70th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb

As the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb passes; the question is still being asked, did Hiroshima really need to happen?

There is no question of the total destruction the atomic bomb caused on the inhabitants of Hiroshima, but were any other options available to the American political leadership? It is also argued that Hiroshima was not a military target; however, as a military target, Hiroshima housed a major army base that were the headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division and the 2nd Army Headquarters. Furthermore, Hiroshima was an important port and communications centre in southern Honsu.

The Japanese political leadership was so frightened the divine emperor Hirohito would be tried as a war criminal, they were unwilling to accept an unconditional surrender. The Japanese political leadership were more than willing to sacrifice the people of Japan to shore up their personal political ambitions and power base.

We need to remember the D-day amphibious landings occurred on the 6th of June 1944; Germany refused to surrender even as the feared Russian forces entered Berlin. The German forces fought hand to hand the whole way against the allied forces on their western flank and the Russian army approaching from the east, the casualties were extraordinarily high. The German surrender finally came on the 8th of May 1945, 11 months after the Normandy landings after Hitler committed suicide in his heavily fortified Berlin bunker. 

How much death and destruction occurred across Europe between the time on the D-Day landings and the German surrender? There was nothing to indicate that anything but a full scale invasion of the heavily defended island of Honshu would yield surrender and the end of World War II. The experiences of the marine landings on Okinawa and Iwo Jima indicated that a determined and heavily fortified enemy were more than willing to fight to the last man with estimated casualties exceeding a combined one million people with the Pacific theatre of war extending into 1947. It is difficult to fathom that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually saved lives given the terrible deaths the inhabitants had to endure.