Mark your calendars! Episode two of the Korean War arrives this Tuesday. Subscribe and stay tuned: www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell

A rather interesting sidenote this week on June 26 1945 is that Prime Minister of South Africa Jan Smuts will become the only person to have signed the documents forming the League of Nations and the United Nations when he affixed his signature to the United Nations Charter at San Francisco, California, in the United States.

An uncle of mine was killed, and buried at sea, on 25 June 1945. So close, and yet too far away.

Tension between Truman and MacArthur? Oh well, at least Indy won't need to discuss that in any other channels! 😉😉

Marshall to MacArther: 'These are not the casualty numbers you are looking for...'

Ah, Borneo. The last days of my great grandfather in the war. He had truly seen so much of the world during the war. From the deceptively cold desert nights in North Africa, to the most tenacious of the Japanese in the Pacific. Just a few more days and he and his mates get to finally enjoy some proper rest

In context, the Purple Hearts that was produced in preparation for Operation Olympic, has only recently begun producing again

"War's tragedy is that it uses man's best to do man's worst." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

The assessment of Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew should be given serious consideration. He was the US Ambassador to Japan from 1932 to 1942 and observed the principal players in the Japanese leadership closely for ten years. He probably knew more about Japan, its leadership and culture than anyone else in Washington.

"Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat, Five Star MacArthur" . Well... nothing more to say, right?

My father was Filipino American and was in the US Army Signal Corp. on Adak island in the Aleutians in the summer of 1945. My father said he was personally happy when the Japanese surrendered. He had heard about the massive casualties that were projected.

One item I came across years ago really put in perspective the magnitude of the blood bath. The invasion plan has one of the Marines' activities planned out for five days on account that the regiment was expected to be destroyed by the sixth. Not necessarily dead, just enough casualties to reduce it to battalion or company strength.

It’s pretty surreal to me how, after years of the episodes growing in length as the war grew in size, they are now getting shorter as the war is winding down.

My father was apart of a bomber crew in France, after Germany surrendered they ended up going to Okinawa. A lot of planes were arriving there back then. Amazing you all covered this.

I hope we get some stuff about the Japanese preparations on Kyushu. They are successful in guessing most of the invasion plan and they end up putting a lot more forces there then the US expected. This all become clear by mid July and suddenly every casualty estimate talked about in this episode looks low.

I'm a Leahy. It's pronounced with a long A. Lay-hee. (After nearly 55 years of hearing it mispronounced I just always chime in). Also, thanks for mentioning him at all. There's almost NO knowledge out there about him and I always thought the guy bearing my family's name was just a rose garden butt kisser who never did anything meaningful during the war. While I'd rather have seen him commanding ships that delivered pain to the enemy, knowing he was genuinely useful makes me pretty happy. A fellow is never too old to learn new stuff! Thanks! 🤘

It's weird seeing episodes under 20 minutes. You can tell things are winding down. Well on to Korea gents

I think we've been spoilt in the last few months, I was so used to 20+ mins videos that i'm surprised that this one is "short" at 16 odd minutes. Keep up the good work!

The 33rd Infantry Division was an Illinois National Guard unit created for WWI. After WWII it was changed into an Infantry Brigade and then an Area Support Group (a Brigade sized logistics unit). I deployed with the 33rd ASG to Afghanistan in '04

