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Originally Posted by mystmarimatt
A few hundred civilians? Try more along the lines of 120,000 People, from both bombings. And, the death doll arising from the effects of radiation account for a far greater number of deaths.
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He didn't mean that's how many people died from the atomic bombs. He meant that NOW as in, in the present day, if you kill some civilians in a war, it's a huge controversy, but at that time little would have been thought of it. That was the whole point.
I think it says something that the controversy over the bombing is not much of an issue in Japan or to the Japanese people. On the other hand, China and Korea bitch nonstop about the atrocities of the Japanese military. Draw your own conclusions. I'm not afraid of criticising the US government, but in this case, I think some of the critics need to look at this from a more realistic perspective of the times. The modern social stigma against nuclear weapons didn't exist (and these bombings certainly had a role in its formation); they were just powerful weapons that could quickly end the war, and I can't blame the leaders for taking advantage of them.
IANAH (I am not a historian, though I did take a class titled Japanese History), but from my armchair general's point of view, I find it unlikely that the Soviet declaration of war alone without the bombs would have caused Japan to surrender, and maybe it wouldn't have cost x number of lives, but if Japan refused to surrender, it certainly would have cost some fraction of x greater than 0 and possibly just as many or more Japanese lives as in the bombings.