where we justified in using the atomic bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki?

Question

my personal belief is yes, we warned them, and they were constructing the same thing.

in genreral including all those things, legal moral and whatnot, was the outcome worth the price

Answer 1

Tough call. Despite having already been effectively beaten, the Japanese were not yet ready to surrender at that point. Some historians say that more people would have been killed on both sides if we had been forced to invade Japan instead. Other historians say we dropped the bomb as much to send a message to the Stalin and the Ruskies who Truman was meeting with in Potsdam at the very moment the bomb was dropped. The former makes a compelling moral and ethical argument for using the bomb. The latter much less so. Still in all, I think in the eyes of much of the world it puts the US in a much weaker moral standing that we hold the distinction for being the only country ever to have used it.

Answer 2

The bomb actually saved lives. It is fact that US bombings using incendiary bombs were killing more Japanese in one night of fire bombing than both nukes combined. The target was Tokyo that racked up such a grisly toll. The buildings in japan at the time were mainly wood and paper. The atomic bombs silent killer radiation wasn't understood at the time and proved to be the bombs biggest means of killing someone. So given that if we didn't use the bomb the regular bombing would have continued racking up massive casualties each time. Then there is the forth coming invasion which probably made the Iwo Jima campaign look very tame. With the never ending death tolls constantly climbing by doing it the so called humane way would not make sense to nuke'em and cut everybodies losses. This war could have gone on for months the Japanese generals were all for it. If it wasn't for the emperor finally saying enough that war would have continued even with the a-bomb but it was the bomb that finally made the emperor move to end the war.

Answer 3

The Japanese weren't constructing a nuclear weapon. Simple as that.

There is a belief that Japan would have surrendered anyway, they were begining to realise the war couldn't be won - especially as they were under attack by a renewed force that no longer had a Western front to worry about.

However, if the atomic bomb had not been dropped on Japan that may have increased the likelihood that the Soviet Union and the US may have had a nuclear war - the world would still have been unaware of the sheer horror of nuclear weapons, and may have used them in their ignorance. A far better thing would have been that nuclear weapons had never been made, but it is unwise to change history, as nobody can ever know the outcome of events.

Answer 4

I guess the moustache and lame answers are in fashion this season.

As history has proven, no it wasn't. Japan was virtually leveled and communication was broke down beyond repair. The only reason skirmishes were still going on through out the Pacific was because orders couldn't, that were given, be communicated to them.

The use of the atomic bomb was purely political. Truman was afraid he'd be impeached if he didn't use the bomb. There were two offers of surrender from the United States in the 1-2 weeks before the drop of the bomb, both Japan was willing to accept, but not on some petty clauses in grounds for a truce. The United States wanted unconditional surrender, and the clauses Japan wouldn't agree to were, in retrospect, petty.

Japan also offered to surrender, but that was rejected too.

However, even though all these surrenders were offered, the decision was made to drop the bomb WEEKS in advance and no matter the out come of the offers it was already decided it would be dropped. Even after the first bomb was dropped, unconditional surrender was offered by Japan, but was rejected by the United States and they dropped the second bomb.

All for politics and science. The United States also had no problem, or it's corporations rather had no problem, in taking the research Japan had conduct in Manchuria, and the research conducted by Nazi doctors on Jews in concentration camps, and capitalizing on it. Bayer is the greatest example probably.

I think your talking about Germany having the bomb. Check your facts. Obviously, they would have shared information, but Japan was much further away from attaining the bomb, Germany was about to complete one before the country was dismantled.

Answer 5

I don't know that they were constructing the same thing (maybe the USSR was, however).

Japan was content with sending every man, woman and child to die in defense of the Emperor, clearly radical and disassociated from the globally recognized value of human life. We would have killed millions of ostensibly innocent civilians as well as military, had the carpet bombing of Japan continued at the same pace seen in the spring/summer of 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki sacrificed their own for the salvation of the rest of Japan. The bombs woke up the military to challenge the 'banzai' approach to war and salvage their lands and people. It was unfortunate, but it did prevent further long-term attrition through carpet bombing. It saved American lives, and in the time of war, that's what's important.

Answer 6

Yes in every aspect of the word. Did you see the Discovery Channel show that revealed the Japanese detonated an atomic bomb in (now) North Korea 2 days after Nagasaki? They surrendered anyway because they had no way to deliver it. You think THEY were developing it for "peaceful" purposes? If they had gotten it a few months earlier, San Francisco or LA might be the smoldering ruin today.

Answer 7

I do not know if use of nuclear weapons can ever be justified, that is a question of conscience as a society I think. It can be argued though that the whole world including Japan was after nuclear technology and they surely would have used it against us should the roles have been reversed.

Answer 8

Justified how? Legally? Morally? Politically? Militarily?

The argument was that killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians saved tens of thousands of American soldiers.

Personally, I think the demonstration would have been just as impressive and just as effective if it had been done on a small island well of the Japanese coast, where everyone gets to see the big explosion and gets to realize that it could have been dropped on a city.

But in the history of the species, nothing gets the message across quite as pointedly as mass slaughter. The US just took a page from the history books, same as the Nazis, or the 9/11 hijackers. Death gets the point across.

Answer 9

Japanese Imperial Government . . . They really brought about their own demise by pissing us off! They had many ways of informing us of the dangers that we would face by roaming the waters of the Pacific, etc. They could have declared war via messenger. That attack that they made on our Pacific Fleet docked @ Pearl Harbor was totally uncalled for! Many U. S. Sailors were trapped below the water in closed hulls, and state rooms, constantly, slowly-but-surely filling with water. For that reason, I think that we probably should have obliterated Yokosuka, and also I think I would have personally chosen to obliterate Yokohama, as well. But I wasn't even born yet. Therefore, no one asked me what I though about it.

Answer 10

Yes, definately. A full scale invasion of japan would have killed just as many civilians and people as a whole (+they would be americans) and probably a lot more. although it had more of a psychological effect on people cuz it happened in a matter of seconds, it still was the right choice.