The only thing special about the A-Bomb is that it was a single plane delivering a big bang! The Fire Bombings of Tokyo and Dresden were equally horrific in their effect but just needed more aircraft to carry out.
There are few of the WW2 Allied soldiers/sailors/airmen who doubted that many lives were saved in A-Bombing Hiroshima & Nagasaki. It gave the Japanese Emperor and his advisors an ‘out’ to over-rule the Bushido-crazed militarists who hoped to stalemate a clear end to the Pacific War and thus negotiate a better (for them) surrender.
The bloodbath that was Okinawa was a foretaste of what an invasion of the ‘Home Islands’ would have cost in time, lives and effort. The Japanese militarists were convinced that waves of women and children smothering the Allied beachheads while the Japanese soldiers killed from dug-in positions would so sicken the war-weary Allied Nations as to force them to do something other than invading more than once.
Before someone scoffs at the idea of women and children being so dangerous, remember Vietnam and what behaviors they were capable of then. Revisionist history is endlessly critical of the US and the Allies but also endlessly optimistic of what something else could have done. I’m not convinced!
In the early 1970s I was stationed on Okinawa and learnt some of the history..
at the south end of Okinawa there are caves where people hid from the Allies in those final days of the war..
there was a group of young school girls who were told if the Americans caught them they would be raped so they killed themselves and their bodies were found in one of the big caves...
another group were Japanese generals etc who threw themselves over the cliffs ...
When we visited the spot there were Japanese people in the cave worshiping the girls or saying silent prayers at the cliff top ...
It was eerie to say the least...