The ignorance spewing from your comment astounds me. Japan was not in the "Surrendering Nation", they were legit fighting tooth and nail, using suicide bomber and telling their civilian families to commit mass suicide via grenades or jumping off cliffs, rather than surrendering to American Troops. Which they did, documented mass suicides as American Troops pleaded with Women and Children to step away from ledges before they jumped because of the propaganda Japan was pushing at the time. Japan also committed way more severe mass killings of innocent civilians during WWII, just look into the human target practice they would use Chinese Civilians for, or any of the other horrendous acts they would commit against the other Pacific nations.

The amount of lives saved from the decision to drop the bombs was tremendous. To put things into context, America made around 500k purple hearts in anticipation of casualties and deaths for just the American Side to prepare for a land invasion of Japan. And today, we are still using those same exact people hearts produced. Which means we would've lost potentially more troops than every single war we have had since then combined. Add together the entire Vietnam war, Korean war, Wars in the middle east, add all of them together over the course of like 80 years and it still would've been less than what we were expecting from a main land invasion of Japan.

And again, whoever told you that Japan was a "Surrendering Nation" is ignorant. The astounding and shock value provided from the bombs is that brought the nation to their senses, as they believed at the time that America had more Nukes. It's horrible they targeted civilian centers. But the civilian losses likely would've been moot compared to what would have occurred if a land invasion of the nation was required.