If Truman refused to use the atomic bomb on Japan, what should he have done instead?

[DirkGently]

85. What other wars should have been ended with nukes, then?

What is so incredibly unique about the U.S. obtaining instant, unconditional surrender in WWII that made using horrific weapons of mass destruction that caused decades of cancer and birth defects, a necessity, when no one today would suggest a nuke would ever be the best choice?

I do not believe the "million deaths" "house-to-house fighting" story at all. Japan was on its knees. Their naval and air forces were destroyed. Perhaps it would have required time. Perhaps surrender would not have been unconditional. We had won.

Nuclear weapons was not the "only" nor the "best" option. And using two within a short interval is even less defensible.

It was a show of force to the world, and test of nuclear weapons on live human targets for scientific and political gain. Every other war in history was ended in another way, no one believes any other war should ever be ended in such a way.

There simply is no honest way to evaluate the use of nuclear weapons by the United States on Japan without acknowleding that a large, signficant, and perhaps dominating rationale for their use was the desire of the military and political leadership of the United States to demonstrate, specifically to the Soviet Union, that it had functional nuclear weapons, and to test the effects of those weapons on live human targets.

There may have been a military "upside" for the U.S. But it was not the only way. It was not the most humane way, somehow. It was not justified because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor or committed war crimes.

We wanted to use the nukes. We wanted the world to see that the U.S. was, and would be, the predominant military force in the world. There simply is no reasonable question about that motivation, at all.