Was the bombing Hiroshima justified?

Question

Provide why and links if you know of any.

Answer 1

Would you prefer to be speaking Japanese right now?

Next Question!

Answer 2

Yes.

With information at hand it was a justified decision to try to bring the war to a quick end. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both planned targets for massive aeriel bombardment anyway, so either way those cities would have suffered horribly. But if the Japanese had not surrendered, then the US would have needed to invade the home islands to end the war. The estimates on casualties for that invasions were something like one million, just on the US side. And probably another 5-8 million on the Japanese side. (military and civilian) So in this case, yes it did save lives. It did it in the most horrific way possible, but it did none the less.

The Japanese were training every man, woman and child in the country to fight the invaders. They were busy trying to build their own atomic bomb, as well as biological weapons. There were also working on aircraft that could reach the US, and already had Submarine aircaft carriers that could have struck deep inland with these weapons. If the war had lasted another year, I wouldn't be surprised if there would have been an additional 12 million casualties, between the invasion itself and the japanese use of bio-weapons.

To dismiss the use of the A-bomb as racist, or dismiss the idea that it saved lives in the long run is short sighted. As close as the Japanese may have been to defeat, they weren't showing any signs of it, and were fully intending to fight to the last man.

Answer 3

Well, the Japanese already offered to surrender a few times before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And while the official reason of the bombings is to reduce the number of lives lost during an invasion, the U.S.A. can easily use an even less drastic and cost effective method.


As for the A-bombs equal surrender.

The problem of A-bombs equal surrender is the following...

a scared cornered wounded cat or any other creature is much more dangerous than a regular cat or any other creature.

If the Japanese government didn't order their people to surrender after the bombings, suffice to say you could see a very brutal counterattack after the bombings.

There's no guarrante that they will surrender just because they were bombed.

But look at this way, now we know on what will happen if an A-bomb was used, and personally, I think that's what happened in August 1945, those were tests and demonstration, plus to humiliate the militaries and governments of both countries.

But I doubt it was to 'impressed' the Soviet Union, since the Soviet Union probably already know about the bomb's capability.


Anyway. Using an A-bomb is not bad really, it's very effective at area clearing. Just give a notice, like what the angels did to Luth before they wipe clean Sodom and Gomorrah.

Note: Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the people there were a bunch of jerks, not because they were homosexuals.



As for Pearl Harbour.

Well, it's very suspicious on how one could get away attacking Pearl Harbour, it's like saying one could get away attacking New York, and yes that one too is very suspicious.

It was also strange, since if Japan didn't attack Pearl Harbour, the U.S.A. will never entered both the Pacific war and the European war.

But suffice to say the Pearl Harbour is a military outpost, while Tokyo is the capital, which was firebombed shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour. And the toll of the Tokyo firebombing was worst than what happened in August 1945, so Japan already suffered more.

Answer 4

The Hiroshima Bombing was a painfull decision made after considering the massive costs in human life, on both sides, that would have resulted from an American landing in Japan. The Bombing was truly a shame, but put the bloody war to an end with minimal casualties as opposed to the available alternatives t the time.

Answer 5

No.
1. The all out warfare of the time against the Japanese was fueled by racism. As can be seen in the worldwide lack of reaction to Japan invaded Manchuria, no one cared what happened in Asia-the people there were considered to be subhuman.
2. The US told the Red Cross that Hiroshima was not a military target and thus would not be bombed. Like Dresden it was filled with refugees fleeing the fighting. We killed civilians, not military targets. We were still in our cultural warfare approach and terror bombing approach that worked so well in Europe.
3. The bombing of Nagasaki did not end the war, nor did the bombing of Hiroshima. The Japanese did not surrender until the Russians declared war on them. Everyone at the time was terrified of the Russian army (the RAF recently declassified documents showing that many bombing raids were done against unncessary targets in Germany just to scare the Russian army into not continuing their march past the German boundaries).
4. The Western world has never tried to approach an Asian government in a way that is acceptable to both. We did not fare well in Vietnam or in Japan because we just do not understand their society.
5. The obvious guilt of the US government. As soon as the war ended the US began dumping money into helping stabalize Japan. Factories were rebuilt, industries were recreated from the ground up with state of the art machinery, while American factories were left to try to modernize on their own. If the gov't thought it was justified, why did they spend so much time and money neglecting things here to try make up for it?

Answer 6

because of the fact Japan had no longer surrendered, on the cases of 18 could, 1945, 26 June 1945 and 24 July 1945 nor on the cases we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or on Nagasaki. those 2 bombs, by utilising killing hundreds of human beings and forcing Japan's renounce-saved possibly a million lives that could have been lost if we would have had to invade Japan. Comprendo?

Answer 7

Well, keep in mind that two bombs were dropped (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
I sometimes wonder if they would have dropped them if they had known the true devastation they would cause, but I also wonder if Japan might have surrendered sooner. I don't know all of the answers, but I do know that the bombs ended the war. I also know that Japan launched surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor US, Thailand, Malaya and Hong Kong, and later attacked the Phillippines. They were not innocent bystanders, they were not trying to help other countries, they were aggressors. We defended ourselves.

Answer 8

the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had far more to do with post war politics then the tactical considerations of winning the war

japan was already essentially defeated but refused to surrender unconditionally to the Americans (who had promised the soviets to accept nothing less) when emperor Hirohito announced the surrender to the public it was because of the bombing of the two cities but the army was told that it was do to the soviet declaration of war against the empire

if you accept the second explanation as did many American military commanders of the time then it seems that the bombings where completely unnecessary however there is a belief that the bombing served as a warning to the soviets and helped prevent the cold war from being another world war in that case two cities and a couple hundred thousand lives seems cheap

Answer 9

I saw a documentary on the History Channel that said that an Allied invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost 1 million Japanese lives alone. Knowing this, and the fact that far less Japanese were killed as the result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is logical to deduce that the bombing saved many lives on both sides-- regardless of how terrible nuclear weapons are.

Answer 10

:The Japanese command would NOT have ended the war if we had not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and there would have been enormous loss of lives for both sides.

Addendum: Apart from long conversations with my father,conventional wisdom, and historical fact also support the decision to drop the bombs. I had A VERY hard time when I was younger accepting this, but maturity and a lot of reading changed my mind. Some of you might want to try the 'thinking' thing- you might find that you like it.

Answer 11

Let me see, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States, we went to war with the Japanese, look at the lives lost at Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, and the only way to stop the war, to show the Japanese that they were not in control was to use the power we had, and bombing them got their attention in more ways than one. So yes, we were justified in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it ended the war that should have never started.