EXACTLY as predicted Evan!

The fact that a few scrolls above your citation tells the opposite side of the coin goes totally unmentioned by you. Being the scholarly type I would have thought you felt some modest obligation to point that out. There are even Japanese quoted as saying the bombs were a (paraphrasing) 'gift from God to end the war quickly'.

Now tell me, what was it that you were speechless about? Was it that I was so incredibly wrong that you couldn't believe that I or anyone else would even consider saying something like that, or was it that one just doesn't say things like that today?

You also are bringing a different argument to the table. Yours is really 'should the bombs have been dropped' when the original statement you found incredible was '...saved lives on both sides...'.

In another message you said that the allies learned from WWI that UNconditional surrender was the only way to get true peace. Japan is acknowledged to have been pursuing peace but with conditions. They had NO interest in unconditional surrender. They were training every citizen to resist any foreign force that might arrive.

Your selective citations are all guesswork, just as the 'bomb saved many more lives' is a theory. We can never know. But we can, if we put aside the horrendousness of those two bombs, come to some reasonable conclusions regarding the forces that were being assembled for invasion, the forces being arrayed to defend the homeland, previous experience at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, etc. Hundreds of thusands would have died and millions would have been injured.




>>>Credible references please that support your statement that "there's little doubt that more lives were saved, both Japanese and American/allied, by dropping those bombs"
>>>
>>>>No bomb, regular or nuclear, ever "benefits" anyone. But the use of those 2 nuclear bombs saved thousands, if not millions, of lives.
>>>
>>>I continue to be speechless.
>>
>>I'm not sure why. This was, in fact, the calculus that Harry Truman had to work with. Would ending the war immediately by dropping the bomb save more lives than it cost? Based on what was known about the Japanese and their willingness to fight to the death, he believed that it would.
>
>These guys disagreed:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Militarily_unnecessary
>- General Dwight D. Eisenhower
>"Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary"
>
>- General Douglas MacArthur
>
>- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
>"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan"
>
>Check out the United States Strategic Bombing Survey.
>"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
>
>To address your point directly, yes I think Truman believed, but that is far different from could, would or did save lives. Especially Japanese lives.