[buccaneer81]

If it makes the Japanese feel any better, they should realize that the destruction of their two cities and 240,000 people probably prevented a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviets. Tests are one thing. Seeing real cities and real people vaporized is quite another. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the real-world results of atomic weapons.

[squidly]

My father, who was there following the war, told me that Tokyo looked worse than Hiroshima.

[reg45]

If it makes the Japanese feel any better, they should realize that the destruction of their two cities and 240,000 people probably prevented a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviets.

They also fail to comment on the million or more Japanese people who would have been killed in a US / Soviet invasion of the main islands.

[Skywalk]

Actually, the numbers(before inflation by anti-nuke lefties and Japanese victim cultists) were around 70-80K for Hiroshima and 40K for Nagasaki. The numbers were arrived at using a much more scientific process involving ration cards(which were issued to everyone)

The numbers we've come to know now are fiction. It's possible more thna 120K total died, but not two times that number.

[Question_Assumptions]

The quick end to the war and the occupation by the US probably also saved Japan. Period. The USSR had entered the war between the two bombs and the Russians, to this day, occupy 4 small Japanese islands and, as a result, still do not have formal peace with Japan. Had the war gone on longer, Russia would have occupied much more of Japan, taking at least Hokkaido and possibly dividing Japan for years like Germany was. Had the Americans accepted a conditional surrender that left the Japanese government intact and did not result in an occupation, a much weakened Japan with no resources would have had to face China as well as an expansionist Soviet Union and may have suffered the same fate as Korea or Vietnam. The atomic bombs were the only way to get a quick and unconditional surrender (and even then, it two out of the three that we had). Yes, a lot of civilians died but every scenario I can think of that takes the facts (as opposed to the wishful thinking that an unconditional surrender would have happened anyway when the facts show nothing like that would have happened) into account suggests that things would have been much worse for Japan, nevermind America, had those bombs not been dropped.