I've said any number of times, Freightdawg, that a "frontal assault on Japan" would never have been necessary anyway...regardless of whether there had never even been an atomic bomb! But that doesn't seem to occur to people anxious to justify what already happened. Japan was in such a sorry and miserable postion that they would have had a change of government and sued for peace within probably less than a year...probably less than six months...with NO invasion whatsoever! Just a continued blockade, accompanied by the inevitable Russian push into Manchuria. The loss of American lives? Absolutely negligible. It was the entry of Russia into the conflict that really floored the Japanese, even more than the atomic bombs did. They were by that point utterly helpless to do any serious harm to either the Americans or the Russians and would definitely have gone for peace at just about any price within quite a short time (I'd give it 2 to 3 months at the most, in fact).

All that was needed in Washington was a little patience.

Those bombs were not needed to defeat Japan. They were needed (presumably...) to scare the Soviets and demonstrate American striking power. Think about it.

Here's another one to think about: Stalin had shown no interest in the bomb whatsoever, despite a hint to him at Yalta that the USA had a "special weapon". He seems to have not taken that hint seriously...he may have thought it was another rocket with a conventional warhead, like the Germans had used on England. At any rate, he wasn't impressed...UNTIL Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Then he was so impressed that it started an arms race that consumed Russia and America's attention for the next 45 or more years, and brought the world to the edge of destruction once or twice (that we know about).

On the other hand...devil's advocate...I think there would definitely have been a shooting war between the Warsaw Pact and the West in the 50's without the Bomb...and it would have killed tens or hundreds of millions. So should we be grateful for the Bomb? Maybe.

It still doesn't justify incinerating 2 cities full of oriental people in order to forestall an invasion that never needed to be launched anyway.

- LH