The invasion of Okinawa killed something like 140,000 civilians, in addition to the horrific military casualties. That's just Okinawa.

Holy shit, that's insane...

The civilian death toll just in ETO Belgium is higher than that of Nagasaki. War is fucked up.

It's total war. That's what happens.

The atomic bomb was horrific in its effect, but it was no different that the industrial scale bombardment implemented throughout the war.

Even a cursory study of this subject going back to the manipulations in China in the 1930s makes it pretty clear that the US/Allied cause was righteous.

The firebombing of Tokyo itself did much worse. The projected losses were so insanely higher for ALL sides it's just stupid to act as though the bombings were not the best options available. I consume every bit of WWII history I can get my hands on, but your suggestion is nothing but revisionist. Please stop spreading this insane notion.

I don't claim to be well-versed on WWII history, but that's my opinion until I hear a convincing argument as to why using a nuclear bomb was necessary. Just saying it was the "best option" isn't too convincing imo. There were many prominent scientists who advised against using it, so it wasn't a unanimous decision as you make it out to be.

> The firebombing of Tokyo itself did much worse.

Are you considering the aftereffects of radiation on top of the civilian death toll?

I think the U.S. is quite fortunate that they bombed Japan and not another country. Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing in such a short period of time. It makes people who blame the U.S. look bad because "oh but they're doing fine now, so it wasn't that big of a deal".

Wikipedia says the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki killed 129,000–246,000+ (in a single week). The bombings of Tokyo killed 75,000–200,000 (over 3 years). The debate over whether more lives would have been lost if the bombs had not been dropped is entirely hypothetical and moreover has been the subject of debate amongst historians since the end of WWII, notwithstanding the confident pronouncements of authoritative-sounding posters on hackernews who don't appear to be able to accurately compare the relative death tolls of the two tragedies.

> the confident pronouncements of authoritative-sounding posters on hackernews who don't appear to be able to accurately compare the relative death tolls of the two tragedies.

Right? One thread a JS expert, the next thread an authority on WWII. Welcome to HN :P

Again, what we did to Tokyo was far worse and that somehow never comes up. In this case, nukes were actually not the worst thing we did. I never claimed a unanimous decision, but even with hindsight there is no convincing argument you could possibly make for an alternative invasion of Japan. It would simply have been to horrible for all parties.

> Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing

Ever heard of the Wirtschaftswunder? US support post-war was crucial for a lot of countries' recovery.

Yes, the casualty figures for the bombs include radiation.

From what I can tell, it is difficult to make an argument against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki based on the civilian toll. The pacification of Japan without the bomb would seemingly have led to far more civilian deaths.

>The pacification of Japan without the bomb would seemingly have led to far more civilian deaths.

Just curious on how you could have arrived at this conclusion?

Because just the invasion of Okinawa led to more civilian deaths.