Instead of guessing what the issues were when the Hiroshima / Nagasaki bombs were used, read what the actual facts were. A good web page is [www.waszak.com] . Millions of Japanese were prepared to die to fight for their emperor and home land. It is deeply ingrained in the culture to not surrender dishonorably. This fact was made obvious in the small island invasions on the way to the Japan home island. The Japanese soldiers would not surrender, they fought on to the death as long as they were ordered to. Women living on the invaded islands jumped of cliffs to their deaths rather than face humiliating surrender to the despised foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of US troops would have been killed in the horrible battle. Being killed in face to face combat was the only honorable outcome for the Japanese. However, being incinerated by a faceless bomb was not honorable, and therefore the nuclear bombs compelled the Japanese military elite and emperor to order Japanese society to lay down their arms. MILLIONS of people would have been killed if the United States invaded Japan. Instead, about 200,000 Japanese were killed. Remember, it was the unprovoked Japanese who attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. Also many people do not realize, the Japanese slaughtered MILLIONS of Chinese in an attempt at genocide. They even experimented using biological weapons (black plague) on Chinese villages. Japan deemed the Chinese inferior and had aspirations of annexing a part of China for the Japanese Empire.