[Types_with_Fist]

If not, you can bet we'd have needed a full scale invasion and millions of lost lives in the process on both sides.

That's exactly why Truman gave the get-go. Although, I think he did it to save American lives mostly. The computations were that we would sustain a million American casualties in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

[r9etb]

Although, I think he did it to save American lives mostly. The computations were that we would sustain a million American casualties in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

IIRC, his reasoning was based on the casualties at Okinawa, where we lost a lot in killed and wounded in a pretty small island. (I'm sure he also considered the 200,000 civilian casualties there, though they were probably not his primary concern.)