Was Japan Defeated?

 ‘Japan was already defeated’: The case against the nuclear bomb and for basic morality (msn.com)

The author is wrong about Japan being defeated and on the verge of surrender. His quote about Eisenhower was interesting but guess what? Eisenhower wasn't in the Pacific theater. Those that watched American bodies pile up on beachheads across the Pacific disagreed with Ike. The men (of all ranks) that slogged and fought their way across the Pacific, island by island, had a strong argument for the Japanese not being willing to surrender. It's called Okinawa. Do a search and see how many Japanese were willing to surrender on this tiny bit of their homeland.

I suppose weeks of firebombing the Japanese islands was preferable to dropping two nuclear bombs? 

145,000 deaths were caused by the A-bomb at Hiroshima. Another 75,000 were killed at Nagasaki. Pretty horrible but small scale compared to the firebombing campaign that was in progress and the planned increase in raids.

80,000 - 130,000 Japanese were killed in one night of firebombing on a Tokyo raid and the Japanese government did not surrender. Hell, the Japanese didn't even surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped. It took a repeat to force an end to the fighting.

BTW, army officers rebelled and attempted to seize both the Emperor and a recording of his surrender speech to the country. This coup failed but clearly shows how some in the Japanese Army were willing to take the unthinkable step of disobeying the Emperor in order to fight on.

Those that were actually in the Pacific theater claimed that it was likely that the allies would have lost over a million troops when trying to take the islands. Millions more Japanese would have perished and it's likely that the Soviet Union would have occupied Northern Japan leading to a situation like the Korean peninsula.