Dropping the atomic bombs vs. an American invasion of Japan

[TJ in Oregon]

I think dropping the atomic bomb was for the best under the circumstances despite being horrible nonetheless. Imperial Japan had sworn to fight America to the last man and a land invasion done under those circumstances would have been disastrous. IIRC the atomic bombings weren't too much more deadly than our firebombings of Tokyo either. At that point the war simply needed to come to an end and the atomic bomb did just that.

In addition by using the atomic bomb, the world had a glimpse at the power of nuclear weapons in an era before their use would have caused global destruction. That might not have been a bad thing.

[TJ in Oregon]

I have reversed my opinion of this since I posted several years ago in this thread. It was not okay for us to drop the atomic bomb on civilian targets as we did. I've come around to thinking a blockade was probably the best approach.