I believe the severity of the fighting, convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like, and tipped the scales in favor of using the Atom Bomb.
“I believe the severity of the fighting, convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like, and tipped the scales in favor of using the Atom Bomb.”
Then the US lives lost were not in vain. The airstrip that resulted helped end the war, too.
Yes, the severity of our casualties “convinced the leaders that this was what an invasion of Japan was going to be like..”
Forget the Kai Bird version of events, and that of other leftist fake historians.
People forget that the Japanese Imperial Army in China, according to at least one item I read, numbered up to 2,000,000 men and held a lot of Chinese mainland territory.
We could not have fought them on the ground to defeat without paying a truly horrible price (the same for the British/Indian/Burmese and Kuomintang Chinese Nationalist forces. The Communists under Mao were not going to waste their men fighting the Japanese, just like Ho Chi Minh DID NOT wage total warfare against the Japanese in Indochina (he held his main forces back so that they could take over when the Japanese surrendered and before the French could come back).
We did not have another ready nuke to take out any Mainland China army as an example of what awaited the rest of them (the next A bomb being worked on was at least 3 months away, if not 6 or more and there were no more plans for additional ones).
By nuking Japan and inflicting terrible but well known casualties on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we forced the Japanese Imperial leadership to realize that would could systematically destroy their homeland without an invasion.
That is what brought about their “unconditional surrender”.
My father-in-law, a veteran Army soldier (75th JASCO) of 4 Pacific Island landings including Tinian, Saipan and Iwo Jima told me that he knew he wasn’t going to come back.
My father was on standby orders with the Chemical Warfare Service to go to Australia to help oversee our Chemical weapons already prepositioned there in case the Japanese resorted to them in their final homeland stand.
Another friend of mine, a medic, was onboard a ship sailing for Japan when the big ones were dropped. He said once they got the word what happened, the ship turned around to another destination.
We are here today because our fathers/relatives/in-laws and complete American soldier/sailor and Air Force men and women did not have to go “in” to Japan.
Never let the Left tell you that using the atomic bomb was immoral. It was the most “moral” thing Pres. Truman could do to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of American, Allied forces, and Japanese soldiers/civilians lives.
No regrets. Only wish he had more A bombs to take out the Mainland Japanese armies.