[Colonel]

[quote="Short Hand":c805e]2 Nukes droped just outside of Tokyo would have had the Japenese surrendering within hours. .[/quote:c805e]

The fact that we didn't drop it on Tokyo shows that we were considering loss of life in the equation. In addition, Hiroshima was a military target. Tokyo was not. Further, it is a good thing that it was not dropped "just outside Tokyo" either. No one knew the long term destructive power of radiation. Dropping the bomb near Tokyo would have had devastating health effects on the many more Japanese people, and ultimately would have led to more deaths, than dropping directly on Hiroshima and Nagaski did.