Atom Bombs
After capturing the island of Okinawa in an 82-day battle, Allied planners began preparing for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. Based on their experience with the tenacious, fatalistic defense Japanese troops had displayed through the Pacific, they were aware these operations would cost large numbers of American and British Commonwealth lives. Some estimates in popular media ran as high as a million; military planners expected a few hundred thousand. They also feared that a homefront weary of war would demand a negotiated settlement if the war dragged on into 1946.
Allied salvation came in August 1945. An American B-29 dropped a single atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, obliterating the town. When no Japanese surrender was forthcoming, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. While the world was shocked by the high number of primarily civilian casualties and massive destruction wrought by a single explosive device, in fact far more Japanese had been killed in the firebombings that U.S. planes had been carrying out for months.
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