Your comments are chillingly arrogant. US invasion casualties were forecast to be over one million men.
"Your comments are chillingly arrogant. US invasion casualties were forecast to be over one million men."
Your comments are chillingly ignorant.
Right there in your response is the cxrux of the issue:
"...casualities were estimated to be over one million men..."
Estimated. There's that word again.
And that "estimate" does not take into consideration a variety of factors: how long before Japan finally starved, how long before critical shortages of materials brought the entire Japanese nation to a screeching halt, how long could the Russians be expected to remain a somewhat-freindly memeber of the Alliance?
The sad truth of the matter is that while "one million casualties" is a significant and chilling number, we'll never know if it was accurate, nor will we ever know if it could have been mitigated. The fact is that the United States and it's allies were sout of soldiers come 1945, and in that regard, 1 million casualties is a price no one wanted to pay (nor should they have). I take question with the "morality" that says 150,000 incinerated Japanese was more "humane" then allowing them to die of starvation or disease, or by a bullet to the brainpan, if the end result is the same: dead Japanese and an enemy who has surrendered.
If I used your logic, then Pearl Harbor was a "humane" attack because, while 2,400 American's died at anchor, thousands more would have died in the open ocean if the fleet had put to sea to meet the initially superior Japanese fleet.