The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

As if to demonstrate what they had in mind, Japanese resistance to the American invasion of Okinawa in April of 1945 was fierce and fanatic and, in its organized form, did not end until June 21, 1945. The Americans experienced a 35 percent casualty rate in taking that island. Assuming that a similar ratio would hold in an invasion of the Home Islands, the American commanders anticipated a minimum of 268,000 dead and wounded on their side in the first phase of the attack. Altogether, they anticipated up to a million American military casualties—with a similar number for the Japanese, and many, many more millions in civilian deaths. The bloodiness and stubbornness of the battle on Okinawa contributed strongly to the American decision to use, if necessary, a new weapon that, though unproved, would soon be in the U.S. arsenal—the atomic bomb. The American leaders knew that Japan’s fighting capability was crumbling, but they saw no sign that its fighting spirit was fading. And, indeed, it did seem that the whole island nation was being mobilized for a suicidal battle to the death; even young schoolchildren were ordered to start sharpening bamboo shoots with which to kill Americans. The secret messages between Tokyo and Moscow that the Americans intercepted were hardly sufficient to indicate that the Japanese government was prepared to ask for peace—because it was not. Despite the ever-worsening position, the Japanese government remained ambiguous, indistinct, and tentative in i...