The firebombing of tokyo killed 200K people, more than both nukes. the firebombing was an attempt to end the war via conventional means and it did nothing to weaken japanese resolve.
The reason hiroshima and nagasaki (small cities) were chosen as nuke targets was because every other bigger city was already mostly destroyed due to firebombing campaigns.
I am not sure how this is relevant to the point I made. Lots of people died. You still don’t know (and never will) how much would have died due to the other options. It’s speculation at best.
The reason hiroshima and nagasaki (small cities) were chosen as nuke targets was because every other bigger city was already mostly destroyed due to firebombing campaigns.