Just FYI, my grandfather was in the 821st AEB (army airforce engineers) Battalion and I was very close to him. He was actually loaded and ready to go from Luzon P.I. to invade Japan when the bombs were dropped. So no I dont have this opinion because I don’t care for the lives of US servicemen like my Papaw.
It’s possible we could have forced surrender, still saved US lives and spared the population of 2 Japanese cities with a first strike on a military target.
Isn’t that worth a chance?
Your musings fly in the face of reality. The hardliners wanted to keep going down to the last Japanese citizen. It took the second bomb for Hirohito to realize it was over.
After 4 years, and millions of lives lost, it was past time to end it.
The Americans sacrificed just about everything during WWII. I recall my mother telling me her family's gas ration was 3 gallons a week. She lived near Portland, and I tried numerous times to get her to talk about her neighbors and friends that were shipped off to Japanese internment camps. She never talked about it, I finally gave up.
One of her cousins enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor. He called his mom from the SF shipyards, "Mom, we're shipping out today, no idea where."
She would not hear from him again for 3 years.
A "demonstration" bomb would not have served the purpose you so ardently desire.