I don't agree with all that you say on #3, Imperator. Japan did not have adequate time to surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped.
The United States should have given Japan a few more days after Hiroshima to surrender. I think one did the job, but we didn't have time to see. Japan sent a team in to confirm if the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was nuclear; I am of the mind that Japan would have surrendered as soon as it was confirmed. Unfortunately, this team did not confirm it was nuclear until after the United States dropped another bomb on Nagasaki.
This isn't actually true. I'm sure you're familiar with the Potsdam declaration, the one that says something like "Surrender now or face Prompt and utter destruction"? That was issued on July 26, 1945; That's almost two weeks before any Nukes were dropped the first being on the 6th of august. And Japan said No, they'd fight to the bitter end. The Japanese knew it was a nuke, because truman told them so and because they got a lot fo reports saying that it was something like a "bright flash of light and the a huge explosion".
They knew it was a nuke, but it get's worse; The reason japan decided not to surrender after Hiroshima was not because they didn't know it was a nuke that wiped the heck out of their city, but rather because they knew what a nuke was and how hard it was to build, and figured that the US couldn't have that many more, so they were okay with continuing the fighting that would cost millions of lives.
the reason we dropped the bomb was not to save lives, but to get japan to surrender to us and not russia, who was preparing for invasion when we dropped the bomb. we could have saved american lives by letting russia invade, but then we would have lost that sphere of influence.
The USSR wasn't preparing for an invasion, the Soviet invasion of Japan was a real thing that was actually happening when the US dropped the bomb. The Soviets had invaded the Japanese state of manchuria and completely toppled japanese rule there. They had also invaded the Sakhalin islands and taken control of them, and were preparing an invasion of Hokkaido, the second biggest japanese island.
Sure, you can make the Argument that they didn't invade anything we consider Japan today, but They invaded the Japanese empire, and Killed around 83K Japanese. It was an invasion, and a real invasion.
Now, it is true that The Japanese were trying to negotiate more favorable terms with the USSR and surrender to them under those more favorable terms, but that's really sneaky of japan, and not really something that can result in anything but a bad thing for the US.
One thing I find interesting about modern leftists like shyb is that they're happy to mention the US's bombing of Hiroshima and nagasaki as examples of evil, but never want to talk about the over 100 Million people murdered in brutal regimes under Leftist, COmmunsit goverments.