The American invasion of Kyushu, Operation Olympic, intended to occupy the southern one-third of the island. While the Americans held this line, the occupied bottom third of Kyushu would be rapidly transformed into a massive array of American military bases and ports to support the March 1946 invasion of Honshu, Operation Coronet. How events would have turned out becomes very unpredictable when after the war, it becomes known the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo shoehorned close to one-million men onto Kyushu. The Japanese government knew the Americans intended to attack Kyushu first. The American invasion strategy had been predicated on the existence of about 350K plus of Japanese defenders on Kyushu. Soon U.S. military intelligence began detecting massive reinforcement, upping the number of anticipated defenders to around 660K. This greatly worried American invasion planners as it meant intense combat operations with higher casualties. But little could be done about it. The Kyushu invasion was on and had to go ahead. The American attackers, estimated at around 500K, not all of which would be frontline troops, would be confronting nearly one-million fanatical Japanese defenders. What this boiled down to was that American casualties as a result would be indeed higher than conservative estimates. Could the American invasion force have coped with one-million Japanese defenders? Once the Americans were shocked by the massive numbers of frontal assaults everywhere by waves of attacking Japanese infantry, everything would have to be thrown against the Japanese. This would include heavy and medium bombers, hundreds of fighter-bombers, off-shore bombardment from battleships and cruisers, heavy and medium massive artillery bombardments, and hundreds if not thousands of armored fighting vehicles ranging from tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled artillery, armored cars, etc. And this would have to go on 24/7 in the initial weeks of the Kyushu invasion. Indeed the undertaker's count on both sides would be high. In order to minimize losses, Americans would have to hunker down behind a literal shield wall of fiery steel consisting of aerial bombs, ship artillery and land artillery shells. Experience from the later Korean War showed that this necessity would indeed work in rebelling human wave infantry attacks. Still it would not be a surprise if American casualties did rise into the 30 to 50 thousand range due to the intense infantry combat operations in the first month of Operation Olympic.

How fast the Americans built up Okinawa is incredible

The American casualties for Operation Olympic would have been horrific. The Japanese casualties would have been outright genocidal. If the US hadn't dropped those nukes, then there would likely have been far fewer Japanese alive today. I think the Japanese who see themselves as the victims of the US and decry the use of the atomic bombs fail to realise how total the destruction of their people and nation would have been had the US landed on the home islands. The Americans would have killed every man, woman and child who took up arms against them, which would have been most of the country. Besides bullets, bombs and incendiaries, the US would absolutely have resorted to mass starvation to snuff out the Japanese populace. It sounds callous, but the communists regimes in China, Russia Cambodia and elsewhere have collectively (laugh at my cheap communism joke) murdered at least 70 million people between them through starvation alone. Not firing squads or labour camps. Starvation alone killed that many.

We can only guess about how destructive and bloody the Operation: Downfall would be if it came real… 😢

On the occasion of the fights for northern Borneo, I recommend the quite forgotten but quite good film "Farewell to the King" with Nick Nolte, loosely telling the story of these events.

King was particularly worried about losses transport ships would suffer to kamikazes. They were the most sensitive targets all while being essential for the invasion for obvious reasons. Studies suggested 1/3 -1/2 could be destroyed during the initial invasion. It’s no wonder he leaned toward the blockade and bomb approach.

the differing opinion about the status of Japan is fascinating, the fact that a person as high ranking as William Leahy doubt the the cost of forcing Japan to an unconditional surrender and try to make his colleagues look at another peace alternative while at the same also oppose the occupation of Japan and even Truman kinda keep the question open to the congress for alternative is very interesting, there was so much doubt before the guaranteed soviet invasion and atomic bomb being tested

My grandfather joined the army in 45 and was training to be in operation olympic...he told me when I expressed my interest in the war that they would tell him how bad it was expected to be and that they were going to have to be ruthless because the enemy would be. He never spoke much of it though I wonder what happened?

This channel is one of KZfaq's all time greats!

I read a while back that the Japanese military was fully prepared to lose well over 10 million soldiers and civilians in a fight to the death defense of the home islands. They believed the American public would never accept the high casualties it would cost to conquer the Japanese homeland. The methods they used to deceive the Germans of the Normandy invasion weren’t working also. The Japanese planned on turning all the landing zones into Omaha Beach type of landings. It’s easy to see why Truman decided on the A-bomb.

If anyone wants to watch a movie about the suffering of stranded Japanese soldiers in the Philippines during WWII "Fires on the Plain " is a nightmarish watch. There are 1959 and 2014 versions.

We all know what we want after the WWII series come to end: The 100 years war - week by week!

