If those bombs were not dropped, and with the information the United States had on Japan at the time, the United States was prepared to invade Japan at a cost of up to the lives of 1,000,000 American soldiers and millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians. Thousands of lives were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that millions were not.
Thousands of lives were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that millions were not.
The strange thing is, you always hear about the two atomic attacks, but hardly anything about the firebombing raids on dozens of Japanese cities in March-April of 1945, with death tolls that were in the millions. To me, that would be more horrible. A slow, inescapable death from a massive firestorm, rather than instant nuclear obliteration.
You’re forgetting one other thing: If the US had to invade so would have the Soviets. All of Korea would be the PROK and Hokkaido and perhaps half of Honshu would have been the People’s Republic of Japan. Imagine a DMZ running just north of Tokyo and tell me those bombs weren’t justified.