Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, I don't mean killing hundreds of thousands of people was good, but it did end WWII, and presumably saved lives that would have been lost via a land invasion (US + USSR)
This is far from how I learned it. I am not saying either of us is right, just noticing how interesting it is that historical facts taught differently completely change a person's perception. We will probably never learn the truth as none of us were there. I have always been told that Japan was already ready to surrender and that dropping the bombs was simply the first step into the cold war -- a bombing to show stre…
The key debate within Japanese leadership was what conditions of surrender to accept. They'd known for some time they were going to lose, but hoped to drag out an invasion of Japan enough to get better concessions, keep the Emperor in power etc.
The nuclear bombings ended up not playing a huge role in their decision making. At the time all the major cities in Japan had been firebombed except Kyoto. The fission bomb technology was shocking, but ultimately it meant they did with one bomb what had already been happening via thousands. When the US firebombed Tokyo it killed over 100,000 people in a single night, mostly women, elderly men, and children. McNamara has said he believes he'd have been convicted of war crimes for that had the US not emerged the winner.
Russia steamrolling through Manchuria in just under 30 days, utterly routing the Japanese forces there weighed heavily on the minds of Japan's leadership. Once Russia declared war and was clearly committed to being part of the invasion of Japan, they realized they most likely would not be able to extract concessions by further resistance.
It's a bit more complex than all that, and there is a debate among historians on details of these points, but I believe it's reasonably accurate. The simple narrative that it saved US lives is a way of avoiding looking at just how ugly things got.