Was the bombing of Hiroshima justified?

Question

please give specific reasons why you think that it was justified if thats your opinion..... it's for a debate that I have to do for school!

Answer 1

What do you yourself think? Have you collect much info into this. I hope you do. But my answer to your question is this. In some ways yes. We really have not much choice at all. We were running out of much resources at the time, and Japan was in many ways similar to Germany during WWII, and as a matter of fact Japan and Germany were allies. The A Bomb that was invented by American German was meant to be used as final resort to stop Hitler from destroying many European countries. At the same time, Japan was doing similar things to East Asia. During this time, our leaders were frustrated by what the Japanese was doing and I believe we were scared to death of the Japanese taking over us militarily. Philipines was the only country that would have been between USA and Japan, I mean where the war between and the US would have started. (What's really odd is this, why most of our troops were based at Pearl Harbor, but I'm afraid it could have een another ways of using it as an excuse for the justification of destroying Hiroshima... Not sure on this, but seems to make lots of sense though...Anyways we can all stretch our opinions to satisfied our theory any way you want, but the thing is things are so complicated that you can pinpoint exactly what went on. ) Anyways you look at it, the Japanese were already all over East Asia. It didn't matter whether we sent our troops to Philipines or not. We still wouldn't be able to stop them. They were so close to Hawaii and guess what's in Hawaii? Yes, you guessed it right. Our troops were there. That's where we have to but our defense troops at to stop any country from invading the west side of USA through Mexico and California.

On the other hand, America stopped sending resoucres, especially scrapped metals to Japan before they could move along any further. This really pissed them off. Nobody really thought America would enter the war against any country unless the Allies cried out for help. America, before the cold war, did not want to stick our nose into any one's business at all. Right after Vietname war, the country seems to have gone down hill ever since then. But this another story. Good enough, yes? I hope you get an A in your debate.

Answer 2

Yes the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both justified, remember the Japanese attacked America first (one can argue it was a provoked attack but that is irrelevant to the issue).

The military experts of that time estimated in excess of 1 million American casualties if we has conducted a land based invasion of the Japanese home land with substantially more that 1 million Japanese lives lost at the same time.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was different from the bombing of Germany in only one way, that was we used our newly developed Atomic bomb rather that traditional high explosives. If Germany had not surrendered when they did you could have expected to read about the US Military dropping an Atomic bomb there as well. By the way both Japan AND Germany were very close to developing their own Atomic bombs to use on us. Also Japan and Germany had entered into an agreement to divide up the United States if we had lost the war.
All of this is historical fact.

Answer 3

It's true we lost the moral high ground after use of the nukes on Japan, but looking at what Truman faced in 1945, i probably would've done the same thing. To compare the moral depravity of state sponsored genocide where the death ovens at Aushwitz/Birkenau were topping out at 2,600 per day or 80,000 killed per month and the aerial bombardment of civilians is looking at different scales.

The "Final Solution" was the policy of only one country during the last century, and it wasn't the U.S. My beef is with the multi-national business cartels that allowed it to happen, the top being IG Farben (now BASF, Bayer, among others).

Not only did they finance Adolf, they supplied him with Zyclon B for use in the death camps. The American side of the company was not tried at Nuremburg, although they were just as culpable, go figure.
The fire bombing of Dresden by the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command, caused the destruction of 15 square kms including 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 18 churches, etc. with a conservative estimate of around 30,000 civilians killed. At the time, the Germans used it as propaganda to advocate against following the Geneva conventions and to attack people's perception of the Allies claim to absolute moral superiority. The military claimed the railroad center was a military target, which it was, altho it was up and running a week later. Feb 1945 was only 3 months away from May 1945 (end of the Euopean war), the outcome of the war was not in doubt, so why bomb a 'cultural' medieval city of 600,000?

The firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, genocide should also include civilian victims of aerial bombardment. Even after saying this, i still don't think the Allies were close to the moral depravity of the Nazis and their wholesale holocaust of the Euopean Jews.

The bombing of civilians is a great tragedy, none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized, and if one side attempted to do so it would be most likely to be defeated. That to me is the lesson of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Answer 4

You bet it was. The ruling class of the Japanese military were bound to defend their homeland to the last man, woman, and child. It took the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince them that the war was irretrievably lost. Had the US armed forces been required to attack the Japanese mainland, at least a million more service members would have been lost. To not use the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been at the very least a deriliction of duty on the part of President Truman and the War Department. There are generations of Americans alive today due to the ending of the war without an invasion of Japan, and that goes for not only America, but also for Japan.

Answer 5

Just as justified as the bombing of any other city, and perhaps a bit moreso, in that the immense power of the atom bomb had a decisive effect on the thinking of the Emperor. If there's a debate, it should be about the bombing of cities (with conventional munitions) throughout the war, and everybody did it.

Answer 6

of course it was. in fact, the army was gearing up for a total invasion of Japan at the time. this invasion, which fortunitly never happened, would have cost america so many lives, possibly into the millions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, being religious sites, showed the Japaneese we didn't care where or who we bombed. my only regret is that i wasn't born early enough to be one of the crew of the Enola Gay so i could bomb those Japs for what they did to my people, the Filippinos.

Answer 7

And so we have the weekly question of Hiroshima. I wish there was some way to store the answer and just click one button and repeat.

Yes it was, yes, yes. Death in warfare, anywhere else is the same. Does not matter whether fall out of building to your death or you are caught in a ball of napalm. Death is death is death.

The bombs were used in the aftermath of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. If you project the losses, on both sides at those two invasion islands, then the loss of life in an invasion of the Home Islands of Japan would have been unprecedented in all of history. The deaths of Japanese would run into the many millions. The losses on the U.S. would have run into the hundreds of thousands. The Japanese were preparing for hand to hand fighting by civilians and military. They had just done it and would have done it again if the war had not ended so abruptly.

Answer 8

It was more justified than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Plus WE warned THEM to get outta Dodge! But did they LISTEN? noooooo

Answer 9

yes, the war was taking its toll on both sides there had to be a decisive attack and the bomb was the perfect solution. With this tremendous show of force the war was quickly ended.

Answer 10

Y E S, The Japanese did not want to surrender,
so by dropping the A-bomb made them surrender and saved million of lives by the US
not having to invade Japan by sea.