Thanks for your thoughtful response!

The fact that the United States was, in theory, prepared to drop numerous atomic bombs on civilians spoke to their desire to end the war at any cost. Threatening to bomb the last remaining major population centers with weapons of mass destruction can be seen as a genocidal threat. The Japanese people were under direct threat of complete annhiliation.

I agree that dropping the atomic bombs was preferable to an invasion of the mainland. The US commanders were worried that the Japanese would dig in on their home islands and force a protracted and horrible land war in order to try and get better terms.

With how fanantically the Japanese fought over desolate spits of land in the Pacific, everyone was terrified with how they would act on their home soil. Luckily, we never had to find out.

The point of this article was to highlight the fact that the atomic bombs were only an effective end to the war because there was a threat that was put out there that if they did not surrender, more and more atom bombs would be produced and dropped on Japanese cities.