In 9th grade US history we held a mock trial about the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was assigned the role of Harry Truman, one of the defendants. I did a ton of research about the plans for invasion of Japan on both sides, and it was terrifying. The Japanese were teaching children to fight with garden tools, and US casualty estimates were over a million soldiers.

However, in the end I came to the conclusion that the nuclear strikes weren't necessary, and I wouldn't have ordered them simply because a the war was already incredibly one-sided, and an invasion wouldn't have been necessary in the first place since Japan was already on its last legs.

The class ended up convicting me of a war crime, which was nice.

However, in the end I came to the conclusion that the nuclear strikes weren't necessary, and I wouldn't have ordered them simply because a the war was already incredibly one-sided, and an invasion wouldn't have been necessary in the first place since Japan was already on its last legs.

Then how does the war end, in your scenario?

If I'd have been president I'd continue the (not very) strategic bombing and implement a blockade. Japan has very few natural resources and relies a lot on imports, so this would have hamstrung their military effectiveness. It would have taken a bit longer but based on my half-remembered research from almost 30 years ago it would have worked without an invasion or nukes.

IMHO the nukes were signals to Stalin that he better stop at Berlin.

There were studies done on the loss of human life that a blockade without an invasion would incur.

It was horrific. Literal millions of deaths were projected.

The terror bombing (and that's what it was, by 1945) was considerably bloodier than the atomic bombings.

War is weird.

Firebombing wooden cities night after night? All good carry on.

Poison gas? Whoa WTF are you some kind of monster.

There was a weird little side note in a debate about using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Someone in the Pentagon on the pro side said, more or less: War is total. People die. If you're killed in a war, it makes absolutely no difference whether it was from being shot, or stabbed, or blown up by a nuclear bomb. People die and that's the end for them. That's war, that's what we're talking about, don't get all squeamish about it now.

I don't agree with bombing Vietnam obviously, but I do feel like there's an essential point about war there that is often papered over; people become horrified by some things about war while remaining fine with other things.

War is weird, but ultimately the concern is generally escalation/normalization of weapons. If nukes get normalized, then every military worth its salt needs one, and can use them, and that means suddenly warfare becomes much, much more bloody as a matter of averages, not just as a matter of a bomb or two vaporizing a few hundred thousand people in the occasional high-intensity war.