Comment by Aloisius

> letting a weakened Japan fight indefinitely

Again, that simply wasn't an option. The US did not believe it could sustain the blockade indefinitely. The American public was growing war weary and Japan was far from neutered - Japanese aircraft, submarines, suicide torpedoes and mines continued to inflict casualties.

The US would have been slowly bled without any end in sight for potentially years. Had the Japanese then sued for peace with extremely favorable terms that allowed them to keep the bulk of their expanded empire, the fear was that the American public demand the US accept it.

> Most of the troops outside the home islands were in Manchuria, which Stalin was willing to sort out for us

Japan had about 3.5 million military personnel outside the home islands in 1945. Only 665K of them were in Manchuria. They had 1.1 million in China, 190K in Taiwan, 127K in the Philippines, 107K in Thailand, 134K in Malaysia/Singapore, etc.

The Soviet Army couldn't fight them all.