This doesn't meet your definition of "conquered"?
Maybe if it were true. But you obviously don't know your history with regard to Operation Olympic, or the facts related to just how prepared the Japanese were (discovered only AFTER we dropped two nuclear devices on their cities, and threatened to overthrow/kill their emperor) to defend their home islands... And if you doubt that this resolve existed, you should research the Saipan campaign. The Japanese soldiers and civilians of that era were reknowned for fighting on in the face of overwhelming odds. Especially when it involved defending their "god emperor":
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Defence
Captured Japanese documents and postwar interrogation of Japanese military leaders disclose that information concerning the number of Japanese planes available for the defence of the home islands were dangerously in error.
During the sea battle at Okinawa alone, Japanese kamikaze aircraft sank 32 Allied ships and damaged more than 400 others. But during the summer of 1945, American top brass concluded that the Japanese had spent their air force, since American bombers and fighters daily flew unmolested over Japan.
What the military leaders did not know was that by the end of July, the Japanese had been saving all aircraft, fuel and pilots in reserve, and had been feverishly building new planes for the decisive battle for their homeland.
As part of Ketsu-Go - the name for the plan to defend Japan -- the Japanese were building 20 suicide take-off strips in southern Kyushu with underground hangers. They also had 35 camouflaged airfields and nine seaplane bases.
On the night before the expected invasion, 50 Japanese seaplane bombers, 100 former carrier aircraft and 50 land based army planes were to be launched in a suicide attack on the fleet. The Japanese had 58 more airfields on Korea, western Honshu and Shikoku, which also were to be used for massive suicide attacks.
Allied intelligence had established that the Japanese had no more than 2,500 aircraft of which they guessed 300 would be deployed in suicide attacks.
12,725
In August 1945, however, unknown to Allied intelligence, the Japanese still had 5,651 army and 7,074 navy aircraft, for a total of 12,725 planes of all types. Every village had some type of aircraft manufacturing activity. Hidden in mines, railway tunnels, under viaducts and in basements of department stores, work was being done to construct new planes.
Additionally, the Japanese were building newer and more effective models of the Okka -- a rocket-propelled bomb much like the German V-1, but flown by a suicide pilot.
When the invasion became imminent, Ketsu-Go called for a four-fold aerial plan of attack to destroy up to 800 Allied ships. While Allied ships were approaching Japan, but still in the open seas, an initial force of 2,000 army and navy fighters were to fight to the death to control the skies over Kyushu. A second force of 330 navy combat pilots were to attack the main body of the task force to keep it from using its fire support and air cover to protect the troop carrying transports.
While these two forces were engaged, a third force of 825 suicide planes were to hit the American transports.
As the invasion convoys approached their anchorages, another 2,000 suicide planes were to be launched in waves of 200 to 300, to be used in hour-by-hour attacks.
American troops would be arriving in about 180, lightly armed transports and 70 cargo vessels.
By mid-morning of the first day of the invasion, most of the American land-based aircraft would be forced to return to their bases, leaving the defence against the suicide planes to the carrier pilots and the shipboard gunners.
Japanese pilots crippled by fatigue would return time and time again to re-arm and fight. Guns would malfunction from the heat of continuous firing and ammunition would become scarce.
Gun crews would be exhausted by nightfall, but still the waves of kamikazes would continue. With the fleet hovering off the beaches, all remaining Japanese aircraft would be committed to nonstop suicide attacks, which the Japanese hoped could be sustained for 10 days.
Subs
The Japanese planned to co-ordinate their air strikes with attacks from the 40 remaining submarines from the Imperial Navy -- some armed with Long Lance torpedoes with a range of 20 miles -- when the invasion fleet was 180 miles off Kyushu.
The Imperial Navy had 23 destroyers and two cruisers, which were operational. These ships were to be used to counterattack the American invasion. A number of the destroyers were to be beached at the last minute to be used as anti-invasion gun platforms. Once offshore, the invasion fleet would be forced to defend not only against the attacks from the air, but would also be confronted with suicide attacks from sea. Japan had established a suicide naval attack unit of midget submarines, human torpedoes and exploding motorboats.
The goal of the Japanese was to shatter the invasion before the landing. The Japanese were convinced the Americans would back off or become so demoralised that they would then accept a less-than unconditional surrender and a more honourable and face-saving end for the Japanese.
But as horrible as the battle of Japan would be off the beaches, it would be on Japanese soil that the American forces would face the most rugged and fanatical defence encountered during the war.
Throughout the island-hopping Pacific campaign, Allied troops had always outnumbered the Japanese by 2 to 1 and sometimes 3 to 1.
In Japan it would be different. By virtue of a combination of cunning guesswork and brilliant military reasoning, a number of Japan's top military leaders were able to deduce, not only when, but where the United States would land its first invasion forces.
Advantage
Facing the 14 American divisions landing at Kyushu would be 14 Japanese divisions, 7 independent mixed brigades, 3 tank brigades and thousands of naval troops. In Kyushu the odds would be 3 to 2 in favour of the Japanese, with 790,000 enemy defenders against 550,000 Americans.
This time the bulk of the Japanese defenders would not be the poorly trained and ill equipped labour battalions that the Americans had faced in the earlier campaigns.
