Not likely any of the decision makers back in 1941 managed to be at Nagasaki or Hiroshima and get nuked only to survive until today.
My Dad had been LeMay's flying crew chief. My existence relies on a chain of events thinner than the finest hair anywhere in the universe.
I don't blame women and children for their nation's wars.
"I don't blame women and children for their nation's wars."
I don't blame them either, nor did Truman. But the fact of the matter is that the Emperor would have fought on endlessly unless it could be demonstrated that Hirohito faced the total annihilation of his people from a weapon that he could not stop. Civilians always suffer in war, particularly when their leadership is willing to sacrifice them.
Any informed source will contend that American AND Japanese lives were saved by the bombs that finally broke Hirohito's will.
And I don't blame Harry Truman for a decision that may have traded 200,000 casualties for 2.2 million. The Japanese forces on the Asian mainland were killing somewhere around 250,000 and 400,000 civilians a month, so there would have been 750,000 to 1.2million deaths in august, September and October. Then, the invasion on 1 November would have cost about a million or more lives, mostly civilians.
Truman would have to have been a monster to hold it back.