> the potential for a future, prolongued military battle It wasn't "potential", it was already happening. People fixate on the atom bombs but completely ignore

> the potential for a future, prolongued military battle It wasn't "potential", it was already happening. People fixate on the atom bombs but completely ignore the carpet bombing campaigns that had been going on long before. Dozens of Japanese cities were flattened to the same extent of destruction as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only difference is that with those two cities, it was accomplished with a single plane, dropping a single atomic bomb, whereas with other Japanese cities, it was accomplished with hundreds of planes dropping thousands of napalm filled warheads.