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.