A million of ours, two million of theirs (and yes, I know that sounds backwards; I may be remembering it wrong, but the USN bombarded the coast every night for a year before the bombs, too. ) People today don't understand the mentality summed up in "death before dishonor" and few have heard the stories of hardened war veterans who knew they couldn't win but were dug into caves and cliff sides where they knew the death toll to finish them off would be staggering. VERY few people understand or even know about Japanese fascism driven by an Army Party as committed to nationalism and militarism as the worst German Nazi. Or remember the Bataan death march where not just soldiers but medical personnel were summarily executed if they couldn't keep moving. Germany had it's "War Guilt" conveniently blamed on Jews, but fascist Japan had as deep a sense of racial superiority born of a nation that hadn't lost a war in 2000 years. To see much, if not all, of this corroborated by a member of the IJN makes all the arguments that atomic bombs were inexcusable under any circumstances so much more hollow. And even at that, the United States has offered formal apologies and reparations to victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts; no such measures are forthcoming nor expected for survivors of Bataan, Pearl or the Rape of Nanking, nor their families, and Korean girls forced into military prostitution at gunpoint remain persona non grata with the Japanese government.

War is hell, that one especially, and if the bomb spared millions suffering and death by ending it sooner, I'm OK with that; painting the US as villains because we insisted on unconditional surrender rather than a surrender that changed nothing and allowed those responsible for war to go unpunished doesn't change that. I can't say I'm sorry if this thread generates less controversy than you expected (but either way, you can't say I didn't do my part to help. )