Paragraph from Wikipedia:

“During World War II, 1,506,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. By the end of the war, even accounting for medals lost, stolen or wasted, nearly 500,000 remained. To the present date, total combined American military casualties of the seventy years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there remained 120,000 Purple Heart medals in stock. The existing surplus allowed combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to soldiers wounded in the field.[9]“

Wastage is probably pretty high; I know a bunch of unawarded medals got damaged in storage in Iraq at one of the hospitals, and were subsequently destroyed without being issued. Same thing’s probably happened in all the wars since WWII.

Japan definitely did not need to do what it did; most of the oil and materials embargo happened because of Japanese actions in China, thanks to the US missionary lobby back here in the US. Had Japan followed the path of peace, they’d have done a hell of a lot better by their nation, and probably retained a bit more of their traditional culture, which we destroyed on the way towards eliminating the militarists. It didn’t have to happen, but they made it inevitable.

WOW! I never heard that. Someone should chime in with that fact any time they try to shame Americans for dropping the bomb. The Japanese, no matter how we pestered them, didn’t have to attack us.

The outcome of that invasion is something I’m glad I don’t know for sure.

Little-known fact: The US military has been issuing the stockpile of Purple Hearts they laid in for dealing with the expected casualties from those battles now for the last seventy years, and I think they still have a bunch on hand… That should give anyone the willies, contemplating that.

Quoted passages above align with the idea that Gray was indeed a person other than grunt; the idea that anyone would be guilt-stricken over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially those who were in the units slated to take part in Olympic and Coronet…? Man, that’s just outrageously wrong; even guys who later developed qualms over the whole thing would admit that they thought it was probably more humane than the invasion would have been, and to be quite honest, probably saved more Japanese lives than we know.

Personally, the way I think it would have gone, without the atom bomb? The invasion would have been a bloodbath, the typhoon that came in after the surrender would have actually hit the fleets taking part, and the resultant cluster-fark would have meant that the first officer suggesting humanitarian relief for the Japanese in the aftermath of all those civilians-attacking-with-improvised-spears incidents, which the Japanese were gearing up for…? With all the casualties resulting on our side? Yeah. My guess is that we’d have happily let 90% or more of the Japanese starve to death in the resulting famine, and then gone home with clear consciences after God-alone-knows-what being done in the aftermath. Maybe we would have turned the wreckage over to the Soviets as a bad job, and then watched them try to make something of the place. Certainly, Japan would have wound up split between blocks, because after the mess of Olympic and Coronet, there wasn’t anyone on the US side who would have said “Keep the Soviets out…”.

All in all, I think the actual history we have probably represents the best case outcome for the Japanese people–Other than them never starting the war in the first damn place. The other alternatives almost mandate a far worse outcome for them, had we gone down that path. The conventional invasion one is a particularly nasty nightmare.