preventing massive casualties on both sides in the planned invasion of Japan:
Kyūshū was to be invaded in October 1945 and Honshū five months later.
U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson estimated the invading Allies would suffer between 1.7 and 4 million casualties in such a scenario, while Japanese casualties would have been up to 10 million.[118]
"One scholar estimated that kamikaze attacks could have sunk or damaged a full third of the invasion armada destined for Kyūshū."[119]
As the chief commander of the Japanese army, Korechika Anami was outspoken against the idea of surrender. Even after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anami opposed talk of surrender, and proposed instead that a large-scale battle be fought on the Japanese mainland causing such massive Allied casualties that Japan would somehow be able to evade surrender and perhaps even keep some of what it had conquered.[121]
There were 2.3 million Japanese Army troops prepared to defend the Japanese home islands, another 4 million Army and Navy employees, and a civilian militia of 28 million men and women.[122]
The national slogan was “One hundred million will die for the Emperor and Nation.”[123] The Japanese military ordered the murder of all Allied prisoners if there was an invasion.[123]
Eventually, Anami's arguments were overcome when Emperor Hirohito directly requested an end to the war himself.[124]