockade and use of carriers to bomb military targets accurately in July 1945 was highly effective. |
| Intercepts of diplomatic cables, called Magic, kept Whitehouse fully informed that the Japanese government was sending ‘peace feelers’ to Moscow as the USSR still had a neutrality pact with Japan |
| Moscow-Tokyo cables show a defeated regime desperate to find surrender on its terms. |
| The threat of the Soviets entering the war may have led to Japan’s surrender |
| In 1945 rise harvest was the poorest since 1909, rice imports were 11% of pre-war levels. Rations were a mix of rice and seaweed. Fishing halved in 1944. |
| US naval blockade had virtually sealed off country. |
| No oil imported in 1945.war machine running out of gas. |
| Mobilization into economic roles extended to schoolchildren | |
