Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Decision

I apologize to my opponent for taking such a long time to respond. I will now present my own arguments.Rebuttal"At the time, the Allies, which were a group of countries that supported each other during the war, and the Japanese were fighting the Pacific War. The war was causing hundreds of soldiers to die."It was causing hundreds of thousands of soldiers to die. Big, big difference. [1. http://en.wikipedia.org...]"At the same time as the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan was also being attacked by the Soviet Union. It is likely Japan would have surrendered soon because of the Soviet forces and the defeat of Germany.Actually, the Soviet goal in the invasion was not to conquer Japan, but to take Manchuria and Korea, both of which were held by the Japanese. [2. http://en.wikipedia.org...] This would have given the Soviets much-needed access to the Pacific. They did not intend to conquer Japan as it would have been taken by the U.S. long before they could."Emperor Hirohito was for peace, and wanted to surrender as soon as possible: "By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort" (www.ihr.org). Emperor Hirohito saw the hopelessness of the war effort, and wished to do everything to stop innocent civilian casualties. The Emperor needed time to convince the persistent militaristic leaders that it was time to end the war."The Emperor did desire peace, and he officially could have at any time, but the real controllers of the country were the military. The Japanese army also had a tradition of murdering political opponents. [3. http://www.warbirdforum.com...] A successful coup could have prolonged the war and have resulted in massive destruction of Japan."Japan was already shaken up by the nightly air raids, and was seriously considering surrender. There were already many Japanese who wanted their country to surrender, including the "Doves", who were Japanese people who wanted to surrender. The Doves would have taken action to force the Japanese to surrender if the Emperor did not have to leave his throne according to the terms ultimatum. If the ultimatum was tweaked slightly, Japan would have surrendered."As I said, the military was in control of the country. Con has made no arguments for why these 'Doves' could have succeeded in their coup, and I could find very few sources for them. However, an attempted coup was made by the military after the atomic bombings to place Emperor Hirohito under house arrest. [4. http://en.wikipedia.org...] The goal of this coup was to prevent him from making peace. After the coup was foiled, the perpetrators of the plot committed suicide in accordance with Bushido, which is likely what they would have forced Japan to do as well (by continuing the war).Arguments1. The Japanese would have executed prisoners of war.After Germany was defeated and the concentration camps discovered, the world was shocked. The Japanese knew that the same thing would happen once the Allies liberated their own camps (where they kept prisoners of war). To prevent the world from finding out about their own horrific treatmeant of prisoners, they would have executed them and erased the evidence. [5. http://www.billmuehlenberg.com...] The bombing ended the war before this could be carried out and allowed food and medical aid to be given to the occupied areas, which were utterly destroyed, and Japan's own starving population. [6. http://en.wikipedia.org...]2. The casualties from the invasion would have been enormous."A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7-4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities." [7. http://en.wikipedia.org...] This is several times the number of casualties from both bombings (even though this debate is only about Hiroshima). Looking at Japanese records shows that they had correctly predicted where the invasion would be, and were waiting for them. [7] Even the "roads" marked on the map turned out to be dirt paths, which would have stopped the effective use of tanks and allowed the Japanese to adopt a guerrilla-kamikaze strategy.____________As a closing remark, I should like to point out that my opponent's lone source (www.ihr.org) not only claims that the killing at Aushwitz was greatly exaggerated [http://www.ihr.org...], but also claims that the "Zionists" were in collaboration with the Nazis [http://www.ihr.org...], that the Jews masterminded the Russian Revolution [http://www.ihr.org...], talks about the "Jewish lobby" [http://www.ihr.org...], and this is a direct quote: "The Holocaust remembrance campaign deserves scorn, not support, because it is a one-sided effort that serves narrow Jewish and Israeli interests and bolsters Jewish-Zionist power."While this has little to do with the debate, I could not help but notice it when I looked into Con's source. I ask all voters to keep it in mind when doing the same.