"Victory in the Pacific"

Today we continued watching "Victory in the Pacific".  The portion of the documentary we watched today focused on Tarawa and Saipan.  Tarawa was a disaster for the United States Marines.  The military reconnaissance they had gathered was inaccurate, and because of this, when they were landing on the island, it was low tide.  The soldiers had to get out of the boats at a coral reef and wade in chest deep water for a quarter mile to reach the shore.  All while doing this, they were being fired at by machine guns.  Over the course of the battle, 1100 marines died.  The United States learned a hard lesson from Tarawa, that it was imperative that they had detailed plans and extensive, accurate reconnaissance before an invasion.  On the island of Tarawa, there were 5000 Japanese troops.  Out of these 5000, only 17 Japanese were taken prisoner because the rest had either died in combat or committed suicide.  This was another reality shock for the Americans-the Japanese were going to fight to the death or die with dignity rather than being taken prisoner.  At a later battle, taking place on Saipan, only a couple hundred of the 40,000 Japanese inhabitants of the island survived.  This is not all due to the United States marines, civilians and soldiers alike committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs of the island instead of surrendering.  This was a shock to US soldiers, and the Japanese hoped that the suicides of Japanese women, children, men, and soldiers would scare the US enough to have them stop advancing towards Japan.  Do you think that the war would have been different if the Japanese had surrendered instead of committing suicide?