[dvwjr]

"I wonder why one never asks the question why Hirohito did not give up earlier faced with a losing position. In fact, even after two cities were vaporized, he was still reluctant to give up. Fortunately he did. We had no ability to conduct many more A bomb raids and most of the other high value city targets had already been reduced to ashes."

Not true, a third atomic bomb was being transported from th US for use against Japan. After that there would have been a pause until October for the next series of a-bombs. Projections for war-time use were around ten bombs a month at first. End of the war cut production until 1946.

dvwjr

[Mouton]

I said many more raids...it was not like we had a strategic stockpile of 100s of them. I know there were more so we are discussing the extent of them, not that there were none.

The thrust of my comments was not the number of bombs, it was why does not anyone question why Hirohito did not give up before he did facing an onslaught they knew was coming. Yes they had a large number of soldiers but a limited availability to move them around. Their airforce was reduced to a large number of planes to be employed as kamikasi planes and their navy was only deployed in the inland sea. So, it appears Hirohito and his war lords decided at first to fight to the last man. To me that means that worked till they were worried they would be reduced to ashes with little loss of live by the US. Hardly does that make us the bad guy here.