What would've happened if the atomic bombs weren't dropped in Japan?

Answer 1

Then the US forces would have had to invade Japan, probably resulting in the massive loss of life on both sides. The Japanese civilians would have certainly been involved in suicide attacks in order to protect the homeland and Emperor. Japan would have been a bloodbath as they would have refused to surrender because of their honour system.

Answer 2

We would have invaded them similar to Germany, divide it up between Russia, england, France and the us. This probably would result in a commie capitalist split like in korea and germany. The japanese were willing to fight until there were none left.

So a "japanese" war would end with japan throwing everyone out. They would then begin to do similar to what the weimar republic did, and eventually a radical would come to power and start a nuclear ww3.

Pretty much if the us didn't nuke japan, the war would turn out like wwi for the japanese.

Answer 3

There would have been a greater loss of life, not only for the Americans and Allied forces fighting from island to island towards the Japanese mainland island, but also for the population of Japan. The Japanese armed forces and civilians were reputed, and indoctrinated, to be determined to fight to the last man, woman and child.

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This cannot be determined because they were dropped, so we are in the area of counterfactual speculative history.

They were in contact with the USSR secretly (the US knew nothing of this) trying to negotiate possible peace terms that would allow them to retain much if not all of their conquests.

The Japanese military had no intention of ever surrendering as to do so would cause them to "lose face" (although they knew that they had lost access to the resources needed to support modern warfare), in fact they even had a secret plan that they hoped could keep the war going at least another 10 years until the American people tired of war and insisted the US government end the war immediately at any cost on terms favorable to Japan (e.g. the US giving back most of the Pacific Islands to Japan just to convince Japan to stop fighting).

The Emperor was willing to surrender but had no official political power in the Japanese government of the time. It was only the atomic bombing that gave him the courage to speak "to save my people from destruction by this new weapon".

Even the Americans expected that the war would last 1 to 2 more years using only conventional "D-Day" type landing, invasion, and occupation tactics; and would cost up to a million Allied and a million Japanese casualties.

Note: had the first 2 atomic bombs failed to force surrender (which they did) the US had plans and production facilities in place to deliver another 21 atomic bombs on Japanese cities before the end of 1945. Once the planned invasion of Japan began the US troops would be fighting on the world's first "atomic battlefield" and having to cope with fallout from nearby bombings, etc.

Answer 4

Then many lives would have been lost because if the bomb hasn't been dropped many more lives would have been lost. Casulties would have increased also. The war would have went longer also.

Answer 5

The probability of the future use of atomic warfare would be increased, as it would not have been used before.

Answer 6

No one else would have made it. Germany was already defeated before the used the bomb, and Japan wasn't even working on it.

Answer 7

A huge amount of both Japanese and American troops would've been killed because the U.S. would've invaded Japan. It would be more carnage in short.