Quote:
Originally Posted by Real Dodger
Not a mistake. The bond not only saved 500,00 American lives or so, they saved MILLIONS of Japanese lives. Specifically, the Japanese were not going to surrender, and they had no food to eat, 100,000,000 people had no food to eat.
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I was referring to our mistakes as a society, not whether a justification existed for a specific decision. I agree that, in the time and at the moment, President Truman's decision to use atomic weapons is eminently defensible. The mistake(s) I refer to was society allowing the forces that came to power in Japan and Germany to achieve such power and use it in the fashion they did.
The only nit I'd pick with your post is that it was more than American lives. While the US had, by a large margin, the biggest force deployment in the South Pacific and would have suffered the most casualties in an invasion of Japan, the other major western Allied nations (Britain, Canada, New Zealand) also had a significant force presence in the Pacific theatre.