You got that right... The Russians saw the opportunity to dominate Eastern Europe and gain control of China and Japan. The Russians wanted to try to negotiate a truce with Japan that would have eliminated any US influence in that part of the world.

By the end of WWII, it had been proven that the Germans murdered millions of European civilians, the Japs were as brutal, if not more brutal to the civilian populations of China and Southeastern Asia.

Instead of of bringing these civilizations and cultures to their knees, should we have resurrected the ghost of Neville Chamberlain, to go and talk to these despotic leaders and wait for them to utter "there will peace in our time."

Anderson,
"Really? Me, I don't have much respect for people who use words like "honorable" and "just" without having the slightest clue what they mean."
"Different strokes for different folks, I guess."

You are right, I would never try to define "honorable" and "just" to you. But, based on your "Cum by Yah" sense of foreign policy, leads me to think that I was and continue to be more "right" than "wrong."

Why Truman Dropped the Bomb
Takes a while, but eventually concludes that the "surrender" offer scheduled to be made via the USSR was phony -
` The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.`

Also points out non-Japanese civilian deaths would continue -
`This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, verwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.`

Really? Me, I don't have much respect for people who use words like "honorable" and "just" without having the slightest clue what they mean.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I believe that the bombing these two Japanese cities not only saved American lives, it saved many Japanese lives.

Invading and conquering Japan would have brought forth many more casualties on both sides than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The civilian population of Japan proved that they would fight to the death in the battle of Okinawa. I think that battle, in the latter stages of the Pacific War, was one of the deciding factors that convinced the leaders in our government that destroying vestiges civilian populations in Japan would hasten an end to the war. And thus, saving American lives. Good call, Thousands of them equated to one of us...and I believe in the equation...if killing thousands of them would have save one of us...so be it...that was a good thing.

The A-bombs were not necessary to win the war against Japan. Japan had no navy left and depended on imports to survive. Blockade was the obvious solution, tho itself liable to kill many civilians.

More importantly, the Soviet nonrenewal of its treaty with Japan (the day before Nagasaki), which was no surprise to us, dashed their last hopes for a deus ex machina.

Killing tens of thousands of civilians as a terror tactic, which is exactly what we did, is not "necessary" in any sense of the word.

Things were done differently by all parties back then. We did what was necessary.

Prayers and thoughts go out to all that are serving now and to their families as they wait.

Richard Frank's Downfall makes the most persuasive case for the A-bombings that I've seen, but ducks the larger question of whether we should have been burning down cities (women, children, babies, the old and the sick) in the first place. He opens with the horrors of the Tokyo firestorm, which probably killed more people than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki did.

My mother worked for him and his business partner for several years.

It is a shame that he requested to be buried in an unmarked grave to avoid making himself a gathering point for people with a political agenda.

But in a way it tells you a lot about the man.