Of course when invasion of Japan would come, the Allied troops (not only US) would not exactly be received with flowers. Estimates exist (speculation, you will say, but when will speculation be statistics, when they suit your taste?) on likely casualties on both sides and numbers are much higher than the actual casualties from the 2 bombes.

The alternative as viewed at the time was to drop the bombs as a show of force in order to impress on the Japanese leadership the need to surrender. It worked.

Is it unfortunate that civilians died? Certainly. Civilians were dying in appalling numbers especially during city bombings, be they Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry, London, Hamburg, Berlin, Essen, Osaka, Kobe, Tokio, whatever. In terms of cold numbers, the casualties caused by the 2 atomic bombs were not extraordinary as compared to a regular large raid on Tokio, so why single them out? For emotional reasons?

At the time the atomic bombs were viewed as something like extremely large bombs, Grand Slam king-size. They did not carry the emotional load that was later generated during the Cold War. No CND at the time (the discussions I used to have in my Cold War days - not about this, but about the neutron bomb etc - had this dream quality and left me with an impression that I was banging my head against a wall!)

All this has been discussed in higher forums and by brighter minds than ours. We must not generate bad blood over a question on which we are not reaching consensus, that is quite frankly above our heads, and will still be running long after we are all dead.

In short, in my opinion yes, civilian deaths are unfortunate (hell, I'm a civilian!) and yes, the bombs were justified.

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