The Planned Invasion of Japan
Bibliography of works by D. M. Giangreco

D. M. Giangreco
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Florence American
Military Cemetery

A Video Tribute

  (1) Giangreco, D. M., Operation Downfall [US invasion of Japan]: US Plans and Japanese Counter-Measures, presentation given at the symposium Beyond Bushido - Recent Work in Japanese Military History sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Office of International Programs, and the Departments of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Kansas. Monday, February 16, 1998.

(2) Giangreco, D. M., Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasion of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications, Journal of Military History, 61: 521-582, July, 1997. The Journal of Military History is published quarterly for the Society for Military History by the George C. Marshall Foundation and the Virginia Military Institute. Mr. Giangreco was awarded the Society for Military Historyâs 1998 Moncado Prize for this article.

(3) Giangreco, D. M., Rousseau or Monboddo?, the original version of what later appeared in the October, 1999, Journal of Military History. This matter is also continued in a Diplomatic History piece (April 2005) by J. Samuel Walker. For the D. M. Giangreco response to Walker, see the Giangreco Letter in the August 2005 Passport (vol. 36, no. 2, p. 52).

(4) Giangreco, D. M., To Bomb or Not To Bomb, an essay with bibliography covering the atom bomb and planned invasion of Japan, Naval War College Review, Spring, 1998.
(a) Maddox, Robert James, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. 215 pp. $23.95.
(b) Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995. 272 pp. $34.95.
(c) Chappell, John D., Before the Bomb: How America Approached the End of the Pacific War, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. 246 pp. $24.95.
(d) Polmar, Norman and Allen, Thomas. Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan and Why Truman Dropped the Bomb, New York: Simon & hs1995 351 pp. $25.95
(e) Skates, John Ray. The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb, Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1994. 276 pp. $27.95.

(5) Giangreco, D. M., Parameters, Army War College review essay covering the following works on the use of the atomic bomb and the planned invasion of Japan that were not covered in the Naval War College Review essay.
(a) Alperovitz, Gar, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. 847 pages.
(b) Wainstock, Dennis, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, Westport, Conn., Praeger Publishers, 1996. 192 pages.
(c) Ferrell, Robert H., editor, Harry S. Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History, Worland, Wyoming, High Plains, 1996. 125 pages.

(6) Moore, Kathryn, and Giangreco, D. M., A Nation Remembers Its War Dead and History With Medal, May 27, 2001. The American Heritage article on Purple Heart production for the invasion of Japan, Dec-Jan, 2000-2001, was published before they made these articles available on the web, but a much shorter version for newspaper distribution was also written. Newspaper articles are frequently edited for length and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was the only one to run it completely intact. It is entitled, "Half a million Purple Hearts".
You can also read correspondence related to the article carried in American Heritage, May 2001, Vol. 52, Issue 3, entitled, "Too Many Purple Hearts", by clicking here.

(7) Giangreco, D. M., Operation Downfall: The Devil Was In The Details, Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn, 1995. The "Beyond Bushido" lecture (1) above was an expanded and cleaned-up version of this piece.

(8) Giangreco, D. M., Letters, Joint Forces Quarterly, Spring, 1996. Letters discussing the Joint Force Quarterly article including one from the same fellow which prompted "Rousseau or Monboddo." Author's responses to these letters.

(9) Giangreco, D. M. and Moore, Kathryn, Dear Harry . . . Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953: The Truman Administration Through Correspondence with Everyday Americans, Illustrated, 512 pp. Mechanicsburg, Pa.:Stackpole Books. $34.95. The Truman Show, (in MS Word format), Stanley Weintraub, Sunday, October 24, 1999, New York Times Book Review. Numerous issues relating to the end of the war can also be found this book.

(10) Giangreco, D. M., Harry Truman and the Price of Victory: New Light on the President's Biggest Decision, American Heritage, April-May, 2003. This article briefly summarizes one aspect of the article (11) which follows.

