no one will ever know for sure how many American and other Allied troops would've died if we invaded.
no one will ever know how many civilians.
but the Japanese were not trying to surrender.
a few of the emperors advisors wanting to means nothing.
i would hope they advised him not to start the war in the first place.

the japanese army was not giving up.
and the people were going to do what they were told.
namely, kill every non-japanese person they saw,
even if it meant killing themselves.
to think no, or not many, allied (American) soldiers would've been killed in an invasion is crazy talk.

there were many reasons for dropping the bombs.
just because it was a strong demonstration to russia,
doesn't mean it didn't also save lives.
just because japan was sealed off and was running out of resources,
doesn't mean they didn't have hundreds of planes ready to be flown into enemy ships,
or millions of civilians who could live off bugs hiding around every corner in the country.
more japanese civilians would easily have been killed with prolonged conventional bombing and invasion.
it just would've been more drawn out.
and it would've come with the price tag of 'God only knows' how many US troops.
what did the US owe japan to make it worth even 1 more American life to conquer them more 'humanely'?

a little off topic,
but its always amazed me who was allied in ww2.
imperial japan and nazi germany both saw themselves as the 'master race',
and saw everyone else as inferior.
yet they had no problem allying with each other to fight a war against the rest of the civilized world.
and the fact that the soviet union was suposedly on the good side hurts my head.
stalin was probably responsible for more deaths than all the axis partners combined.
and yet,
he gets to be one of the big three and the USSR gets to emerge as a superpower

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