The propaganda fed to the boomers' parents seventy years ago was that it was more humane, and that the Japanese would've never surrendered. The US knew they were going to surrender, but were worried about them surrendering to Russia. The dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan had not so much to do with Japan's army or people, but its geography. If Japan surrendered to Russia, then Russia would control the Pacific and by extension most of the historical spice trade of the old world and that's p much gg capitalism. The atomic bomb was not dropped to win a war; the Japanese people were the first victims of a new type of alchemical murder employed explicitly to save capitalism.