Nagasaki

Reader Dave emails in response to my post about why we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  It's something to think about on this 67th anniversary of the second atomic bomb.  Reprinted with his permission:

I highly recommend D.M. Giangreco's Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945 - 1947. BLUF: any invasion would have been bloody, extremely bloody, costing hundreds of thousands (some estimates ran as high as a million) American dead and perhaps ten times as many Japanese.

I also highly recommend Rev. Wilson Miscamble's The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs and the Defeat of Japan.  Rev. Miscamble also calls attention to the additional lives saved in Japanese occupied Asia, where tens of thousands more were being killed every month the war continued.

The truth is more nuanced than we're told, even by people who claim to value nuance.