General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Truman wanted to end the most destructive war in human history. The cost in men and materiel was off the charts. The USSR was poised to enter, and make a colony of, Japan, an untenable reach for the West. Truman could have invaded Japan. Estimates were that it would cost the lives of 500,00 American soldiers. Suppose that was widely off the mark, and America lost (only) 50,000 men? How could Truman justify such a loss to his people, all in a war not of their doing? It has often been suggested by people ignorant of the war, that Truman could have bombed a few uninhabited islands to show the Japanese what they faced. Bombing a few islands would only have spurred them to greater retaliation. The Japanese had a no surrender policy. They believed in it so thoroughly that they murdered captured American soldiers as cowards for surrendering. Different psyche. At Iwo Jima in 1945, 6,200 US soldiers died. On Okinawa, 13,000 Americans were killed, all by fight-to the-death enemies. And, in fact, even the Hiroshima bomb did not deter the Japanese. Truman waited a full week after the Hiroshima bomb, and the Japanese refused to give up. A second bomb on Nagasaki did the trick. After the war, captured Japanese war plans showed that the Japanese believed that if they fought long enough, despite the cost in Japanese lives, the Americans would agree to a worldwide cease fire, with every country keeping the land they occupied at the end of hostilities.

There is much more, of course, but there is the nutshell version.

It constantly amazes me that we have congenital idiots who think they can nitpick the decisions that were made. There must be some on this site who remember, as do I, the tenor of the times. I was a kid, and with other kids, we cheered at the news, Coventry and the Blitz fresh in our minds. We cheered Dresden, too. It was a terrible thing, sure. War is terrible. That’s why it is called War. In the countries that start wars, there are no innocent victims. Whether they supported their government or not, whether they rejoiced or lamented at their victories – does not matter. The cruel irony is that people who have no power are nevertheless responsible, and suffer for, the misdeeds of their governments. Japan and Germany learned that hard truth. At Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and in Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden.

Truman had no practical choice, did the right thing, and the world is better for it.