It seems you're under the impression I was arguing the Japanese weren't war criminals with many of their WW2 actions or that I believe they ought to have won the war, or at least that I believe the US ought to have lost WW2, or some variation of that.
But if you read carefully what I wrote, I'm saying nothing of the sort, am I? I'm arguing about the atomic bombings and American beliefs about their justification.
So spare me the description of Japanese war crimes: I'm aware of them and I wouldn't want to live in a world where Imperial Japan had won WW2.
This is not complicated: the justification was it ended the war faster and reduced further death and destruction.
The Japanese were not planning on surrendering before the any atomic bombs were dropped. They were not planning to surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped. They only just started to waver after the second.
There would be a lot more suffering as the US slogged their way through the Home Islands:
> In addition, the Japanese had organized the Volunteer Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men aged 15 to 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people, for combat support and, later, combat jobs. Weapons, training and uniforms were generally lacking: many were armed with nothing better than antiquated firearms, molotov cocktails, longbows, swords, knives, bamboo or wooden spears, and even clubs and truncheons: they were expected to make do with what they had.[63][64] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."[65] They were expected to serve as a "second defense line" during the Allied invasion, and to conduct guerrilla warfare in urban areas and mountains.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Ground_forc...
Dropping the atomic bombs saved lives, both American and Japanese (and others), over the alternatives.
I don't understand what you think this paragraph adds to the conversation. It obviously is complicated, since this is what I've been arguing against for dozens of comments now: the rest of the world outside the US doesn't agree with this explanation.
You don't have to take anything the Americans said into account, but to merely look at the actions of the Japanese themselves:
Two atomic bombs being dropped on them was not decisive in getting the Cabinet to decide to surrender. It took the Emperor's involvement to break the deadlock and even then there was a coup attempt to stop the surrender:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
And even those things were only barely over the line:
> When word of the emperor’s decision reached General Toroshiro Kawabe, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army, he noted in his diary that he concurred with another senior general in doubting that the overseas commanders would comply with the emperor’s order. That these officers correctly doubted even an order from the emperor would secure compliance with key parts of the armed forces, was swiftly confirmed by messages from the commanders in China and the Southern Area, declaring they would not comply with the surrender. Their commands mustered between a quarter and a third of all Japanese servicemen. It took Hirohito’s personal emissaries to persuade these commands to surrender.
* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japans-surren...
Those two reasons are IMHO sufficient to me (as a non-American).
How else would you get the Japanese to surrender? AFAICT, this could have been done in the (i) 'traditional' way with troops invading the Home Islands, or (ii) with the atomic bomb. The estimates on the land invasion:
> The U.S. Sixth Army, which would invade and occupy Kyushu, estimated 124,935 U.S. battle casualties, including 25,000 dead, plus 269,000 non-battle casualties (disease, accident, etc.) for Kyushu alone. The JCS came up with an estimate that a 90-day campaign on Kyushu would cost 156-175,000 battle casualties, with 38,000 killed in action. By late July, the JCS was forecasting 500,000 casualties at the high end and 100,000 at the low end. In late July 1945, the War Department provided an estimate that the entire Downfall operations would cause between 1.7 to 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400-800,000 U.S. dead, and 5 to 10 million Japanese dead. (Given that the initial Downfall plan called for 1,792,700 troops to go ashore in Japan, this estimate is indeed most sobering, and suggests many more troops than planned would need to be fed into a meat grinder).
* https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/di...
The US (Truman and others) concluded that they were not willing to have Allied troops suffer just the Japanese refused to accept the reality that they were beaten (which the Japanese knew themselves in 1944). And while the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese from the atomic bombs is regrettable, the lives of several more million Japanese were spared.
What other method(s) of ending the war with Japan do you use besides the above (i) or (ii) above?
Please, I'm curious to know, what scenarios you / "the rest of the world outside the US" think were possible. Can you outline them?
I'm just pointing out few outside the US believe in the narrative that the atomic bombings were used "to save lives" and therefore justified.
You want to drag this conversation into something it's not. I also invite you to read the other threads of this discussion, I'm not going to rehash it for you here.
I'm well aware of the literature on the subject. A non-exhaustive list of various books on the various positions is available in this handy thread:
You seem to want me to rehash my position (also asserting "it's not that complicated") when it's obvious it is complicated (otherwise people wouldn't hold disagreements so strongly, even here) and also you could simply read about my position or other's in this very comments section of HN.
The fact you mistook the position under discussion to be about Japanese crimes (which is why you so vehemently described them), when it was about alleged justifications for the atomic bombings, also makes me think it's indeed a complicated topic.
What I am telling you is that I am not going to rehash my position again for your benefit. Read it elsewhere in this comments section. If you feel like you must simply restate what others have already said, maybe don't? It adds nothing to the conversation.
It's a good thing that the US did not lose the war, as otherwise the large part of the planet would be living under a xenophobic/racist, totalitarian regime that viewed foreigners of little value and did experimentation on human subjects:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
The Japanese War Council were not planning on surrendering after the first atomic bomb:
> The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know how very difficult building it would be. Therefore, many Japanese and in particular the military members of the government refused to believe the United States had built an atomic bomb, and the Japanese military ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of Hiroshima's destruction.[84] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.[85] American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large supply.[61][86]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Hiroshima,_...
Even after the second bomb there was still some disagreement:
> In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyūshū, had been hit by a second atomic bomb (called "Fat Man" by the United States). By the time the meeting ended, the Big Six had split 3–3. Suzuki, Tōgō, and Admiral Yonai favored Tōgō's one additional condition to Potsdam, while General Anami, General Umezu, and Admiral Toyoda insisted on three further terms that modified Potsdam: that Japan handle their own disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals, and that there be no occupation of Japan.[96]
* Ibid
And even after the Emperor ordered the cessation of hostilities (note: he never used the word "surrender" in his address) there were still elements in Japan who wanted to fight:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident