Don't go after the women children and elderly - that's just cowardly to slaughter them en masse to make a point.

The war was ended because of the decision by Pres. Truman to drop the bombs, thereby saving countless American and Japanese lives by avoiding an all out invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

My father was in Okinawa getting ready for the invasion when the devices were dropped, thereby very likely saving his life and mine for that matter.

It was a very horrible event, but I won't endorse it or condemn it, it was all out war against an enemy that refused to surrender, even after the first device was dropped.

I presume you cancel the B-29 raids, as well as the attacks on their shipping (which caused starvation).

What do you do?

Realistically if we take the bombs, invasion and food blockade off the table there are only two options-

One, move to a land war against the Japanese in China. It would have been unpopular, lasted for years and caused millions more casualties, mostly among the Chinese civilian population.

Two, negotiate a cease fire. The failure to complete the defeat of Japan would have been devastating to morale. While some concessions may have been obtained, Japan would have kept control over Korea, Formosa and Manchuria. It is possible some islands would have been given back.
Isolationism would return to the US. It is probable there would have been no Marshall Plan. The USSR would have been the dominant power in Europe.

Wars further back were even more horrific.

The issue really comes down to what was the reasoning behind what was the purpose of doing so.

The Japanese army conducted major offensives in China as late as 1944. Japanese war time behavior in China, going back to the 1930's was not pretty. China suffered greatly in the 20th century, and certainly Japanese behavior toward China, which certainly involved the loss of women and children, was a tremendous tragedy resulting in and causing that suffering. and that suffering needed to be stopped as expeditiously as possible by any means possible. (It continued well after the war, but the war set much of it in motion.)

Decency is always a casualty of war and the argument that one set of women and children is materially different than another, that one should be protected when their government is actively working to destroy other women and children for purposes of aggression, will not withstand moral scrutiny.

It is also notable that men are people too. Many Japanese war crimes involved men as well as women. This was not limited to soldiers, although soldiers are people. The construction of the Burma railway involved the enslavement and death of many local civilians and civilians brought in from other countries.

There were, and certainly could not be, any moral absolutes in the Second World War. War by its nature is an enterprise in eroding and ultimately eliminating morality, and thus the major onus stands on the cultures that start wars.

That’s why starting one is generally poor practice.

...I believe that the decision to drop the bombs was the right one.

War is always atrocity ratcheting; between 1936 and 1940 many nations being bombed and not being bombed objected to the atrocity of bombing cities. A short time later these same nations were bombing cities.

Arguably the specter of nuclear war prevented several World Wars that otherwise would have happened after 1945.

There is no evidence that Truman ever considered not dropping the bomb, but the argument that Japanese loses of life would have been greater in the absence of the nuclear attacks is a strong one.

Hirohito's surrender speech specifically referred to the nuclear attacks, and one should note that even after these dramatic events, there were still militants who wanted to continue the war.

The problem we now face is that the world is forgetting. We need to carefully disarm the nuclear arsenals of the holding nations, which involves transferring weapons grade actinides to use in nuclear power plants, thus denaturing that material. That would have the added benefit of doing something meaningful to address climate change, because all of this continuous hyping of so called "renewable energy" while focusing on banning nuclear energy is failing and failing dramatically.

The weapons grade material is a resource for a quick start up of defeating climate change, if we take out of the bombs and use it to breed strongly denatured plutonium and uranium in commercial reactors.

Look what happened in Okinawa. Civilians were conditioned to kill themselves rather than surrender. Japan was not going to give up without being conquered by land. That would've ended even worse. Even after the first bomb, they STILL wouldnt surrender. I wonder what would've happened if they hadnt finally surrendered after the 2nd bomb? Because we only had those two. Many people dont know that.

Looking at the videos of Beirut's explosion you can see a tiny, tiny version of what this horror was probably like

After that, the United States had 12 more in the pipeline.



U.S. Planned to Drop 12 Atomic Bombs on Japan

While there were a lot of projected Allied casualties in the Operation Downfall documents, what gets overlooked are the projected Japanese casualties both military and civilian.

Using Okinawa as a template, some of the casualty numbers projected for Japan were 10-15 million (I lean more towards the upper limit), mainly deaths. An invasion and movement thru the country would have caused large numbers of direct deaths but it would have also further disrupted the remaining infrastructure and critical need supplies (minor things like food and clean water).

IMO, an Allied invasion of the Japanese Islands would have further decimated the population and might have set become their reconstruction by decades driven by the almost total loss of a generation of Japanese.

Looking at it dispassionately, there is evidence to support the case that dropping the atomic bombs in early August was a more compassionate than a full fledged invasion of Japan.

I'm not sure what FDR and Truman would have said at that time about that, but can you imagine the deaths and injuries from that?

There was US military support for the use of gas vs. Japan.

Generals George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur and one of the assistant secretaries of war supported its use but, IIRC the British opposed the use of the gas as they were concerned that the Germans would retaliate (as this was before the German surrender).

At the time there was a wide expectation of a German invasion of Britain, and Churchill advocated using gas on the invasion beaches.

He raised the point several times afterwards.

Hitler would have retaliated, and the V-2 and V-1 would have made for a terrible outcome.

Hitler, of course, had been gassed himself, so he demurred from using it outside of the holocaust, where six million people were gassed. It is a measure of his cruelty that he used it on people who could not resist but declined to use it on people who could resist in kind. It was Trumpian of him.

The Americans in general were not fond of the gas idea, particularly the person who mattered most, Franklin Roosevelt.

Maybe not, I guess, since the government back in 1945 also refused to see the reality of defeat till the second bomb was dropped.

Dont take away any options with a threat like that.

should they feel the need to do so.

went to Nagasaki for safety.

was an Ensign, later a Lt. (jg) on a LST. Due to tides and beach topography, his ship would have beached on Japanese mainland with virtually no escape if the invasion of Japan had taken place. His crew and officers had no qualms about ending the war immediately.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

It served no military purpose. But it DID bring the end quicker.
You are not defeated until you STOP FIGHTING.
The Germans were not defeated until Berlin was overrun. Even though they didnt stand a chance. The Allies didnt hold up at the Rhine & say "Well, thats enough. We'll stop now"

lost control of their own air.

Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces

against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.

Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman

The Japanese right-wing extremist killed many Americans and other citizens.

Thank our Veterans for protecting our freedoms.