Actually, both the Japanese and Americans have admitted that if the bombs weren't dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the continued fighting and the napalm attacks would have resulted in much higher death tolls among Japanese soldiers/civilians and American soldiers than the bombs did. Some Japanese have gone so far as to say that the bombs saved them because their government was willing to fight to the very end and had even already armed civilians to fight back. Everyone was expendable. I know this sounds like U.S. propagandizing, but it was even stated by Japanese officials. Does this warrant the bombing? I dunno. With how much land and people were being wiped out by napalm attacks, I'm afraid to think of what Japan would be like today if the fighting had continued on the scale it was.