the shock of the bomb to force the emperor's hand and surrender. The notion that the U.S. did not have to drop the bombs is a fundamental anti-American propaganda ceated by the radical, anti-American left. The idea, of course, is to destroy the moral credibility of America so that the followers of the radical, anti-American, anti-capitalist element will turn agaisnt us and help the haters destroy us. I had a very good comment about a friend in Japan who is former kamikaze pilot*...who admits the bombing was necessary. Blogger lost the entire long post I had written....it was a good one. Too bad you missed it. {*former kamikaze pilot in training actually....he is alive today because of the bomb} While you discuss whether Japan was ready to surrender or not before the atomb bomb was dropped, and how many lives were actually "saved" by dropping it on civilian targets, you're missing another point entirely: The future lives that would have been spared from the Vietnam and Korean wars, and perhaps the Indonesian slaughters, had a large scale U.S. military invasion of Asia, and Japanese encirclement taken place instead of the atomic bomb. Ho Chi Minh and Mao were on working terms with the U.S. during W.W.II. It is highly unlikely the U.S. would have handed back the keys to the European colonialist's with our army on the ground, in control, particularly at this time, the founding of the U.N., with all it's noble retoric. It is a situation government (Roosevelt)