Sooner or later, the bombing and naval interdiction would make it impossible for Japan to continue, but no one knew how long that would take. The United States resumed the firebombing missions and continued planning for an invasion of Japanese home islands.
Japan still had five million troops, 10,000 airplanes-more than half of them configured for suicide missions-and a seven-month supply of aviation fuel. The military regime refused to accept defeat. Since the beginning of the year, American B-29s had been systematically demolishing Japan’s urban areas and industrial centers with incendiary bombs. For Japan, the war had been lost for some time. Eighty thousand people had been killed instantly and two-thirds of the city destroyed by the atomic bomb dropped by the B-29 Enola Gay on Aug.
