lets forget about the deaths that were avoided when there was no direct assault of ground troops on the Jap main island by America and the allies...think of the people; POWS, innocent civilians, Korean comfort woman, who were saved from death by the dropping of these bombs- people who were being worked to death in slave labor at POW camps around east Asia (McDonnell and others), people being worked to death in places such as the Siam-Burma railway never mind the innocent people who were being tortured and killed by the Japs for amusement...
the 100’s of 1000’s of people basically condemned to death by the Japs is what people forget and that alone was worth the value of dropping the bombs...
Additionally, it should be added that a POW taken at the fall of the Philippines and a survivor of the death march stated flatly that, should the Allies have invaded, all, ALL...the POW’s would have been murdered.
Nobody discounts the Burma prison camps, the Chinese plight, the forced labor or the civilian deaths. Unlike Nazi Germany, most of that was a known before the end of the war. It was the utter and complete brutality that was underestimated.