POSSIBLY saving the lives of Japanese soldiers by taking away the lives of their kids, wives, and daughters back home, you mean? I have a funny feeling that says if they were asked the question, the soldiers would prefer to die fighting themselves, rather than their kids & wives burning to ashes by bombs dropped over their homes.
Not only soldiers, but civilians. An invasion of the Japanese home islands and a fight to the death up and down those islands would have killed many, many civilians as well as soldiers, both US and Japanese. Look at the number of civilians killed in Germany in WWII, and the Germans didn't even fight to the bitter end. As we firebombed Dresden, so would we probably have firebombed many Japanese cities, which because of their construction and density would have been even more vulnerable to fire than the European cities. It's not a question of Japanese soldiers vs. Japaniese citizens, but of both.
And, I hate to point this out to you, but while I am sure your "relatives" are/were great people by whose presence the world is richer, their survival does not justify the incineration of two cities and pretty much all their inhabitants.
And I hate to point this out to you, but they started it. When a person starts a fight, they have, IMO, no grounds to complain if the other person brings in bigger guns than they had expected. |
