what was Plan B in the Pacific Theater? (and would it have been worse?)

Every person with the slightest interest in American history has had the discussion about The Bomb. It's hard to contribute anything new to either the debate over whether it was morally acceptable or the question of how the war would have proceeded without it. For years, the justification given for use of The Bomb was the huge number of lives (American and Japanese) that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan. However, a recent article from OpenDemocracy.com adds a new twist to the debate -- the American government was prepared to use massive amounts of chemical weapons against the Japanese in such an invasion.

The thought of this being a part of my own history frightens me. I know Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific, but something about them seems inevitable -- not just because they are such a familiar part of the past, but something about the novelty of the bomb itself, the wonder and terror of Trinity. Though I am sure it has been lived and relived many times in the minds of the victims, the singular flash seems as if it must have been necessary to bring in the Cold War and all that followed.

The record of chemical warfare would not seem nearly as clean. The news would have trickled back to the U.S., probably resulting in a more ambiguous final few months of the war. The resentment over the internment of the Japanese in California might have become even worse once the images were recycled in the public mind. And it seems likely that the Japanese would at least to attempt to return fire, resulting in thousands of American chemical casualties. It might result in an entirely different history of "weapons of mass destruction."

But there are two questions in particular that stick in my mind. First, would the death toll have been higher if chemical weapons had been used instead of The Bomb? Keep in mind that this includes a large number of deaths from the conventional invasion as well. The article claims that the U.S. estimated 5 million deaths -- while Wikipedia says about 120,000 immediate deaths from the A-bombs, and twice that many over time. Even if the original estimate is conservative, it seems like the bombs would have been a more humane choice.

A more relevant question, though, is what does the plan to use chemical weapons say about the race factor in the use of the bomb? It seems unlikely that race and culture didn't play some role. If the war in Germany had lasted longer and Truman had contemplated bombing a major German city, you would think some of his advisers would object on the grounds of European cultural heritage. "We don't want to be rememberd as the civilization that destroyed one of the cultural capitals of the world, etc." At the least, you would think that this might have motivated Truman to consider a target of low value as a demonstration. But history never forced Roosevelt or Truman to make a choice about using atomic weapons against Germany.

However, using chemical weapons would have been a possibility. Yet unless there's something missing from this article, it would seem that the Americans never planned on it. There may be explanations here I'm avoiding, but I think this provides some essential insight into the decision to drop the bombs on Japan.