>What about the estimated 100,000 or so that would have been
>saved had we invaded?

President Truman declared the
hope that "this new weapon will
result in saving thousands of
American lives."

"The president's initial formul-
ation of 'thousands,' however,
was clearly not his final state-
ment on the matter to say the least,"
remarks historian Gar Alperovitz.
In his book, The Decision to Use the
Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of
an American Myth, Alperovitz documents
but a few of Truman's public estimates
throughout the years:

December 15, 1945: "It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities . . ."

Late 1946: "A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand - maybe half a million - of America's finest youth."

October 1948: "In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed."

April 6, 1949: "I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved."

November 1949: Truman quotes Army Chief of Staff George S. Marshall as estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be "half a million casualties."

January 12, 1953: Still quoting Marshall, Truman raises the estimate to "a minimum one quarter of a million" and maybe "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy."

Finally, on April 28, 1959, Truman concluded: "the dropping of the bombs . . . saved millions of lives."