[Darren]

[QUOTE=godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

How do you figure?

By the time the bomb was dropped, Allied troops had advanced to within 500 miles of the Japanese homeland and secured a military staging area on Okinawa by June 1945. There was already a secured fighter base at Iwo Jima and bombers from the Marianas could fly almost with impunity over any Japanese target with fighter escorts. The Japanese fleet was tattered and in shambles. Strategic materials, primarily petroleum, metals and compounds necessary for explosives and propellants were dwindling, nationalists and communists in China had finally started working together and were driving the Japanese out of China,and it's only ally, Nazi Germany had fallen.

Any Pacific Islanders had already been "liberated". The "last stand" actions of Japanese soldiers in locales like Guadacanal and Iwo Jima, along with the kamikaze pilots indicated extreme conditions and desperate measures.

Japan was suing for peace. This was confirmed as early as February 1945, at the Yalta Conference. The Allies refused to negotiate. They wanted an unconditional surrender....not a negotiated one.

There is a compelling argument that the bomb was not dropped to compel the Japanese into surrender, but to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that any plans for overreaching after the war would be frowned upon and we had the wherewithal to back up our demands.

I think that a case could be made that very few lives need have been lost, as a siege of fortress Japan could have brought it to its knees, and surrender, relatively quickly and without loss of much life. Such was recommended, but ignored....because we had the bomb.

Especially the bit about the "unconditional surrender" clause. Actually, it was only a couple of fruitcakes in charge of the Japanese military who believed in death before dishonour by that stage. The pm was for surrendering.
As you suggest, a complete naval blockade of Japan would have tipped the balence given the state of things (i.e. no air force or navy, no big friendly allies to bale the Islands out with supplies etc.)

An interesting comparison might be drawn with island Britain in the early forties. Germany didn't manage to destroy the RAF in 1940, and were hopelessly outmatched by the Royal Navy's surface fleet from the outset. Even so, Britain depended entirely on the Atlantic Convoys returning from the US and Canada to continue resisting. That was Britain's Achilles heel and it was the blockade by the German U-boat fleet, not the Luftwaffe air raids, which nearly broke Britain by, at two different stages in the war, sinking a greater tonnage of supply ships than was being built.
If the RAF and RN had not remained intact and developed to counter the U-boat threat in '41, '42 and '43, the Atlantic supply line would have been cut and Britain would have been forced out of the war.
The united nations could have mounted a far more effective blockade against Japan in 1945 than Germany could have dreamed of raising around Britain. Moreover Japan, possessing no means of breaking such a blockade, could not have established a lifeline even if there existed the possibility of obtaining supplies and munitions from any continental source.