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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
The crux of the issue is were the Japanese ready to unconditionally surrender, I would fully agree that it was obvious the end was near for them and that what ever action the allies took the result would be Japanese surrender eventually but the Japanese internal history shows that the army was not ready to surrender, their plan was to fortify the southern islands, make American casualties so horrendous there that they could force the U.S. into accepting a conditional cease fire of some sort, it's important to remember the Japanese high command did not surrender after the bombs were dropped, they had to be forced into it by the Emperor, it's also important to realize the Japanese military was not in any way centrally controlled, the Kwuntang army of Manchuria invaded China against the orders of the mainlands high command, generals were not particularly obedient to orders that they considered 'dishonerable', such as surrender.
You can't call the dropping of the bombs a war crime unless you can show that there was a way of ending the war otherwise that wouldn't kill 300,000 civilians, I've read many arguements on both sides but I've never seen any arguement that could make a cogent case for ending the war with less casualties, in fact thus far no one here has suggested any action that would have forced surrender.
I repeat once more there is absolutely no evidence the Japanese were on the verge of surrender, all the available information is clear, we were going to beat them but only with a long bloody campaign forcing our way through the multiple islands that make up Japan.
U.S. military estimates at the time for the two campaigns too capture Japan were that it would cost two million allied troops and in excess of ten million Japanese.
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As an example of this, of the estimated 22,060 Japanese soldiers in Iwo Jima, 21,844 supposedly died. That's an enormous proportion. Soldiers were told to fight to the death or commit ritual suicide. To put that into perspective, during the Normandy landings, the Germans had an estimated 50,000 troops but only 5-10,000 died.
When one side of a conflict's actions are totally outside basic humanitarian and reasonable principles, you can't assume that a peaceful settlement is in any way desired.