Hiroshima (1946)
&gt; In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill, life for life; the soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs. They were silent and dazed.<p>However I may feel about the bomb having been used, I don&#x27;t doubt it saved more lives than it took. As for all the civilians and children and other non-combatants, I doubt the tragedy would have been less without the bomb. It&#x27;s hard for me to reconcile how such an obvious force of destruction could be more desirable than an invasion, and that&#x27;s probably because it&#x27;s very hard for me to understand the destruction an invasion creates. An invasion&#x27;s impact isn&#x27;t as easy to put into neat pictures and anecdotes as a singular experience that a bomb explosion creates.<p>There&#x27;s some question if the ramp up of the Soviets on their eastern border had more to do with Japan&#x27;s surrender than the atomic bombs we dropped. I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s a clear answer there.