I believe that President Truman did the right thing by dropping the bomb both times. Let me explain. Truman was faced with three choices. One. Countinue with the current stragtey of blockading the Japanese by sea and firebombing their citys. Two. Invade Japan with 20+ divisions (10,000 men each) againast an enemy who would fight to the last man, woman, and child. Three. Drop a nucler bomb on there country every week until they surrender. One would not work because the Japan would just keep throwing siucide planes into the U.S. Fleet and the Japanese would not of surrendered. Also the U.S. people wanted to see a quick resoltion to the war in the pacific once Germany had surrendered. The blockaid would of dragged on for a year or more in all likelyhood. Two would not work because an invasion would of resulted in 100,000+ U.S. deaths and Millions Japanese deaths. (Military and Civilian) Also the U.S. invasion plans made no menition of the Divisions that would of made up the spearhead of the invasion past the fifth day of the invasion if it had gone to plan. ( This means that the U.S. planners expected the divisions that made up the spearhead to be wiped out by the fifth day of fighting.) So by dropping the Atomic Bomb, even twice, the bomb saved more lives then they took. The bombs only killed about 120,000. One firebombing raid on Toyko killed over 100,000 Japanese, nearly as much as both Nucler Bombs killed to gether. And by the way, even after both Bombs were dropped the some in the Japanese military were still against surrender and the day before Japan said it would surrender, some Japanese officers tried a military coup against the emperor that would of stopped Japan from surrendering. ( It was only stopped because a U.S. air raid caused a blackout that pevented the military from reaching the emperor. See the History Channel's "The Last Mission".)