Surely Truman's opinions of MacArthur won't have ramifications in the future right? Right?

Around this time my father was involved in the invasion of Cebu in the Phillippines, where he got a second Purple Heart. At war's end ,he was on Okinawa training with the 81st for Olympic.

My Father and his Crew and aircraft were departing Wendover Utah on a series of hops to Tinian. They would arrive there on the 16th of July. He would make 2 Missons over Japan bringing his total Mission count to 54, 52 in B 24s and 2 in B 29s before the 509th and the Soviet Union ends the War.

An interesting move by Marshall considering in the European Theatre he was very conscious about not needlessly wasting American lives on things such as driving on Berlin. Now with Olympic here, he's willing to skew numbers of casualties.

We STILL haven't used all the Purple Hearts they made in preparation for Olympic.

My grandfather was a 2nd LT at Guadalcanal, and was wounded twice there, and missed out on Iwo Jima. He was a Captain at Okinawa, and became a Major there. He told me that his job, as far as his commanding officer said it, was to prepare Marines for the invasion of Japan. He instructed his guys there that this will be brutal, that they may have to shoot women and children because they might have anything from bamboo spears to vests of explosives to run underneath tanks and trucks to repel the invasion. He told me that he was honest and direct, that there be no illusions about how bad this invasion was going to be. He personally estimated 200,000 casualties. He told me his experiences on Okinawa, how he couldn't stop civilians from throwing themselves off of cliffs to their deaths, because they were told that Americans would ravage and torture them, and they believed it. It was one thing I caught when, after the invasion of Okinawa was successful, that men and women went to him in tears thanking them for not being merciless. My great-grandfather was at Verdun, and that was horrendous. But what my great-grandpa-pere said about Verdun, awful as it was, cannot necessarily compare to seeing women holding their babies in their arms as they jumped off of high cliffs into the sea. I think that has an effect on a person. Grand-pere adopted my Aunt Aiko from Okinawa, and she's still alive. She told me that she was terrified of the Americans, but afterward, she loved them dearly. She said they made certain she was fed, even after her entire family was wiped out. As much as I might have my misgivings about America, at the same time I always remember how good Americans can be.

The creation of UN being mentioned in details in the war against humanity series. The joke practically writes itself.

Ah, you moved the watch, about time...

The key point in Indy's final quote is that Okinawa convinced Japan that the US had the determination to see the war through despite massive casualties. The material part was never in doubt. That's why fighting to take the entire island mattered. It changed the Japanese surrender calculus and ultimately their willingness to accept the humiliation of occupation and political control - if it had only been a victory of material with blockade and A-bombs the Japanese would have considered US victory illegitimate. For cultural reasons the US had to demonstrate a spiritual commitment to victory.

Excited to now be watching both this and Korea at the same time!

An invasion of Kyushu and the home islands in general would have been a nightmare. Civilian casualties that were to bring explosives and knives feigning surrender, close range kamikazes in all forms from land, sea and air, and a disturbingly complex defense network of caves, bunkers and tunnels. While the final outcome would never be in doubt, the casualty rate for both sides would have been beyond horrific.

Eastern Front: "Huh, rookie number"

Fantastic work. Thank you. May it long endure, and you get the recognition it deserves.

Giving permanent members of the security council a veto power. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Awesome video as always. So grateful you guys are doing The Korean War. I'm just glad I somehow found you guys all those years ago.

The scale of what the Americans constructed on Okinawa serves testament to why the entry of America shortened WII. Not to mention the volume of small arms, artillery, armor , trucks, and other essentials to the UK, and USSR.

Ian Toll needs to have Indy record audiobooks of his Pacific books. I’d pay for that in a heartbeat.

This would be a good time to watch the 2017 movie Unbreakable, with the last part of the film taking place during these last months of the war

I really enjoyed this behind-the-scenes discussion about Olympic. Thank you. ☮

Fell asleep waiting for the premiere again. Such is life in the Canberra/Tokyo time zone!

