Hiroshima (1946)

Of course they could, and they did consider many options. But they only had a couple of bombs and any additional ones were weeks away. We know now that the bombs helped to end the war but they didn’t know then that they would. Detonating the bombs with no result could be looked at similar to firring your limited ammunition over your enemy’s head to hope it makes them surrender, but if it doesn’t, you have less ammo to fight them.

Firebombing leveled over 60 Japanese cities and killed between 330,000 and 900,000 people (though we will never know for sure because the very records needed were obliterated in the conflagrations). Yet leading up to the atomic bombings, Japan was well underway preparing Operation Ketsu-Go, the Japanese defense of the home islands, meant to inflict immense casualties on the American troops and undermine the American publics’ will to continue fighting [1]. Japan planned to lose a million men in this operation, and enlisted every male age 15 to 60 and every female age 17 to 40 in and around Kyushu [2]. There is no reason to believe this wouldn’t happen, given what we saw in Okinawa, where children were mobilized, civilians died by the tens of thousands in the crossfire (since Japan would not evacuate them intentionally to increase casualties), and civilians killed themselves by the hundreds rather than be captured [3].

Americans and Japanese were dying every second the war went on. Wasting your most powerful weapon, that you have almost none of, with your fingers crossed that this will make the country, where not one military unit has surrendered during the entire course of the war, just give up. This is naiveté and hindsight bias at its finest.

[1] “We will prepare 10,000 planes to meet the landing of the enemy. We will mobilize every aircraft possible, both training and "special attack" planes. We will smash one third of the enemy's war potential with this air force at sea. Another third will also be smashed at sea by our warships, human torpedoes and other special weapons. Furthermore, when the enemy actually lands, if we are ready to sacrifice a million men we will be able to inflict an equal number of casualties upon them. If the enemy loses a million men, then the public opinion in America will become inclined towards peace, and Japan will be able to gain peace with comparatively advantageous conditions”- IGHQ army staff officer in July 1945, from “The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945” by Stanley Weintraub

[2] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-are-no-...

[3] https://www.tamucc.edu/library/exhibits/s/hist4350/page/okin...

This idea you and many other armchair historians have that the USSR can solo 1v1 the axis powers and win isn't any less naive than saying America saved Europe, because it ignores the significant amounts of foreign aid that the US donated to other allied nations. This includes the USSR, who would not have been able to carry out a successful war of attrition against the Germans without a consistent pipeline of supplies and weapons. It certainly would not have been able to win a war on two fronts if the Japanese felt free to invade the soviet far east. I will concede that the Chinese deserve way more credit than they generally get for waging their own war of attrition against the Japanese which prevented them from going to war in the soviet far east, but that was also made possible with significant American logistical support.

But more importantly, you seem to have an oddly eurocentric view of history in which the european theater is the only one of any import. Japan's eventual defeat was never a foregone conclusion, and they were just as cruel to their conquered foes as the Germans were. They were also the only Axis that posed a credible threat to the United States, having successfully established a foothold in the Aleutian Islands with an aim towards invading Canada and the United States. Realistically I don't think it ever would have worked (again, they were pre-occupied with China) but they certainly have a better track record of attacking the North American continent than the krauts ever did.