An overlooked A-bomb issue: the wait-a-couple-weeks argument

[Jim Lane]

38. Sure, wait the additional time if you know that yet another powerful nation will declare war.

This isn't a matter of "let's keep waiting and hope some miracle happens." There was on the horizon a specific important event, that would happen in the near future, and that had some chance of giving Japan a strong push toward surrender. If that came and went, without the desired effect, there would still be time to drop the bomb.

As for the costs, the supplies consumed would be negligible. The United States was not engaged in clearing any more islands, so the only risk to the troops would be the comparatively small number who might die in successful kamikaze attacks during the interim. I don't know what the kamikaze death toll was by that stage but I'm guessing it was small.

Nevertheless, that last concession will seal the deal for some DUers. Their response will be that the government of Japan began an aggressive war, and its officers committed atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere, and therefore it's better to kill 80,000 or so Japanese civilians than to lose even a handful of American lives. I don't accept that moral calculus. It's one thing to defend the bombings if you believe that they were the only way to avert 250,000 American deaths in an invasion, but it's quite another to try to justify immolating two cities just to end the kamikaze attacks two weeks earlier.