I was wondering a few things. If all in all we saved live in Japan by nuking them instead of a ground invasion. And i heard somewhere Japan almost didn surrender after the first 2 bombs were dropped. Any truth to this?

Nah...I know they did surrendered to the US after the second atomic. Yeah, Atomics saved lot of Americans from invasion of Japan in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Fox

Nah...I know they did surrendered to the US after the second atomic. Yeah, Atomics saved lot of Americans from invasion of Japan in my opinion.

I'd say both Japanese civilian and military lives along with Allied soldeirs.

Originally Posted by Fox

Nah...I know they did surrendered to the US after the second atomic. Yeah, Atomics saved lot of Americans from invasion of Japan in my opinion.

Discussing about past is no use.
Japan was an enemy of america.
That's all.
So,america conduct an experiment on a living soldiers in cold war.
Soviet developped　effective using way of human.
Nazi　used jewish to try creating immortial soldiers.
China tested nuclear weapons to east turkistan independence　faction,
that was Killing two birds with one stone.
Experiment on a human body is needed for human advancement,right?
And ,experiment of Anti-terrorist tactics is needed now.

There were actually two factors that forced the Japanese to surrender, only one of which were the atomic bombs. The other factor was the Russian invasion of Manchuria. Many people feel that this was a sideswow, but to the Japanese, it was far more. In Manchuria, the Japanese had their largest army, and one of their largest sources of manpower and natural resources. Between the atomic bombs, the Russians invaded and defeated the Japanese Kwantung Army in about 5 days, and with that loss, the Japanese realized that they no longer had any hope of building any type of an industrial base that would allow them to continue the war. In addition, the Japannese government had been using the Soviet Embassy to send peace feelers to the Alles, and the Soviet invasion shut that door tighter than a coffin. So with the US superweapon, the Allies closing from the south and east, and an even larger army marching unopposed from the north and west, The Japanese War Cabinet resigned or committed suicide, paving the way for the new government to surrender.
I am of the opinion that it took both events to force the surrender. I remain unsure that the Japanese would have surrendered were it not for the Russian attack as well. Did it save lives? YES!!!! The Japanese had a very large army still available to them on the home islands. In addition, they had many fighter aircraft, but few trained pilots. In the end, an invasion would have been very costly, as the Japanese would have fought to the end. Estimates on US casualties of such a battle range from 50,000 (the-quick-invasion-followed-by-a-quick-surrender scenario) to well over a million. For Japanese civilians, the estimates were far higher. In the end, such a battle would have been well described by one line from the Lord of the Rings: If this is a victory, then our hands are not big enough to hold it.

Dean.

I think starving them would've been a better idea. More effective and more devastationg as they slowly starve and die a painful death . Japan would have surrender by this. And we could've used the atomic bombs to blow up the Kremlin and Stalin.

Judging from view of war economy.
First Nuclear weapon is not good at cost performance.
26 billion$/manhatan project÷3 hundred thousands/kill＝87000$/per kill
But,thanks to later america and russian advance of nuclear weapon technology,n-weapon became cheaper.
Assuming that、one Russian tac N that can kill 300,000 in city is 2,500,000$ now.
2,500,000＄÷300,000/kill＝8.3$/per kill.
A human price seems to be as expensive as a lunch.
That's why boys want it.
If kill cost went over millions $,war may never happen between advanced nations.
This is peace?