Perhaps we could have set up a blockade around Japan, but starving them to death would have been cruel, you are right.
I hope Alberta’s Child will elaborate on how we could have ended the war without the A-bomb and without a conventional invasion of Japan.
I think one point that is being conveniently forgotten is that this country by the Summer of 1945 was very War weary.
The possibility of Invading Japan or even blockading them for any extended time till surrender were concepts that the American Public may not have been willing to do if the option of dropping the Bomb would end the war once and for all immediately.