The United States should have used atomic weapons on Japan.

Again, saying that invasion would have cost more lives than atomic bombing is irrelevant, as I'm arguing that neither was necessary to end the war. R1: See above. The Japanese military probably would have fought hard had there been an invasion. But one wasn't necessary, so it doesn't matter at all how hard they would've fought. R1A: "We cannot be sure that a threat that could be an empty bluff would be enough to persuade the Japanese to surrender." Which is why a test atomic bomb could have been dropped, to show them what we were capable of. And we could have waited until after the Soviets attacked to drop the bombs, showing them that that wasn't an empty threat either. "Other bombings were just as deadly? No, the firebombing of Tokyo, a huge city, had about 100,000 deaths. That isn't even close to the deaths from the A-Bombs in much smaller cities." Actually, that's equal to the amount of people killed by both atomic bombs in the initial bombing. (Of course, 100,000 more people died later, but the Japanese didn't know that when they surrendered, so the initial deaths are the ones that count). R2A: Here, my opponent claims that the Japanese feared that we would be able to atomic bomb all of Japan to dust, and that's what scared them into surrendering. If this is the case, then why wouldn't an atomic bombing of an unpopulated area, or a military target, have worked just as well? My opponent admits that destroyed cities and civilian deaths had never been a problem for the Japanese before—if that's true, then it was the threat of total destruction, not the actual civilian deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that caused Japan to surrender. That threat could have been made just as well without killing civilians. "How are the Soviet forces that much different from all the other forces in the world combined?" They'd be much more brutal conquerors, as the Japanese knew. As the Japanese Prime Minister said, "If we miss [the chance] today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, but also Hokkaido. We must end the war while we can deal with the United States." [1] They clearly feared Soviet occupation more than American occupation. Another difference is that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Korea cut off the supplies Japan needed to continue the war effort. And while my opponent is correct that the Soviet invasion lead to many deaths then, and many more in later wars, such deaths are irrelevant. We aren't talking about a choice between the Soviet invasion and the atomic bombings, we're talking about a choice between both of those things and just the Soviet invasion. Conclusion: The US had several choices that would have been much better than the atomic bombings. First, they could have threatened Japan with the atomic bombings and a Soviet invasion—the Japanese thought the Soviets were going to remain neutral until the surprise attack, knowing what threat they were actually facing could have forced them to surrender without either the invasion or the bombings needing to actually happen. The US could have shown the Japanese what the atomic bomb was capable of by testing it on an unpopulated or military target—if the Japanese fear of total annihilation was enough to get them to surrender, then that threat could have been made without actually killing any civilians. Second, if just threats of Soviet invasion weren't enough, the Americans could have waited until the Soviets took over Manchuria and Korea—that, in addition to the threat of the atomic bomb (which, again, could have been made without killing civilians), would surely have been enough to get the Japanese to surrender. They weren't going to be able to continue to fight without the supplies they got from their empire, and, as the quote from Japan's Prime Minister from earlier shows, they'd greatly prefer surrender to the US than surrender to the Soviets. Instead of making threats that could have ended the war earlier, the US chose the deadliest option—making sure the Japanese had no reason to surrender, then quickly killing as many of them as they could with a surprise Soviet invasion and surprise atomic bombing. [1] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy, p237