The article doesn't directly address this, but most people think many, many more civilians would have died in a protracted land/aerial invasion of Japan. You c

The article doesn't directly address this, but most people think many, many more civilians would have died in a protracted land/aerial invasion of Japan. You could basically factor out all the soldiers on both sides, and the total casualty count (just civilians) would have been higher. That's the argument, anyway. I am not any sort of military expert, so I leave you to make your own judgement. But it isn't like they had the equivalent of twitter @dronestream highlighting civilian casualties back then. In the non-nuclear regular-old B-52 firebombing of Tokyo, hundreds of thousands of civilians died, and the entire sprawling city was quite literally burned to the ground. https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=firebombing+of+tokyo&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIlc7Jl7PJxwIVZK6mCh1CSQNz&biw=1402&bih=972 https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=firebombing+of+tokyo&clien... Those pictures don't look like reduced civilian casualties to me.