re: Do you feel bad about the US dropping the atomic bombs on Japan?

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Civilian lives are more important to me than those in the military. Regardless of nationality.

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To a certain extent, I can understand this point of view (even though I don't agree with it)

HOWEVER

You're operating under the false assumption that dropping the bombs resulted in more civilian deaths than would have occurred had the allies continued the war via conventional means and invaded Japan. Every single clue one can draw on says that isn't the case.

For starters, the neither the attack on Hiroshima nor the one on Nagasaki were the deadliest of the war. That honor goes to Operation Meetinghouse - part of the Tokyo fire raids. It killed in the general vicinity of 100,000 people and injured at least that many more. Some Japanese historians estimate that as a whole the Tokyo fire raids may have killed as many as 200,000, which would approach if not exceed the death toll from both atomic bombings combined.

Had the war continued, operation Olympic (the invasion of Kuyusu - the southern island) wasn't even scheduled to begin until October 1945 and Coronet (invasion of Honshu - the main island) wasn't slated until spring of 1946. At a minimum you're talking about 9 more months of sustained air attacks against Japanese industry and population centers. That may not sound like much time, but in fact the strategic bombing campaign against Japan didn't really start until November/December 1944 when the Marianas Islands were captured.

Another 9 months of conventional strategic bombing alone would have easily caused more civilian deaths than the atomic bombings, but it wouldn't have been just bombing. The one time we invaded a Japanese island with a significant civilian population (Okinawa), roughly 25% of those civilians either died as collateral damage or committed suicide. In terms of raw numbers, those deaths were roughly equal to the attack on Hiroshima.

Finally, there's the blockade issue. By 1945, the US stranglehold had Japan teetering on the edge of famine. Even after the August surrender, housing and feeding of Japanese civilians was very difficult. If the war had continued into the winter of 45/46, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians would have died from starvation and exposure alone.

Some will argue that everything I listed would have forced a Japanese surrender without the bombings. Of course, we'll never know but again a look at the known facts suggest that it would have been sometime between Olympic and Coronet. The Japanese still retained large numbers of aircraft to use as kamikazes and a large standing army - not to mention the Kwantung army that could have been relocated (at an obvious cost lost to submarines) to the home islands to resist the invasions. Without the bombs, they weren't quitting before the invasion. Even with the bombs, there was a serious coup attempt by the army to prevent the surrender.

So do I feel bad that people died? Absolutely. Do I think the decision was correct? Absolutely. They saved vastly more civilian lives than they took.