Interesting comments Yaakov and I agree with some. But you should check your diplomacy records dating back before the murderous March 9th fire bombing of Tokyo and numerous other cities costing far more lives than the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were largely civilian populations. admittedly fairly deep points but after Midway there was little to no Japanese Navy and the shortage of materials had left the airforce as a hit and miss joke. Hirota Koki, who was the only civilian hung in the Sugamo trials and also the prime minister who by signature had to declare war on the US after which he was tossed out by the powerful Military, and several Princes, as well as diplomats were actively suing for peace months before. Months. They were using Russia, at that time neutral, as an intermediary. Russia saw an opportunity to reclaim its losses in the SinoRusso war decades earlier and declared war after the bombings.

"according to projections at the time" - right propaganda from the military

"100,00 casualties minimum. America did not want to commit to that." - over 200,000 were incinerated in the Tokyo fire bombiongs, not to mention Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka etc, etc before even the nukes.

The trundled out argument of 'saving lives' has been pushed through the US media and swallowed to appease the fact that millions of hours of work, hundreds of millions of dollars and enormous political gain was at stake for the US government. The truth is the Japan was on its knees, starving, without trained servicemen and reduced to bamboo bayonets and poorly equipped suicide aircraft as their defense. Indiscriminate fire bombing of civilian areas was possible because anti aircraft and radar was limited in Japan. Yes, they were blindly impassioned but political leaders were seeking peace). No, nuking civilians for the sake of being able to have bragging rights is not acceptable. Then came agent Orange in Vietnam ( the villagers wanted that too?) and Weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps American military leaders can justify nuking cities in Russia to free the Russian people of Putin?