Hiroshima 70 years ago

[Pyrrho]

Japanese civilians were going to die no matter what.  They would either,

A) starve to death during the winter whether we invaded or not,

B) die in absurd human wave attacks armed with bamboo spears, if we landed



Or  c) we could have continued the incendiary raids until there was literally nothing left to burn compounding the slaughter we had already unleashed.

Considering that the terms ultimately given to the Japanese ( they would surrender and the emperor would not be harmed) our insistence on unconditional surrender in the abstract seems to have meant very little.

Yes, the insistence on "unconditional surrender" was a silly bit of nonsense that led to the war lasting longer than it needed to.  The Japanese wanted to surrender, but wanted something other than unconditional surrender.  And they actually got something other than unconditional surrender, despite the U.S. calling it that.  If the U.S. had decided earlier to just lie about the surrender in calling whatever terms were made "unconditional," the war could have ended before the nuclear bombs were dropped.