The claim that the Japanese were finished just isn’t supported by the facts as the Allied leadership understood them at the time, or as subsequent history has shown.
There was no indication that prior to the bombings that the Imperial government was prepared to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, in fact, there were no realistic diplomatic initiatives that had the sanction of the government. The documentary evidence just isn't there.
On the other hand, there is abundant evidence, known then and uncovered later, that the home defense was intended to be a fight to the finish. The OLYMPIC and CORONET invaders would have encountered regular army divisions in prepared fortifications, assisted by civilians, all of whom, if the defense of the island garrisons at Iwo Jima and Okinawa was any indication, were prepared to _literally_ fight to the last man, woman and child.
A Navy blockade of the Islands, if it could be maintained -- the Navy was losing nearly a ship per day from kamikaze strikes at Okinawa -- would probably have resulted in mass starvation with risks of epidemic disease and a complete breakdown in social order with consequences that surely would have taken history in a different direction than it has.
I don't believe that modern hand-wringing and revisionist history accomplishes much. Truman made the right decision based on what he knew at the time, and the historical record supports him. Ask a soldier, sailor or Marine veteran of Okinawa or Bataan if Truman made the correct call. Ask their wives or widows.
One thing that has not been mentionned in the decision to bomb Japan : the “probable” total elimination of the Japanese people themselves. Do you remember Saipan ? Do you remember the civilian throwing themselves off the cliffs because they believed the soldiers that the Americans would kill and/or torture them all ? Halsey’s 1941 prediction would have come true, the Japanese language would only have been spoken in Hell, with a lot of Allied casualties to keep them company. Also, a democracy is ill-equiped to fight a protacted conflict, when the enemy is no longer perceived as being dangerous, which might be a dangerous thing, over time, anybody can recover and everybody has long memories. The psychological shock of the bomb was needed (one plane, one bomb, minus one city).
I’ve heard this claimed before, but it’s not true. On August 10th, Gen. Groves informed Gen. Marshall that a 2nd plutonium bomb would be ready to ship to Tinian on the 12th or 13th, and could be dropped on Japan by August 17th or 18th. Carl Spaatz propsed that same day to Lauis Norstad, Air Corps Chief of Staff, that this bomb be dropped on Tokyo. By July 24th, Sec. of War Harry Stimson had already reported to Truman that if the plutonium bomb design was successful, three such bombs would be ready by September, and seven more by December. This is the design that was proven at the Trinity test - the scientists at Los Alamos were so sure the uraninum design would work that it was dropped on Hiroshima untested.
Plutonium bomb production, however, ran ahead of schedule, and two of the bombs at least would be ready in August, though of course only one was used, being the one dropped on Nagasaki.
In the absence of acceptable overtures of peace from Japan, there were only two options that appeared to ensure victory:[list=1][li]Drop the bombs and hope Japan would capitulate.[/li]
[li]Invade Japan.[/list=1]I seriously believe the first option was the more humane. Why? Although it was a gamble, it brought the war to a swift conclusion. It saved not only the lives of American soldiers, but also, given the examples of Saipan and Okinawa, saved the lives of many more Japanese soldiers and civilians. It saved America from the even more brutal act of destroying Japan one person at a time, as quickly as possible.[/li]
War at its best is not pretty. Each Japanese outpost had cost more lives to take than the last. Each had not only killed American and Japanese soldiers, but showed the Japanese capable of “bravely fighting to the last man”. Many civilians did commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the American soldiers who, they were told, would do unspeakable things to them. The American soldiers, not being the evil devils their Japanese opponents imagined, suffered the awful necessity of continuing to fight a people who could not hope for victory but would still not stop fighting and killing them.
War is brutal. It demoralizes not only the vanquished, but the victor. War consists of having to choose between several courses of action, all of which will ensure that property is destroyed and that people will die and suffer grievously, often for no better reason than they happened to be in the way. It is often not clear until afterwards (if then) which courses of action will prove effective. Sometimes a successful action is successful due to blind circumstance, rather than foresightful planning. Dropping the bombs was ultimately the best of several possible courses of action. I believe many more lives would have been lost by both sides (most by Japan) had the U.S. had to invade.
Of course the use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable today, but America was fighting two wars at once,and at it for four years fighting the toughest people on the planet knowing full well that the bloodshed spent so far demanded total surrender At that time, anyone who was president would have made the same decision. As pointed out previously, the benefits of that decision were more far reaching than ever anticipated. First, there has been no significant world scale conflict since then. Suez,Korea, Cuba,Vietnam,Grenada, Falklands, Kuwait, and Yugoslavia have all been relatively small engagements compared to the great wars. No major country is going to foolishly risk nuclear war. Second, total surender has resulted in enormous benefits to both victor and vanquished as shown in Germany, Japan, Grenada, and the Falklands. There was no other way to secure total surender in Japan. How many people today are scratching their heads wondering what’s happening in Iraq.
Also, lets remember that we’re bring 55 years of hindsight into the discussion when we say “nuclear bomb”. We know about the serious risks of nuclear fallout and radiation, about the Cold War, and that we now have weapons that could, for all practical purposes, destroy human civilization and cause unsurpassed ecological destruction. For President Truman and his aides, it was a really big bomb that could take out most of a city, but, other than that, it wasn’t substantially different from all the little bombs both sides had been using throughout the war. Instead of a bomber squadron causing the destruction, a single bomb could. Do I think the dropping of the bombs were neccesary for Japan to surrender? Probably not, but maybe. If I were President Truman, given what he knew, would I make the same choice he did? Yes.