Few people now reflect that samurai swords killed more people in WWII than atomic bombs. WWII veteran Paul Fussell wrote, "The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war."
    Marine veteran and historian William Manchester wrote, "You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands--a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese--and you thank God for the atomic bomb." Winston Churchill told Parliament that the people who preferred invasion to dropping the atomic bomb seemed to have "no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves."

Bradley, "Fly Boys" pg. 297

    But perhaps the greatest lifesaving function served by the atom bombs was that they shortened LeMay's firebombing of Japan. Secretary of State James Byrnes said the atom bombs did not cause "nearly so many deaths as there would have been had our air force continued to drop incendiary bombs on Japan's cities."

Bradley, "Fly Boys" pg. 298