All the historical revisionists and distortionists rely upon widespread ignorance of the actual conditions and facts in 1937-45. Japan, Germany, and Italy had combined to kill tens of millions of civilians while waging the most colossal aggressive war in human history. Final death totals for WWII are estimated up to 50 million.
The US leaders knew from the island campaign leading up to Okinawa that the Japanese military had inculcated a fanatical drive to fight to the death, and there were almost no surrenders anywhere - on Okinawa virtually all of the more than 100,000 Japanese troops fought to the death, killing around 21,000 US troops in the process.
To invade just ONE of the four main islands of Japan would likely have cost 10-20 times as many US lives as Okinawa (200,000 - 400,000), not to mention Japanese military and civilian casualties in the MILLIONS. Even strictly from the standpoint of the Japanese, the atomic bombings did them the enormous favor of forcing the war's rapid end with vastly fewer casualties. Such comparisons sound ghastly, but all the people who rave against the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to understand that the alternative was a MINIMUM of 1-2 million Japanese fatalities.
Of course, US leaders were deciding to end the war as rapidly as possible with the (entirely rational and ethical) aim of saving hundreds of thousands of US lives, but even strictly from the Japanese standpoint it was a moral imperative to free the country of the stranglehold that a depraved military junta had on the government, and this was the ONLY way to do it.
It should be further noted that the Japanese had their own nascent nuclear program with a working reactor located on the Korean peninsula under the direction of a certain Dr. Suzuki. The plan was to hopefully produce enough fissionable material to produce one bomb and place it in the hold of a scuttled Japanese warship at the spot that Allied forces would invade the souhternmost island, with the view of inflicting suchy horrid casualties as to literelly bring the war to a halt. Had Truman waited several months and let Operation Olympic go ahead and the Japanese carried out their plan, Trumkan would very likely have been impeached, if not shot. once it became known that we possessed the bomb and didnt use it to force a quicker Japananese surrencder. Macropolitical consierations aside, my own reason for affirming Truman's decision is more personal. My father was with a USN pacification team on Okinawa at the time and they were planning the invasion of the home islands. His survival of that action would have been problematic at best and my ouwn existence a mere probability.
Even strictly from the standpoint of the Japanese, the atomic bombings did them the enormous favor of forcing the war's rapid end with vastly fewer casualties. Such comparisons sound ghastly, but all the people who rave against the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to understand that the alternative was a MINIMUM of 1-2 million Japanese fatalities.
Excellent post.
Admiral Nimitz was so shocked by the bloodshed on Okinawa that he withdrew his support for an invasion of Japan, hoping that the country could be subdued by means of a blockade, naval gunfire, and bombing - conventional bombing since he knew almost nothing about the Manhattan project