WYDave - 8/6/2020 10:09

The whiners don't have any idea of the alternative.

OK, let's say we didn't drop the atomic bombs. What was going to happen? What was the plan?

Here was the plan:

Gen. Curtis LeMay was going to burn Japanese cities to the ground, the way he did Tokyo. He was going to burn city after city after city, until the Japanese population, those who survived, was largely homeless, without food or clean water, and sleeping outdoors as winter came on.

Edit: I had to go look up the details: LeMay was predicting one million deaths of Japanese civilians before GI's landed on mainland Japan. He mounted raids on 66 cities before the surrender was signed. 

In fact, the last raid of the war was one the biggest B-29 bombing missions of all.  B-29's took off on 14 August, loaded with napalm and incendiary bombs. They arrived over the target in Japan in the early hours of 15 August. Japan had transmitted the acceptance of the surrender by the times the bombs were falling, but a military coup was underway at the royal palace, trying to prevent Hirohito's recorded address to the Japanese people from arriving at the radio station.  This was going to be the way of war until the Japanese surrendered. LeMay was a master of logistics, and he had the logistics to burn Japan to the ground lined up clear back into the continental US industrial centers. Atomic bombs or no, Japan was going to burn.