[jordanb]

Nimitz wanted to embargo Japan and starve them out.

The big problem that McArthur and others pointed out is that all the Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and left behind in the Island Hopping campaign through the Pacific were unlikely to surrender unless Japan itself was definitively defeated with the central government capitulating and aiding in the demobilization.

From their perspective the options were to either invade Japan and force a capitulation, or go back and keep fighting it out with every island citadel and throughout China, Indochina, Formosa, Korea, and Manchuria.