I was discussing WWII with a friend. I've often thought the loss of civilian life could have been prevented and that the US had other options, but don't have the greatest knowledge of this point in history. Below are some of the points my friend shared:
How accurate are these points? Did the US have any other options Japan at the time?
Hi, this question gets asked here a whole bunch. Some specific answers from that FAQ that may be of interest:
So aside from the specifics of what you're asking (we'll get to that), I just want to note up front that the entire "decision to use the bomb" narrative, which hinges on the question of greater loss of life ("bomb vs. invasion") and turns the use of the bomb into a moral deliberation, is entirely a postwar construction meant to justify the use of the atomic bombs. It misrepresents the conversations being had by the US planners at the time about both the bombing and the invasion, and certainly misrepresents the decision-making process (there was no "decision to use the bomb"). Once you accept it as the framework for deliberation it is very hard not to conclude that the atomic bombs were the better option — which is why the narrative was created in the late 1940s by the people in charge of the atomic bombing operation, who were seeking to stem a rising tide of doubt and criticism about the wisdom of the use of the atomic bombs.
The actual story of the atomic bombing operations, and the end of World War II, is a different one, and full of many complexities and twists and turns that are not encapsulated by this narrative. It also likely assigns the atomic bombs too much importance in Japan's decision to surrender (it usually ignores completely the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, which happened at nearly the same time and much recent scholarship suggests played an enormous role in the Japanese decision). If you are interested in a very readable version of a more "complete" narrative, see Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. It's not the last word on any of this but it will give you a much fuller read of the situation, beyond the propaganda versions.
As to your specific points about the atomic bomb question:
The Purple Hearts. This "justification" of the bombing basically only circulated in the early 1990s. It is true that the Department of War ordered many Purple Hearts to be produced. What it is not clear is that this had anything to do with projections of casualties in an invasion. The documentation on this order is apparently very slim (at least, nobody has cited much about it). It does not seem to have been connected with any high-level planning that I can see, and the large number may have just been some kind of cost-saving bulk order. In any event, it does not reflect how the US high command felt about possible casualties — it is a vastly larger number than the projections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I suspect it is a red herring altogether. Someday I hope to get to the bottom of it.
The Emperor leaned towards surrender, and the generals/admirals were largely against it — so either you or your friend is confused on this point. But in any event, the case of the Japanese cabinet is a very complex one (as Hasegawa outlines at length). There was a dominant "militarist" faction that wanted to made the end of the war as bloody as possible as a way of tiring the US public. There was a "peace" faction — to which the Emperor was a member, and whose aims he advanced behind the scenes — that was seeking some route to a negotiated surrender. Not an unconditional surrender, which is what the US was demanding; even the "peace" faction could not imagine the possibility of the imperial house being disbanded, and wanted guarantees. In the end, after two atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, they were still pushed only to offer a conditional surrender. Only after this was rejected, and there was an attempted coup, did the Emperor offer up the unconditional surrender. You can see this is rather complicated and hard to make a simple story out of.
Separately, it is not clear that the second atomic bombing had any effect on the thinking of the Japanese high command. The Soviet invasion, which happened at nearly the same time, had a much bigger impact.
No one on the US side estimated that it would be a million casualties (much less deaths) in an invasion. They had much lower numbers, though there is a cottage industry in coming up with inflated estimates in the postwar, again as a means of justifying the bombing. In any event, this is the framing issue I was talking about before: it presumes that there were only two options, namely a full invasion of Kyushu and Honshu by the US, versus two atomic bombs being dropped without warning on two cities. Not only was this not how it was perceived at the time, but these aren't the only options. For a discussion of possible alternatives, see this piece I have written. I am not suggesting that any one of those alternatives would have been better, just that there were choices made (though sometimes not by the people you would expect — Truman had zero input into whether a second atomic bomb was dropped, and was probably surprised to learn of it).
The question of the US joining the war at an earlier point seems irrelevant to the atomic bomb discussions?