[fredhead]

Truman made a decision that saved many lives. If it hadn’t been for that decision I probably wouldn’t be here. Dad was training for the invasion of Japan when the bombs were dropped.

On the other hand, if not for Adolf Hitler, I might not be here. Dad wouldn’t have joined the Army, and wouldn’t have been on maneuvers in Tennessee where he met my mother.

Crazy how things worked out.

[RayChuang88]

After the bloodbaths that was the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where very few Japanese soldiers were captured alive (and at a horrible cost to American troops), the War Department estimated that the physical invasion of Japan could have cost 1 million American soldiers' lives, maybe 8 to 9 times that in Japanese soldiers' lives, and up to 15 million civilian lives. It could have been the worse military bloodbath in recorded human history, even more than the Battle of the Somme in July to November 1916.

Small wonder why the War Department authorized the use of the atomic bomb to finally force the Japanese to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.