John Toland has written a number of books about the war and in the one I read blames the war to the Japanese ambassador's hemmerhoids. He excuses (actually, he didn't even cover) Japanese atrocities, or blithely says Japanese soldiers suffered as much as prisoners of war. Excuse me, prisoners of war aren't supposed to be tortured.

The Japanese might have been willing to surrender, but they were not willing to go for unconditional surrender. They would have fought. Remember, this is a military government that knew its back was to the wall - they had nothing to lose. Best estimates at the time were a million US casualties.

The US at the time could not back down from its "unconditional surrender" demand, after having beaten Germany.