This time 5 yrs ago on my 27th birthday, the Axis appeared unstoppable. Now today on my 32nd birthday, the Axis are on the brink of final defeat.

The July episodes will truly be a 'calm' before the storm. The storm that will hit in August

Olympic would have been an absolute bloodbath. Kyushu’s terrain was mountainous and scored with deep valleys. Its roads were also very poor, which would have placed serious tactical and logistic constraints when came to the employment of tanks and their supporting forces. In short, the terrain was ideal for conducting defensive operations. The beaches suitable for supporting the landing were also limited. The island would have been a very tough nut to crack. The Americans would have had the problem of subduing the six hundred thousand man garrison. In addition to the garrison, the Japanese had over two and a half thousand suicide planes ready to attack the invasions force, along with hundreds of suicide boats, and midget submarines. Taking all of these factors into consideration, the American invasion force and its naval support would have taken major losses? American losses in all probability would have conformed to Navy’s higher estimate of a third of the landing force?

The logistical preperations for Olympic were colossal.

It's weird to not have the European side of this after such a long time. For Europe, the long process of reconstruction and the slide into the cold was would begin along with the dismantling of the Nazi state and arrest and trial of those involved in war crimes. But most of that would happen quietly, away from the bright spotlight of grand maneuvers.

During the occupation of Japan, more equipment, arms, planes and suicide boats were found than intelligence estimated. My uncle was in the occupation force also, have fought from the Philippines on in the Army. Also, not all of the JN 25 codes had been decrypted until long after the war was over.

The official War Department estimate was between 125,000 and 1.25 million, this is for the US alone. This does not figure in British or Australian troops. My uncle was training in the Pacific, having already been involved in the liberation of the Philippines and Okinawa.

Truman & MacArthur: *Best Friends Forever*

MacArthur and Truman not getting along? I'm sure this is the very last time we'll be hearing about THAT... 😂

Thank you for this episode!

Week 305 only 8 episode left Because the war went on for 313 weeks and 2 days.

It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage video about Okinawa invasion through Olympics operation.

And with Mikolajczyk joining the Polish government this week, it looks like the troublesome Polish issue might be resolved...

Borneo is on my bucket iist. Amazing wildlife. Great stuff Indy!

According to an article from forensic science international in 2021. There are around one million Japanese troops whose bodies have not been recovered. That's a hell of a lot of missing in action.

Surely Adm Yamamoto was right when he said about the USA after Pearl Harbour"All we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve..",upon finding out the timing of the attack and the declaration of war did not go as he wanted.

I m looking forward to our nxt journey indy and crew see ya there

My Dad was 11th Airborne Div.(1945-47) He always said he was told - If we go in you Will Not Survive. The training of school children to use spears against Allied Forces is NOT a myth. Every Person able to carry a stick was to Fight. 一億人の栄光の死 "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million". Up to 900000 US Casualties were expected. Revisionists have changed this to the 20000-35000 or so casualties now preached by those people.

Thank you.

Talking about small allied forces guarding much larger Japanese armies. The Australian 5th Divison is currently containing 150,000+ Japanese at Rabaul, the biggest non POW camp in the world (bit like Salonika from WW1 but opposite sides) The 5th had relived 3 US Divisions from October 44 to January 45 much to MacArthur disgust, who didn't want to believe that 1 Australian Division was equivalent in fighting value as 3 US ones in holding Japanese biggest army in the Pacific. The 5th Division is to be relived by the 11th Division, a garrison unit, this week coming up.

Two things that show the scale of casualties the US expected during Operations Olympic and Coronet. First, the US produced so many Purple Heart decorations for soldiers expected to be killed or wounded during the fighting that those very same medals were still being awarded to this day, even after all the wars since then. The second thing was that plans for the invasion of Kyushu stopped mentioning one entire Marine division by day three. It was expected that by then it would have taken so many casualties that it would have become combat ineffectual.

Tell Indy he's the David Attenborough of war documentary. I don't think I could imagine a different voice (or vest) doing these.