(11) 'A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan, Pacific Historical Review: February, 2003. This article is now part of a University of Missouri Press [ http://www.umsystem.edu/upress/ ] anthology Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism.  It is edited by Robert James Maddox and can be purchased from Amazon books by clicking here.  (Book cover at the right).  

(12) Giangreco, D. M., 60 Years Ago: Spinning the casualties after D-Day, History News Service, sponsored by the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, October 24, 2004.

(13) Giangreco, D. M., Spinning the Casualties: Media Strategies during the Roosevelt Administration, December, 2004, Passport, (the revamped SHAFRNewsletter).

(14) Giangreco, D. M., The Soldier from Independence: Harry S. Truman and the Great War, a lecture presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History at the Frank Lloyd Wright Monona Terrace Convention Center, Madison, Wisconsin, April 7, 2002. This article has also been published in the Journal of the Royal Artillery 130:56-59, Autumn, 2003. It examines Truman's activities during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive when he commanded his battery within what one artilleryman described as "a cemetery of unburied dead," and tentatively links this experience to his atom bomb decision.

(15) Giangreco, D. M., Gentlemen, We Were The Victim of Our Own Success: Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner discusses the failed invasion of Japan at the Naval War College. This paper was adapted from a chapter written for the book Rising Sun Victorious, released by the British firm Greenhill Press in 2001. This paper is used in classes at the United States Naval War College and the Army Command and General Staff College as a primer on idiosyncratic and asymmetric warfare, access denial and joint operations along the littorals or coastline regions.

(16) Giangreco, D. M., Moore, Kathryn, Should America Have Bombed Hiroshima?, American Heritage Events, AmericanHeritage.com website, September 2, 2005. A somewhat updated version is on the British blog site "Harry's Place" with information on the British Commonwealth participation in Operation DOWNFALL, the planned 1945-1946 invasion of Japan, for its readers.

(17) Giangreco, D. M., Did Truman Really Oppose the Soviet Union's Decision to Enter the War Against Japan?, review and analysis of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's 2005 book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Further discussion of this issue by Giangreco is provided through the on-line magazine American Thinker, May 8, 2006.

(18) Giangreco, D. M., Was Dwindling US Army Manpower a Factor in the Atom Bombing of Hiroshima?,  History News Network, July 21, 2008. This article is based on a paper, "The 'Manpower Box' of 1946: Army Ground Forces and the Planned Invasion of Honshu", presented at the Society for Military History's 2006 Conference.

(19) Giangreco, D. M., Hiroshima Hoax: Japan's 'Willingness to Surrender' Before the Bomb, American Thinker, August 3, 2008, reviews the work of historian Robert James Maddox on issues surrounding use of the atomic bomb and Japanese decision making in the period before Hiroshima

(20) Giangreco, D.M., How "Five Old Men" Started the Roll Back of Hiroshima Revisionism, History News Network, July 28, 2014.  Mr. Giangreco’s remarks at the 2011 reunion of the 58th Bomb Wing Association’ B-29 airmen and ground crew, Holiday Inn (Fisherman’s Wharf), San Francisco, September 13, 2011. The event was cosponsored by the New England Air Museum at the Bradley International Airport, Hartford, Connecticut.  


Michael Kort (Boston University) comments on Mr. Giangreco's principal critic in Casualty Projections for the Invasion of Japan, Phantom Estimates, and the Math of Barton Bernstein, Passport, (the newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations), December, 2003.

A list of books published by D. M. Giangreco can be found here.

 

Mitsubishi Zero fighter

Japanese Zero

The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a lightweight fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service (IJNAS) from 1940 to 1945. The origin of its official designation was that "A" signified a fighter and "6" for the sixth model built by Mitsubishi ("M"). The A6M was usually referred to by the Allies as the "Zero"÷a name that was frequently misapplied to other Japanese fighters, such as the Nakajima Ki-43÷as well as other codenames and nicknames, including "Zeke", "Hamp" and "Hap".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
 
 
 

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