Two Paths Diverge

One knack that makes humans so endearing is our inquisitive nature. My mind constantly roils with "what if?" ideas about my own lifetime or actual momentous events. Earlier today I was wondering if "Titanic" had made its original summer release date in 1997, would it have subsequently flopped like a landed mackerel?

Towards the end of WWII, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine just after delivering the components & fuel for the atomic bomb named Little Boy. The successful delivery of both atomic bombs before that catastrophe allowed the United States to annihilate two cities and demolish any remaining Japanese resolve to fight. Japanese surrender precluded involvement by the Soviet Union, which had already begun moving assets across the country to engage along the Pacific Ocean. What if the Indianapolis had been torpedoed before reaching its destination?

This change marks the divergent point for my universe. Eventually my speculations encompassed a broader question: what if the Cold War extended across the Pacific as the Iron Curtain bisects the Japanese islands?

The hallmark of acceptance is plausibility and verisimilitude helps immensely. In constructing my alternate timeline, I kept the following facts in mind.

First off, Japan loses World War Two. Even without the demoralizing display of nuclear annihilation, Japan had few remaining resources with which to fight. Japan had no reserves of oil or fuel for their navy, and many otherwise battle-ready ships were stranded in foreign ports. Even waves of kamikaze fighters was not viable defense defense option - the combined US & Australian navies had ten times number of watercraft than the Japanese had operational airplanes left in 1945.

Nonetheless, while victory was out of reach, the Japanese military was convinced that a protracted war in the Pacific would be unpopular with a war-weary American population. Could the Japanese population fight desperately and successfully enough to repel invaders until elections in the States in 1946 or even the presidential contest in 1948? Could popular opinion shift at home now that Hitler was vanquished?

In the closing days of WWII, United States military forces prepared to unleash a new weapon on the unbowed Japanese nation: the atomic bomb. The Army Air Force flew the components & nuclear fuel for the Fat Man to Tinian Island, leaving Kirkland Army Air Field on 26 July 1945 and arriving two days later. The Navy was responsible for delivering Little Boy. The fissionable uranium & unassembled components were stowed on the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), which left San Francisco on 16 July 1945. The ship reached Pearl Harbor on 19 July and left for Tinian to arrive a week later. The heavy cruiser was sunk en route by a Japanese submarine. With only one nuclear weapon in its arsenal, the US military refrained from using the remaining atomic weapon to force the capitulation of the Japanese government.

Map from CIA World Factbook

The Manhattan project had always remained secret to all but the upper echelons of the military, and even among this cabal, the efficacy of these new weapons was dubious. At the beginning of August 1945, the decision was made to hold Fat Man in reserve on Tinian Island. Instead, the United States military moved ahead with plans to finish the war in a more traditional fashion: invasion.

Planning on Operation Downfall began back in 1943 and had been updated and refined over the intervening months. Operation Downfall was the umbrella designation for two separate invasions of the Japanese Islands by US forces: Olympic & Coronet.

The Olympic invasion would take place in November 1945 on X-Day. The amphibious forces would land on Kyushu and establish a foothold where US air assets could land on the southern part of the island. The goal of Olympic was neither secure the whole island or begin moving troops north onto Honshu. Instead, once enough of the island was controlled and airfields established, Operation Coronet would begin.

Initial estimates placed March 1946 as the earliest possible Y-Day when Operation Coronet would begin. With air support from Kyushu, an amphibious invasion of the coastline just south of Tokyo would take place. The goal was to seize control of the capital city and force surrender of the remaining forces.

Given the overwhelming resources of the United States at this point of the war, the invasion would succeed, but the cost in casualties would be staggering. Additionally, the delay would allow the Soviet Union to move forces from the European theatre and begin assaulting Japanese positions on Sakhalin Island and the Chinese mainland. As US forces implemented Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese islands. The Soviets conducted their invasion in two similar waves. Operation Yarosti Medved ("Angry Bear") involved two waves of troops. The first wave Mishka would land Soviet forces on the northern island of Hokkaido. The primary invasion Boris would land Soviet troops at Niigata on Honshu's west coast and drive across the middle of the island to Sendai on the east coast. Under the guise of this invasion, the Soviet forces retake territory disputed since the Russo-Japanese War of 1906. Without much resistance, the Soviets quickly occupy Sakhalin Island as well as many smaller islands northeast of Hokkaido.

As Y-Day drew to a close and American forces had establish positions near Tokyo, the American military used the Fat Man atomic bomb on Hiroshima to demoralize the population. Unwilling to postpone the inevitable, the Japanese government indicated its willingness to surrender the next day, with the official surrender taking place less than a week later. Similar to the situation in Germany, responsibility for the Japanese islands is divided, with the Soviets occupying Hokkaido & the north half of Honshu, and Allied Forces (US & Australia primarily) in control of the rest of the archipelago. 

Currently I want to set the game in 1949 - just after the first Soviet nuclear test, but before the outbreak of open warfare on the Korean Peninsula. Instead, the entire Pacific Ocean becomes a shadowy world of pirates, agents and aces with dubious loyalty to either side. Additionally, an unknown third party begins moving beneath the depths, further destabilizing any tenuous peace across the waves.

I'll delve more into this setting in the future but I wanted to include various thoughts regarding other threads that may find themselves entangled in this world.

• Do nuclear test detonations still take place across the Pacific, resulting in Lucky Dragon 5 accident in 1954?
• How is nuclear proliferation affected? Who else benefits from solving the riddle of "tickling the dragon's tail"?
• What about Sputnik & the space race? ICBMs? NASA?
• Does the Korean War still occur? What about Vietnam much later?
• Without a unified Japan, do the Philippines become the prime benefactor of US assistance? Does Cubi Point/Subic Bay become the focal point of US naval presence in Asia?
• Does Dewey defeat Truman? What becomes of Generals MacArthur & Eisenhower?
• Do the Windtalkers graduate from military operations to espionage?

May you enjoy fair seas & following winds!
~ Admiral Wolff ~