The attacking American forces would suffer 833,000 casualties in the first thirty days of the two proposed invasions of Japan. If the invasion lasted sixty days, the casualties would double. If the invasion lasted ninety days, the casualty figure would triple. The significance of the first figure—883,000 casualties—is this: The figure represents nearly three times the casualties suffered by America during the entire war. And, in 1945, this figure represented fifteen percent of our total armed forces, or nearly one percent of America’s total population of the time.
