It was not a hard decision for the then-War Department to authorize the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. Not after the unbelievable horror of the Battle of Okinawa, where over 12,000 American soldiers were killed, possibly 100,000 Japan soldiers were killed and maybe as many as 150,000 civilians were killed between March 26 to June 22, 1945. And that was just a preview of the bloodbath that awaited American and British troops if they tried to invade any of the Japanese home islands. Weary from six years of World War, the Americans needed a fast way to end the war—and the atomic bomb was the perfect means to impress on the Japanese government to accept the Potsdam Declaration.
My Dad spent most of the war in the CBI Theater of War. Everything was being shifted closer to Japan when the war ended.
He was in the initial Occupation of Japan and what the occupation forces saw scared them. It would have been horrible had we invaded.
Thank God for the bombs.