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Rockingham: "War is always about killing the enemy with the most potent means available at the least cost to your side.
Run the numbers in the cruel accounting of war and the A-bombing of Japan was a tremendous success in terms of the avoided cost for the US of an invasion.
I once worked for a man who spent most of WW II training to be a troop leader in the first wave to invade Japan.
He and his fellows -- all volunteers -- expected to die in the first hour if they even made it ashore.
He was a big fan of nuking Japan."

My dad also trained to land in the first wave of Operation Olympic, part of Operation Downfall.
He was with the 33rd Infantry Division to land on Kyushu Island, expecting fierce opposition and massive casualties.

And they did actually land, just as planned, on August 28, 1945 and were met by, not the world's fiercest warriors with suicidal attacks, but rather by children carrying flowers to welcome them.
At some point after the landing they took a train to see the destruction at Hiroshima.

One key fact that most people miss is not just the savings in American military lives from the two A-bombs dropped, but rather the savings of many millions of Japanese civilian lives that Japan's military leaders were prepared to sacrifice to prevent American victory over their homeland.

In round numbers, those A-bombs are calculated to have saved about a million American military lives, including my dad's, plus up to 10 million Japanese civilian lives.

A similar event with similar consequences is unlikely to ever happen again.

Quite true. Historians who have written on the subject agree that an invasion of Japan would have resulted in massive destruction and loss of life among the Japanese.

As it was, the Japanese leadership knew that the US had an A-bomb program. Their scientists understood the physics involved and Japan hired neutral Portugal to spy on the Manhattan Project. The Portuguese did a surprisingly good job of it. As Japan's military built tunnels deep in the mountains so they could withstand conventional bombing and battle the expected American invasion to the death, the Emperor looked to the dropping of A bombs as the moment to push for peace. Even after surrender was agreed to though, a faction in the Japanese military attempted a coup in order to keep fighting.

Remarkably, even as the Japanese Bushido code endorsed a glorious death in combat, it also put those who surrendered at the mercy of the victors. And in one of those happy outcomes that are so rare in history, the American victors were not just merciful but were charmed by the Japanese as a people, with General Douglas MacArthur becoming a great peacemaker and reformer of Japanese society.

As WW II combat veteran and later literary critic Paul Fussell put it in the title of an essay and book: "Thank God For the Atom Bomb."