Please read the paragraphs below covering the United States options for ending the war with Japan.

Option 1 - Blockade - The United States considered a naval blockade around the island nation of Japan. In this way, the United States would cut Japan off from food imports, slowly increasing the hunger and suffering there. It would mean that men, women, and children would suffer from starvation and lacking medical supplies as the United States also pursued a bombing campaign overhead. The 1945 Japanese rice crop was already collapsing. If Japan was unable to import or transport food around the nation easily, it would threaten the lives of 36 million Japanese people. The United States military predicted that millions of Japanese people (military, government authorities, and civilians) would die.

Option 2 - Military Invasion - The United States considered a military invasion of Japan. This would produce massive American and Japanese casualties. American planners estimated the invasion would extend the war another year to year and a half, with 400,000-800,000 American deaths. There was an assumption that Japanese authorities would authorize the killing of American POW in Japan upon the invasion initiation as well. Japanese deaths were predicted to be many millions. Senior members of the Army became concerned about this strategy after the costly invasion of Okinawa, seeing it as a preview of the violence and death to come. Planners proposed the use of poison gas against Japanese military forces fighting from difficult positions that would increase American casualties. The United States had the option of having Soviet assistance in the invasion, but this would necessarily produce additional Asian deaths by Soviets and a divided Japan, post-war.

Option 3 - Atomic Bombs - FDR had secretly funded a massive research initiative called the Manhattan Project. Only after FDR's death were the atomic bombs completed. This meant the decision to use the atomic bombs fell to new president, Harry Truman. He had not known about the project until he was notified of the weapons availability. In modern money, the project cost around 20 million dollars and produced four bombs. Researchers were aware of radiation poisoning, but because the bomb was never tested around populations prior to its use in Japan, they massively underestimated the effects of radiation. Truman worried that it might be worse to attempt to use an untested bomb that may not detonate, so despite the cost and military value of each bomb, the first bomb was successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The fourth bomb would take additional time to finalize, so, in 1945, military planners had the option of using two slightly different atomic bombs to attempt to bring the war to a conclusion at the cost of unknown numbers Japanese lives but few American lives.

If you had been President of the United States in 1945, what option would you select to bring the war to a conclusion? Why would you pick this option over the other two?