22. Millions of Japanese Were Still in a Death Grapple With Allied Soldiers
In the summer of 1945, Japan also had millions of military personnel stationed in her overseas empire. They were fighting millions of Allied opponents, producing thousands of casualties on both sides every day. Moreover, Japan held hundreds of thousands of Allied POWs, whom it subjected to barbaric treatment on a daily basis, beating, starving, withholding medication from, or murdering them.
Those casualties from continued fighting and from Japan’s atrocious treatment of POWs would have continued to mount every day the war continued. However, the main justification for the atomic bombings was that the alternative would have been a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands, which the Japanese government was determined to resist via national suicide.