Derek Mayberry comments

The choice of the US was simple - invade the Japanese islands at tremendous cost of human life on both sides, or drop the bomb and tell them there's more to come if you don't surrender. No apology necessary, let's just get over it, shall we?

I just don't understand why this is so hard to understand. This is not 1945. None of us was there. People faced some pretty stark choices. If one looks at it from our modern perspectives, the Japanese militarist faction within the highest echelons of the government at the time -- that being the day after Hiroshima -- can be regarded as quite simply, clinically insane. They were literally babbling about Japan going out like a "chrysanthemum" in a glorious mass suicide of some hundred million people, mostly old men, women and children. The army that was going to defeat the Americans in one big, glorious battle were to be armed with bamboo sticks.

I wish I were making this up, but I'm not. Just look up "Anami Korechika" and you will have your answer to why Nagasaki was pulverized into dust.