Do you agree or disaggree with this statement?

Question

World War 2: The dropping of the atomic bombs on japan was justifiable for what Japan did and ultimatley saved thousands of american lives by ending the war quickly. Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? I just want to get some opinions.

Answer 1

If the US had to invade the Japan mainland, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million US soldiers would have died. An estimated 2 to 5 million Japanese soldiers and civilians would have died as well. Roughly 200,000 people died in the bombings. Granted, most of them were civilians. However, since the Japanese were actively arming civilians, that many civilians plus more would have died on a mainland invasion. I belive that it is better to have 200,000 dead people than 6 million dead people. So I believe that although cruel, the bombings were justified and ultimately saved lives.

Answer 2

The problem with a question like this is it asks people to second guess a decision made in 1945, using knowledge and sensibilities from 2007. That said, the bombing of Hiroshima was probably necessary. If we hadn't dropped the atomic bomb on that city, and the war had continued, it would have been heavily bombed eventually. We killed thousands in a night using conventional weapons in Germany and Japan. From that stand point the death toll in Hiroshima wasn't significantly higher. What was new were the long term health effects on the survivors. That was as new to the US as it was to the rest of the world.
As for Nagasaki, I have always questioned the necessity of the second bombing 3 days after the first. The Japanese parliament was spread out throughout the country and couldn't, as a body, react to Hiroshima. I think we could have waited longer. Perhaps the second bombing would not have been necessary.

Answer 3

I agree. It ultimately saved thousands of lives, American lives. During time of war , that is the ultimate consideration upon which a leader makes decisions. By dropping the bombs, America was able to end the war with out having to invade the main land of Japan which would have resulted in mass casualties and death of the American soldier.

Answer 4

The Japenese considered the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan unjustified.

Shortly after World War II, the victorious allies created the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMFTE) to prosecute the Japanese for war crimes and atrocities committed during the war. During the trial, the defendants claimed that those responsible for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be put on trial also, as they committed what constituted as war crimes as well. The tribunal, being composed solely of Allied judges and prosecutors, dismissed the Japanese claims.

Even up to this day, the Japanese history school textbooks that describes Japan's role in World War II portrays the Japanese as the victims of the war.

Answer 5

Agree, the invasion of Japan would have cost billions of dollars, an estimated one million American casualties. The cost of the Japanese side would have been catastrophic, to the near annihilation of their race. Dropping the bombs saved a few million lives at least.

What most people don't know is that the incendiary bombing raids on Tokyo killed more people than in both Atomic Bomb attacks combined. The atomic bombs have a social stigma attached to them that distorts the justification for using them.

Answer 6

I agree but I'm glad it was not my decision. Yes, the result was horrible. It should stand as a warning to everyone just how frightful these weapons are.

It is very easy to come up with all sorts of arguments against in hindsight but even then I'm not sure that any are valid. If there had been an invasion of Japan proper, the resistance would have been fanatical and the casualties astronomical on both sides. It may well have been, and in fact is very likely, that more Japanese civilians would have died during an invasion.

Answer 7

Agree. The bombs took a terrible toll, but they brought the war to a swift end. An invasion of Japan by American forces would have been long, difficult, and bloody.
As someone whose father (USAAF) would have been in the first wave of an invasion of Japan, I'm glad the bombs were dropped.

Answer 8

Whether it ended the war quickly is a fact, no opinions to be had there. Whether it saved thousands of american lives we can't know because maybe the Japanese would have surrendered quickly even if we had used other strategies. Was it justifiable? Was it justifiable to attack Pearl Harbor? I personally would rather nuclear weapons be dismanteled, but we opened that pandoras box a long time ago.

Answer 9

The first one was probably justified because it ended the war quicker and saved more lives than it killed.

The second one, maybe not so much because the Japanese were getting ready to surrender because of the first one, and because the USSR declared war on them.

And if you think dropping the first one was totally morally reprehensible, you should educate yourself on the Pacific war a little more. It wasn't just the bombing of Pearl Harbor that the Japanese were guilty of. It was the *EXTREMELY* brutal Japanese conquest of the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, much of China, and quite a few other places. The Japanese came close to being responsible for as many deaths as the Nazis, and possibly more because we really don't have a firm grasp on the number of Chinese people who died.

Answer 10

I agree that it was the only thing that would stop the war, and saved lives, (on both sides), but disagree that it was "justifiable" for what 'they' did. If the US had somehow been able to drop the bomb on the Japanese soldiers in China and elsewhere it would have been justified. BTW, more Japanese civilians died in Tokyo from conventional bombs than Nagasaki or Hiroshima.