Pope Francis prints photo of Nagasaki victims

In the actual plans created by Nimitz and Mac Aurthur the estimated Casulty tole would have been somewhere around 250,000 and they overestimated Japans strength. The million casualties line was a post war political invention.

The that is about 130% of the casualties of the Battle of the Bulge. records show what cause them to surrender was the failure of using Russian to intercede and Russia entry into the war. I have no moral objection to the bombs being dropped but I think History is too important to twist. Stalin head was more of a target than Japan's.

Using urban legends to prove you point does not help.

My College cross country coach was on a troop ship in Tokyo bay and September 1945. He would have been killed in operation Olympic. I know it at least two army veterans from World War II that were being transferred and preparation to fight in Japan. They probably would have died as well. It is not an urban legend but I'm saying many people would have had different fathers or would have ended up as orphans with fathers who didn't come back

Not only would our losses have been massive had we invaded the Japanese mainland, Japan's losses would have been far worse both from a numerical count, but also because so many casualties would have been their women, children and the elderly. Prior to dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were firebombing Tokyo, and its toll was staggering by any account "From January 1944 until August 1945, the U.S. dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on Japanese cities, according to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. It estimated that 333,000 people were killed, including the 80,000 killed in the Aug. 6 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack and 40,000 in Nagasaki three days later. Other estimates are significantly higher. Fifteen million of the 72 million Japanese were left homeless."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-wwii-u-s-firebombing-raids-on-japanese-cities-largely-ignored/#.WkvatVWnHIU

SMSgt Thor Merich Excellent Observation but it is always good to have the Leader of 1.3 Billion Christians Reinforce the Message.

How is one going to defeat brutality with pleasantness.
In my estimation, today's society would gladly suffer defeat in a World War ll event.

SPC Andrew Ross - it wasn’t and isn’t just brutality, it was EVIL!

I was going to make the same comment. The bombs, as terrible as they were, were not dropped for no reason. In fact, the war in the Pacific was not fought because the Pacific fleet was bored. The Japanese empire was a brutal and evil empire. It had to be stopped.