The Japanese defenders would be the hard-core of the home army. These troops were well-fed and well-equipped. They were familiar with the terrain, had stockpiles of arms and ammunition, and had developed an effective system of transportation and supply almost invisible from the air. Many of these Japanese troops were the elite of the Army, and they were swollen with a fanatical fighting spirit.
Japan's network of beach defences consisted of offshore mines, thousands of suicide scuba divers attacking landing craft, and mines planted on the beaches.
Coming ashore, the American Eastern amphibious assault forces at Miyazaki would face three Japanese divisions, and two others poised for a counterattack. Awaiting the South-eastern attack force at Ariake Bay was an entire division and at least one mixed infantry brigade.
On the western shores of Kyushu, the Marines would face the most brutal opposition. Along the invasion beaches would be the three Japanese divisions, a tank brigade, a mixed infantry brigade and an artillery command. Components of two divisions would also be poised to launch counterattacks.
If not needed to reinforce the primary landing beaches, the American Reserve Force would be landed at the base of Kagoshima Bay 4 Nov., where they would be confronted by two mixed infantry brigades, parts of two infantry divisions and thousands of the naval troops.
All along the invasion beaches, American troops would face coastal batteries, anti-landing obstacles and a network of heavily fortified pillboxes, bunkers and underground fortresses.
As Americans waded ashore, they would face intense artillery and mortar fire as they worked their way through concrete rubble and barbed-wire entanglements arranged to funnel them into the muzzles of these Japanese guns.
In Depth
On the beaches and beyond would be hundreds of Japanese machine gun positions, beach mines, booby traps, tripwire mines and sniper units. Suicide units concealed in "spider holes" would engage the troops as they passed nearby.
In the heat of battle, Japanese infiltration units would be sent to wreak havoc in the American lines by cutting phone and communication lines. Some of the Japanese troops would be in American uniform. English-speaking Japanese officers were assigned to break in on American radio traffic to call off artillery fire, to order retreats and to further confuse troops.
Other infiltrators with demolition charges strapped on their chests or backs would attempt to blow up American tanks, artillery pieces and ammunition stores as they were unloaded ashore.
Beyond the beaches were large artillery pieces situated to bring down a curtain of fire on the beach. Some of these large guns were mounted on railroad tracks running in and out of caves protected by concrete and steel.
The battle for Japan would be won by what Simon Bolivar Buckner, a lieutenant general in the Confederate army during the Civil War, had called "Prairie Dog Warfare." This type of fighting was almost unknown to the ground troops in Europe and the Mediterranean. It was peculiar only to the soldiers and Marines who fought the Japanese on islands all over the Pacific -- at Tarawa, Saipan, lwo Jima and Okinawa. Prairie Dog Warfare was a battle for yards, feet and sometimes inches. It was a brutal, deadly and dangerous form of combat aimed at an underground, heavily fortified, non-retreating enemy.
In the mountains behind the Japanese beaches were underground networks of caves, bunkers, command posts and hospitals connected by miles of tunnels with dozens of entrances and exits. Some of these complexes could hold up to 1,000 troops.
Chemical
In addition to the use of poison gas and bacteriological warfare (which the Japanese had experimented with), Japan mobilised its citizenry.
Had Olympic come about, the Japanese civilian population, inflamed by a national slogan -- One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and Nation -- was prepared to fight to the death.
At the early stage of the invasion, 1,000 Japanese and American soldiers would be dying every hour. Every foot of Japanese soil would have been paid for by Japanese and American lives.
Twenty-eight million Japanese had become a part of the National Volunteer Combat Force. They were armed with ancient rifles, lunge mines, sachel charges, Molotov cocktails and one-shot black powder mortars. Others were armed with swords, long bows, axes and bamboo spears.
The civilian units were to be used in night-time attacks, hit and run manoeuvres delaying actions and massive suicide charges at the weaker American positions. The invasion of Japan never became a reality because on 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Within days the war with Japan was at a close.
Had these bombs not been dropped and had the invasion been launched as scheduled, combat casualties in Japan would have been at a minimum in the tens of thousands. Every foot of Japanese soil would have been paid for by Japanese and American lives. One can only guess at how many civilians would have committed suicide in their homes or in futile mass military attacks.
In retrospect, the 1 million American men who were to be the casualties of the invasion, were instead lucky enough to survive the war.
Intelligence studies and military estimates made more than 40 years ago, and no latter-day speculation, clearly indicate that the battle for Japan might well have resulted in the biggest blood bath in the history of modern warfare.
Far worse would be what might have happened to Japan as a nation and as a culture. When the invasion came, it would have come after several months of firebombing all of the remaining Japanese cities. The cost in human life that resulted from the two atomic blasts would be small in comparison to the total number of Japanese lives that would have been lost by this aerial devastation.
With American forces locked in combat in the south of Japan, little could have prevented the Soviet Union from marching into the northern half of the Japanese home islands. Japan today could be divided much like Korea and Germany before.
The world was spared the cost of Operation Downfall, however, because Japan formally surrendered to the United Nations 2 Sept. 1945, and World War 11 was over. In the fall of 1945, in the aftermath of the war, few people concerned themselves with the invasion plans.
Following the surrender, the classified documents, maps, diagrams and appendices for Operation Downfall were packed away in boxes and eventually stored at the National Archives. These plans that called for the invasion of Japan paint a vivid description of what might have been one of the most horrible campaigns in the history of man.
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