The atomic bombs, cruel as they were, saved lives. Japanese lives. Millions of them.
Japan was going to run out of food in about 90 days, assuming the means of distributing it were not disrupted earlier, which was likely. As many as 20,000,000 would not have made it through the winter.
The A bombs saved an estimated 500,000 American dead and wounded.
Casualties they were expecting were so high that every Purple Heart that has been given to American military dead and wounded since WWII ended is a leftover from those made and expected to have been given out as the result of an invasion of Japan.