History's been my thing since, oh, the early 70s, and in the last half decade I've been closely studying WWII history, especially in the Pacific, and the Manhattan Project in general in the last half year or so. Nothing I've come across suggests there was any better option, if you accept the targeting of mixed use civilian-industrial areas.
Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, was toast as originally planned, too many IJA ground reinforcements, and our estimate of the number of Kamikazes was low, actually 8,000 or so (!). Thanks to the latter, the Battle of Okinawa was the most costly in US naval history, and it would have been much worse with their not having to fly so far let alone over the featureless ocean.
Those who knew about the Manhattan Project were planning on using 5-8 bombs to make Olympic feasible, and per the above linked book, there was major discussion about what to do with the 3rd bomb if the 2nd didn't force a surrender.
Those who didn't know were planning on mass use of chemical weapons....
The Soviets wouldn't have been much help, if ever, in taking the home islands (who's navy would land them even if they were willing?), but it didn't hurt how they predictably smashed through the IJA in China when they got started between the two bombs.
Just letting them starve on the home islands ... very bad, and again, costing a quarter million lives a month in the sphere outside of the home islands. East Asia was already enough of an abattoir, 25 million plus lives lost.
As for concessions, besides the fact that we'd pledged "unconditional surrender", which we indeed backed off of for the Emperor, I'm just not aware of what specific concessions we could have made that would have likely made a difference. Especially since unconditional surrender was part of a "never again" post-WWI attitude (per Tom Lehrer's MLF Lullaby "We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then") we were very determined that we wouldn't have to do this again. And, you know, we succeeded, and as I've noted in a previous recent A-bombing discussion, we've not had another great powers war since then.
History's been my thing since, oh, the early 70s, and in the last half decade I've been closely studying WWII history, especially in the Pacific, and the Manhattan Project in general in the last half year or so. Nothing I've come across suggests there was any better option, if you accept the targeting of mixed use civilian-industrial areas.
Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, was toast as originally planned, too many IJA ground reinforcements, and our estimate of the number of Kamikazes was low, actually 8,000 or so (!). Thanks to the latter, the Battle of Okinawa was the most costly in US naval history, and it would have been much worse with their not having to fly so far let alone over the featureless ocean.
Those who knew about the Manhattan Project were planning on using 5-8 bombs to make Olympic feasible, and per the above linked book, there was major discussion about what to do with the 3rd bomb if the 2nd didn't force a surrender.
Those who didn't know were planning on mass use of chemical weapons....
The Soviets wouldn't have been much help, if ever, in taking the home islands (who's navy would land them even if they were willing?), but it didn't hurt how they predictably smashed through the IJA in China when they got started between the two bombs.
Just letting them starve on the home islands ... very bad, and again, costing a quarter million lives a month in the sphere outside of the home islands. East Asia was already enough of an abattoir, 25 million plus lives lost.
As for concessions, besides the fact that we'd pledged "unconditional surrender", which we indeed backed off of for the Emperor, I'm just not aware of what specific concessions we could have made that would have likely made a difference. Especially since unconditional surrender was part of a "never again" post-WWI attitude (per Tom Lehrer's MLF Lullaby "We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then") we were very determined that we wouldn't have to do this again. And, you know, we succeeded, and as I've noted in a previous recent A-bombing discussion, we've not had another great powers war since then.