Some, in this very comments section, have argued it saved Japanese lives. I certainly have heard this argued elsewhere, too.
If it was just about American lives, ok, maybe. Sounds better than an invasion of mainland Japan, sure. Maybe there were even better alternatives. An hypothetical weapon which could simply evaporate all of Japan with all the people inside would also have saved American lives, but it doesn't seem so good, does it? The measure of "saving American lives" is a tricky one, and not every option is justified.
But it certainty was not a justification made back then. I don't think anybody argued people back then were considering that.
> Maybe there were even better alternatives.
If you disagree with the strategy followed, your argument would be more powerful if you had an alternative strategy that would have been more human.
I am very open to alternative strategies. I have fought about it a lot, but I don't really see it.
> An hypothetical weapon which could simply evaporate all of Japan with all the people inside would also have saved American lives, but it doesn't seem so good, does it?
Japan had 77 million people around there. If such a weapon existed. How many million Americans would you sacrifice in order not to use that weapon?
Would you for example kill everybody in New York even if 10-20 million would die anyway?
What is the calculation you would actually make if you were in the position. How many American 20 something would you sacrifice per Japanese civilian.
And how do you measure Japanese victims in China, Korea and other places that were suffering many causalities with every additional day of the war.
What's your evidence for this. From what we can tell from the knowledge of the people that actually matter in Japan, they were not that close to surrender.
Even if you had gone away from Unconditional surrender they were not close to a majority.
Even after 2 nuclear bombs, the peace party didn't have a majority, it required the emperor taking a direct political role against the war party to manage getting negotiations.
Soviets were just mopping up in Northern Asia, they were no thread to a Homeland of Japan. At best Soviets was a hope held up by some in the War Party, that if somehow they would flip against the US with them.
> If this was truly about saving lives, like the traditional American narrative goes
It was about saving AMERICAN lives back then. And it did.