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I hate to burst the bubble of The Telegraph's Mr. Christopher Booker; the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the only way to end the Pacific War without a full scale invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin November 1945. Casualties for the Allies were estimated to be a million KIA and WIA. Casualties for the Japanese up to 5 million. The slaughter would have been beyond belief. The two atomic bombs convinced all but the most fanatic hardliners the war was lost.

Curiously, these two atom bombings — horrible as they were — killed less than the conventional firebombing campaign done by the B-29’s of the 21st Bomber Command, USAAF. On the night of 9-10 March 1945, 334 B-29’s attacked Tokyo with M69 incendiary bombs. The firestorm killed approximately 100,000 people, made another 1,000,000 homeless, and burned 40% of Japan's largest city. By 6 August 1945, the Nagasaki strike, the majority of Japan's large, medium, and small cities had been devastated by fire from the sky. The fire raids killed more people than both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Mr. Booker did not do his homework.