The United States should have used atomic weapons on Japan.

1a. As I’m not arguing America should have invaded rather than used the atomic bombs, this point is pointless to continue arguing, so I’ll just drop it. My argument is that neither an American invasion nor the dropping of the atomic bombs were necessary to end the war, so it really doesn’t matter if the American invasion would have been more deadly than the atomic bombs. 1b. Perhaps soldiers would have fought, but the claim that the average person would have taken up swords and sticks to die for their Emperor is absurd. Soldiers fought and died because they believed they were protecting their homes and families, not for the Emperor. And even if the Japanese weren’t willing to surrender prior to August, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have if they had known what was going to happen. Surely, if they surrendered after the actual events (the bombings and the Soviet invasion), they would have been willing to surrender earlier to avoid those terrible things. But they were never warned of those things—the Potsdam Declaration left out the crucial details of what the threat actually was and what the terms of peace would actually be, as I describe below. This is likely why the top military commanders at the time, MacArthur and Eisenhower, agreed with me that the atomic bombings weren’t necessary. 1c. “First, where did you find "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners."?” It is from the 5th bullet point of your part 1c. from Round 2. I also see it here [1], and many other places when googling that text. And, while points 2,3, and 13 of the declaration are certainly threats, they’re still vague threats. While the idea of the atomic bomb may have seemed absurd to the Japanese at the time, the Americans could have simply threatened to destroy 2 cities a different way—through the bombing done to other Japanese cities, for example. Or they could have done a test demonstration of the atomic bomb on a non-populated area in Japan. In addition, as I said before, the declaration fails to mention that the Soviets were going to invade. This is a vital point, as the Japanese were far more afraid of the Soviets than of American bombs, as demonstrated by the fact that other American bombings were just as deadly as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but didn’t cause Japan to surrender. Japan’s Prime Minister said at the time, "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." [2] It’s absurd to think that it was the atomic bombings, rather than the Soviet invasion, that forced the Japanese to surrender. As my opponent admits, “And bombing entire cities to dust was not new to the Japanese. We had been doing it for months. In fact, cities such as Toyama were 100% destroyed.” Are we supposed to believe that suddenly the destruction of cities mattered to the Japanese, when it hadn’t before? Why would more of the same make a difference? The things that were different when the Japanese weren’t surrendered weren’t destroyed cities, they were the facts that 1) the Emperor was allowed to stay in his throne and 2) the Soviets had invaded, defeating Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea, which cut off the supplies Japan vitally needed to continue the war (as opposed to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were of little strategic significance). Conclusion: The only conclusion one can reach after considering the Potsdam Declaration’s glaring omissions is that the United States did not want peace. It wasn’t even a matter of offering the Japanese more in the peace offer, more favorable terms. The Declaration deliberately conceals the truth, making the terms of peace seem harsher than they were actually going to be, and the danger of not surrendering much less than it actually was. It is obvious to anyone that such things would only make an enemy less likely to surrender. In addition, there’s no evidence that the atomic bombings, rather than the Soviet invasion, were the cause of Japan’s surrender. This makes the atomic bombings unnecessary, as the top generals at the time, MacArthur and Eisenhower, concluded. [1] http://en.wikisource.org... [2] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy, p237