It is also arguable that the bombs saved Japanese lives, likely over a million. If a conventional invasion had gone forward, many more Japanese would have died than did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anyone with knowledge of what happened in the fight for Okinawa understands this. The Japanese casualties, both military and civilian, were horrific, and the main home islands would have been Okinawa writ large.
Only ideologues and the historically ignorant think the bombs didn’t save lives.
I’d hazard to guess that the estimated “one million Japanese lives saved” would translate to many many more in the 70 years since then. Why? Because if that 1 million had been sacrificed to hopeless defeat and death to end the war, they would not have “gone forth and multiplied.”
They got what they deserved. What they begged for.
It is also very likely that Hokkaido and the eastern half of Honshu would have been invaded by Soviet forces (at our explicit invitation) resulting in a situation parallel to East and West Germany and North and South Korea. Instead we in the west had the enormous human talents of the Japanese, pacified and focused on technological innovations for the benefit of the world, and a military base of operations off the coast of Asia, all to ourselves.