Was the use of the atomic bomb against Japan justified?

[sharp_stick]

76. They didn't have to win battles

all they had to do was fight during the invasion.

If Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima could be used as examples I'd hate to see the carnage they would have been able to inflict defending the Japanese Islands. They still had 2.3 million troops available on the Japanese main islands. Only 1,000 prisoners out of 38,000 Japanese soldiers in Guadalcanal and 1,000 out of 21,000 in Iwo Jima. If there's one thing that could be said about an Imperial Japanese soldier, they knew how to die.

There were other ways to end the war without invasion. They could have starved them out or just bombed the shit out of them with conventional weapons ala Dresden but there's no way that Japan was going to surrender without one hell of a lot of dead Japanese civilians.

Add to that the fact that the allies had been fighting the fascist assholes in Europe and Japan since 1939/1941 the money and patience were both wearing thin. I don't think waiting them out was going to be popular.