If war broke out tomorrow....

[A Black Falcon]

I don't fight and I wouldn't...

And as for Japan, there's plenty of controversy over whether Japan would have surrendered eventually without the A-Bomb or whether it was needed... and if the second one was needed of if given some more time they would have surrendered anyway after just one. Okay, true, at the time the American leaders had really no idea how horrific a A-Bomb would be, but still... it was a tragedy and even more sad if it could have been avoided.

Did you know we killed probably between 450,000 and 500,000 Japanese civilians during our bombings in World War II? Compared to about 250,000 American soldiers killed in the whole war...

The question really was when the military group in charge in Japan was vulnerable. If they had been given the choice they would have fought to the death and the Japanese people, after so many decades of what essentially was brainwashing, would have followed their leaders wherever they lead... when could some people who wanted peace finally get enough power to get the Emperor to go over the warlords and announce surrender? And of course the Soviets play a huge role here. Truman wanted to keep the Soviets from taking more land. I think that played at least as big a role as the stated reason (saving American lives in an invasion)... quite possibly more. The Cold War had begun even before WWII ended and we were trying to keep the Soviets from getting more land... given enough time it is possible that Japan could have surrendered. The militarists were wavering. But of course we'll never know... either that or whether if the Soviets would have invaded Japan too and taken a chunk of that country as well...