Why, exactly did the US drop the Nuke on Japan at the end of WWII?

Question

I understand that doing dropping these two bombs ended WWII however I wanted to know in layman’s terms why the US dropped these bombs. I have heard that the second one was dropped because Japan did not believe that only one bomb could do that kind of damage, but could someone with a passion for history explain why this happened.

Answer 1

Believe it or not they dropped the bomb to save lives. The bomb killed A lot of people but the war if it went on would have killed far many more.
They went by the forecast of number of people that would die if war continued.

Answer 2

Yes. The US was 100% justified. The most important thing to remember is that the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbor and started the war. As the Americans began to push the Japanese back toward their mainland, the Japanese took a 'never surrender' approach. This approach can been seen at both the islands of Iwa Jima and most importantly Okinawa. When the US was preparing to launch an attack on the Okinawa the was all but over. Still they refused to surrender and Okinawa became one of the bloodiest and costliest battles in WWII. Tens of thousands of American, Japanese and innocent Okinawa civilians perished in the fighting. Once the US had a foothold on Okinawa they set their sets on invading Japan. The US knew that the invasion would be the biggest invansion in human history, making D-Day look like the British Rock Invasion. The Japanese emperor was training EVERY Japanese citizen, including women and children, to resist the American invasion (he refused to surrender). Hundreds of thousands would have died. Worse, for the US, all of those brave men and boys that spent years fighting the Germans would have to be shipped to the Pacific to participate in the fight. America needed a better way out. The atomic bomb allowed that. The US dropped the largest test of an atomic bomb at the Bikini Atoll, close to a Japanese advanced base so that the Emperor would know the distructive power of the bomb. Japan refused to surrender. The US dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima. Still the Japanese refused to surrender. The US dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki with a promise for more to come. The Japanese got the hint and gave up, saving hundreds of thousands (some experts believe millions) of lives. EDIT: McArthur wrote the current Japanese constitution.

Answer 3

At the time it was believed that trying to invade Japan would cost over 500,000 American lives. The estimated damage for the bombs was around 80,000 each and more lives than that were lost in the fire bombing of Tokyo and the massive bombing raids in Germany before that conflict ended. Remember any military action is taken after looking at the probable losses and gains of the action. Naturally there are those that say we dropped the bomb as revenge for pearl harbor but that is not true. It was a military decision based on projected losses and gains.

Answer 4

Because Japan was not exactly losing at that time. Typical brainwashed rubbish follows below. How do you save lives by dropping atomic bombs on civilians. How come some people are full of that stuff? And these are the people worried about North Korea. With record like Japan, they should be banned from having even an army. It was a big war crime.

Answer 5

The second bomb was dropped only 3 days after the first, which did not give the Japanese time to surrender. The Emperor had already wanted peace but his Generals religiously believed it better to die than face defeat, and 3 days was clearly insufficient time for him to have changed their minds. The reason for using the bombs was simply to try out a working example, and check they worked effectively. It was not a last resort, as the US wanted to use them against Korea.

Answer 6

There were 2 choices: Invade Japan and endure the massive casualties that would have been created on both sides or drop the bomb in an effort to force surrender and possibly save hundreds of thousands or millions of lives.

The only thing I have never understood, nor found an explanation for, is the fact that the targets chosen had little if no military value. Different targets could have been chosen with more value for damage to the military machine and still demonstrated that the bomb existed and its destructive capability.

Answer 7

Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa were so costly in terms of US and Japanese lives, that the predictions for losses in an invasion of Japan were staggering. The Japanese actually did fight to the death and any invasion of Japan would have resulted in catastrophic loss of life in Japan. A couple hundred thousand US casulties were also predicted.

The bombs once and for all convinced the Japanese that there was not going to be any honorable death in the struggle against the US.

Once it was proven to them that we could annihilate entire cities at will...well then it was time to shelve the code of Bushido and surrender.

Can't bring a Katana to nuke fight and expect to win.

Dropping the bombs was utlimately the right thing to do. It saved countless Japanese and American lives and showed the world how terrible these weapons are.

Imagine if we never used the bomb and everyone is sitting around with bombs. Eventually somebody would have to find out what they actually did.

Answer 8

k i didi a big project last year on this, they dropped the bomb because they wanted to save as many american and japanese lives. they had 5 options; 1. invade japan 2. warn of attack in any shape or form, if no surrender, drop bomb 3. demonstrate bomb, if no surrender, drop bomb 4. warn of bomb, if no surrender, drop bomb and 5. drop bomb, no warning or anything. if they invaded japan, it would cost millions of lives on both sides, it was a sure way to win, but cost too many lives. and it would be dumb to warn them, we would loose the element of surprise. and theat would not be good. and if we demonstrated bomb, they could take all of the american prisoners of war and plant them in all the big military and large cities. so we would blow up americans, and they would not surrender. so option 5 was all that was left. even tho it took 2 bombs, it ended the war, and saved lives on both sides. it is sad that japanese had to die even tho they were inocent, but it was necessary, and when your new to the presedency, it is hard to make decisions. but truman did a good job, and lots of japanese today dont have hard feelings towards u.s. they say they would have done the same if they were in our position. so yeah, sorry its so long, if u want to know more just e-mail me, its [e-mail].

o and plus, other countries, i think germany or russia, no russia, germany was on our side and helped us develope the bomb, but russia was on our side later. was developing nuclear weapons, and we had to beat them to it, so they could not bomb us first. it was a race, and the u.s. won. we could not risk it