One potential flaw in much of the historical analysis of this subject is that it's predicated on the assumption that there were only two options available to the U.S. government at the time: (1) drop atomic bombs on major Japanese cities (with certain risk to Japanese civilians); or (2) invade Japan (with certain risk to U.S. soldiers).
I have yet to see any compelling case made that the U.S. ever had to invade Japan in 1945 -- or any time after that -- in order to win World War II.
Really? You really see no compelling evidence that the U.S. would have had to invade Japan to end World War II, if not for dropping the atomic bombs?
Please elaborate. I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, but would like to consider your point of view. I see what you are saying about assumptions of two options available to end the war, but just don’t see offhand what other options were available to us at the time. Please explain.
Then I suggest you go back and read the history of the War, starting with the invasion of Manchuria. Study how the Japanese acted when we fought them on Guadalcanal, or any of the other islands as the Pacific Fleet advanced on Japan. Out of a garrison estimated at 5000 troops on one of those islands, 2 surrendered. The rest either fought to the death or committed suicide. If you think they would have fought with less ferocity on their own soil, you are sadly mistaken. It would have taken an invasion of Japan to force them to surrender had it not been for the atomic bomb. Indeed, we might still be fighting door-to-door had it not been so.
Because your question is framed in the counterfactual condition, one cannot answer it in certain. However, given their previous behavior, there is no reason to think they would have gone quietly into the night.
“My basic approach on this subject is that there is no legal or moral justification for any military action whose sole purpose is the deliberate (or indiscriminate) destruction of civilians. You can go back through thousands of years of Judaeo-Christian moral principles and find that this has been the case since antiquity.”
Like when God killed non-Israelite first borns? I am guessing you don’t count that as neither civilian casualty nor Judaeo-Christian history.
How else, then, would the war have ended? The Japanese had already made clear, in the battles on the various Pacific islands, that they would fight to the last man, woman, and child. Even after the second bomb was dropped, most of the Japanese high command wanted to continue to fight. It was only the courageous statement by the Emperor that convinced the military command to give up the fight before a devastating final invasion occurred.
Quoting from your own entry:
” [W]e can not hope to judge such matters unless we ourselves have been submitted to the same pressures, the same provocations, as these men, whose actions are on trial.”
It is obvious that you have never been in a position of making a decision anywhere near like those which had to be made in WWII.
Like you said, “...I have yet to see...” How nice for you, an aerie of smug discernment, written large- in the aftermath, of your unbounded freedom from inhuman ideologies. You gave nothing, and received the gift of Freedom. Someday, you will experience “basic” gratitude.
How? By soliloquy?