They also could have preserved the monarchy by forcing Hirohito to abdicate and appoint a regent, his own father did that. Then when the dust cleared, hold the former emperor responsible. He's no longer emperor, so you didn't technically violate any agreement that the emperor is held responsible. The Japanese would have actually appreciated such subterfuge.

and thus we see the beginnings of what allowed some of the worst war criminals of the war to be let off with no repercussions.

I can't even begin to imagine what it was like to be a civilian that survived Okinawa. Months of brutal fighting, bombs flying everywhere, flamethrowers spitting out hellfire at any bunker and cave. And now the Americans who have turned your island into a scene from your nightmares, are building massive ports and highways even faster than they destroyed everything before.

Thanks TG

I hope you’ll discuss the operations of the OSS “Deer Team” that trained and worked with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh in the last few months of the war. One of the greatest missed opportunities in history…

Hi Indy Interesting week. Thanks.

To quote Confucius, "Man who bomb Pearl Harbour, shall see mushrooms".

Are you going to cover the events of française Indochine War? Id love to see it!

Is it just me, or does the thumbnail look kinda like Wolverine when he was in WW2?

Love the opening "erha?"

12:12 175 days on the line! Wow, I hope 43rd division got a citation for that endurance.

An interesting side-note: The Mexican Expeditionary Airforce 201st Fighter Squadron sees action this week during the fight in Cagayan Valley in the Philippines. Next they will be moved to escort duties in Okinawa.

My father was slated for Operation Olympic. He was going to serve aboard a Destroyer escort for radar picket duty. A few months prior he and several mates were given R&R in Hawthorne Nevada loading freight cars with 20 and 40 mm AA shells. They were to follow the train and head West to ports where they'd be assigned a ship. On a side note, concerning the invasion plans I read that planners dealt with the scenario of a possible Soviet invasion of Hokkaido and northern Honshu by the Soviets. Had that occurred Olympic was to be bypassed and Operation Coronet implemented in order to head the Soviets off before they could move any deeper into Honshu.

Soviets after seeing video title: You gotta bump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers

So technically the US' promise to not persecute the Japanese emperor means that Japan did not surrender unconditionally

1:56 well dang if that is Truman's view of McArthur now I love to see Truman's view of McArthur exactly 5 years from that comment

Thanks

I hope TimeGhost crew mention and bit of a bio on John Curtain who will die next week while still in office, arguably Australia's greatest ever PM.

I already talked about this in another comment, but it’s strange not to see it in this video. T64/M12 Body Armor for Operation Olympic. Expecting extremely heavy losses in the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, the United States decided to produce 100,000 Body Armor and send them to the troops that would invade Japan. The deployment of 100,000 such vests would have reduced American infantry casualty rates from lethal artillery fragments in the invasion of Japan to roughly Vietnam levels. This means roughly 1/3 fewer combat deaths from artillery fragments and about an overall 10% to 20% reduction in total projected combat deaths.

Good video.

Im glad the U.S. didn't have to invade the main land.

Note that near the end of the war this now the shortest episode in over a year now.

There is also the fact that for the 40 years if planning for war with Japan there was never any mention of occupying by invasion the islands but forcing surrender by blockade and bombardment.

Just thinking how much it has changed since the initial Japanese attacks across Asia, great coverage as always

Suffering and loss of lives is more and more bitter this close to the end of the War. Although, I suppose the timing matters little to anyone who lost their life or loved ones earlier in the war. Still, if I feel this way as a spectator from the future, I'd have to imagine war weariness is very much an emotional and psychological thing and not merely a response to the war economy in a "safe" country such as the US.

Every time I think about this period of the Pacific War, I am glad that I live in a future where Operation Olympic was not started. I actually would not be alive in that future anyway. It seems like that would be a terrible dystopia, to have had a protracted land war in the Japanese Home Islands.

The fighting in the Philippines outside of Luzon and Leyte have gotten very little attention. Operations on Mindinao have been on going and have not been mentioned in any detail.