Japan and their war against the US and the UK was going to happen from this moment. Although an argument can be made for 1874 when Japan sized Okinawa but I will not go into that here.
Japan was determined to make the Pacific a Japanese lake which would mean taking over most of Asia and the west coast of the Americas.
Which was why they were establishing colonies up and down the coast and why, when WWII started those countries either confined or expelled the Japanese.
The Japanese were excessively cruel to their conquered, even shocking the Nazis who were no shrinking violets. They were quite interested in biological warfare and had conducted several experiments with weaponizing the plague. These experiments were successful and a plan to hit the US with it was planed for September of 1945. Code named Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night it would have spread the bacteria (Yersinia pestis) known to have caused the five greatest epidemics in human history during a time when the world was already in disarray.
The fact that WWII in Europe had pushed the US into creating the atomic bomb was the only thing that prevented it.
History you don't learn in school.
Interesting.
My father served in the Pacific (USMC) as did my uncle (also USMC)
He stated unequivocally that the “bomb” saved hundreds of thousands (or more) lives. Without the bomb an invasion of Japan would have had to take place. Uncountable casualties.
Who should be blamed for the civilian deaths from the bomb?
The Japanese.
Japan in its military dictatorship phase was brutal, that is for sure.
1. Japan was late (by 30 years) to the forcing of concessions on China. The Europeans were the first to demand concessions from China, and that process was not ignored by Japan.
2. Japan was late to establishing colonies in Asia. Again Japan was preceded in that by the Europeans and the U.S., and again Japan observed that and as Japan industrialized came to see it as European and American blocking actions against a modernizing Japan. In Southeast Asia the Europeans even admitted they were blocking recently industrializing Japan.
3. Looking out from Japan in WWI (when they were on our side) they saw an Asia largely occupied by the Europeans and Americans, from India all through Southeast Asia, up through the Philippines and the coast of China.
While HOW Japan came to deal and react to 1.,2. and 3. above is the subject of good criticism. That they did react to all that was not strange, even from a general Asian perspective. From a general Asian perspective the suddenly outward looking Japanese Empire was following on and reacting to the western colonization of so much of Asia.
I would be interested in your thoughts on some claims that the Japanese balloons found over rural areas in the western US (during WWII) did have toxic biological agents—but that they were ineffective because they were in remote areas.
What did the atomic bomb have to do with it?