Was President Harry S. Truman wrong to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 214,000 civilans,

Answer 1

NO!

Without employment of the "A-Bomb," estimates reflect as many as 3 million more American soldiers would have died in a prolonged WWII.

(Unprovoked, Japan initiated a "hellish attack" against the United States on December 7, 1941)

Answer 2

No.

The issue was carefully considered by the President at the time.

The Japanese were fighting desperately in mid-1945. To defeat them, it was estimated that we would have 750,000 American casualties in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. That didn't even count Japanese casualties. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved far more American and Japanese lives.

Japanese and German cities had already been put to massive bombing raids that caused death and destruction not much different from these two nuclear attacks. (And the Germans and Japanese would have done the same, had they been able.) Although atomic bombs were new, attacking cities was not by World War II standards.

Add to these the fact if we had not ended the war quickly in 1945, the Russians would have pushed further into the far east, vastly extending their Communist empire. By August 1945, the world was beginning to see just how bad Stalinist rule could be.

Some suggested finding a way to test the bomb, such as in the upper atmosphere. But if the test had proven to be a dud, the Japanese would have been heartened and would have fought on all the more determinedly. Others said that we should warn the Japanese so that they could evacuate the cities. All they would have done, though, was fill the cities with American prisoners of war. The only remaining choice was an actual attack. It achieved the desired goal, and on balance a lot more lives were saved because of it.

Answer 3

There's a case to be made that strategic bombing was wrong, but WW II was all-out war, and population centers pretty well had to be bombed, because the circular area of probability of a bomb strike was about a mile. There was, in the Allied breakout from Normandy, a case of B-17's being used in tactical support, and they bombed the heck out of an American division. Bombing was simply not precise enough to do better.
In terms of the use of fission weapons, the casualties were no greater than would have occurred with conventional bombing, and one raid on Tokyo caused more deaths than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The only significant difference is that it took two planes, and two bombs, to do the job instead of large fleets.

Answer 4

Truman did the right thing.

Without the A-bombs, the Allies would have been forced to invade the Japanese Home Islands at the cost of perhaps another 1 Million Allied casualties.

With such horrendous casualties on the Allied side, imagine the slaughter of the Japanese. Probably on the order of 6 to 10 million additional Japanese casualties, mostly innocent civilians.

Far better to kill 200,000 that several million might live, than to have had the war drag on for another two years, killing that many or more every month.

Truman did the right thing.

Doc Hudson

Answer 5

I think this is almost impossible to say. If you accept that the Allies genuinely believed that Japan would fight to the end, the invasion of the mainland would have been an absolute bloodbath, and the use of the bomb ended the war, thereby saving millions of lives. If it is true however that Japan had opened peace negotiations and the US wanted to deploy the bomb just as a statement to the USSR, then it becomes much more morally reprehensible.

But I think it is hard to judge the mindset of a generation that had suffered total war for so many years. After all, the nuclear weapons were terrifying in terms of the devastation done by one single bomb, but the images of the destruction of Hiroshima, awful though they are, are not objectively different to those of Coventry, Dresden etc.

Answer 6

This is really three different questions.

Based upon what he knew, it was a wise and courageous decision that saved millions of lives on both sides.

The hard part of the question comes from initiation of atomic warfare. If the U.S. had not dropped the first bomb, would someone else have? Based upon what we know now, it still is defend able as necessary self-defense.

The last part of the question is how future generations will feel about this. If we have a nuclear holocaust, will we all regret the start of nuclear warfare?

Answer 7

No.

Truman's decision saved the lives of at least 300,000 service personnel who would have been maimed or killed (based on Army quartermaster records dealing with the buildup of material in the months prior to the bombings, which would be used in the invasion of the Japanese home islands). The Imperial forces were looking for a fight to the death; the casualties among the civilians caught in the middle (not to mention those pressed into service by local military commanders) would have been horrific, likely dwarfing anything seen sice the Mongol invasion of Europe.

Answer 8

No, he wasn't wrong. Had he not dropped the bomb, Japan would have created havoc by prolonging the war and more than 214,000 people would have been killed. That was Truman's only alternative at that time.

Answer 9

incorrect. President Truman knew that jap have been thinking resign with the Soviet's intervention, Japan at that factor replaced into asserting that if united statesa. could purely comply with keeping the Tenno gadget, they could resign. The conflict replaced into on the threshold of the tip at that factor. there replaced into no might desire to drop atomic bombs. yet he desperate to apply the atomic bomb. Why did they drop atomic bombs? Why have been men rounded up on the battlefield and bombs dropped on cities the place purely women persons, little ones and old human beings have been final? If the point replaced into to end the conflict with the aid of dropping an atomic bomb, it is going to have been adequate to bomb merely Hiroshima. Why is it that they dropped atomic bombs of categories on 2 port cities further surrounded with the aid of mountains and then many times investigated the blast victims for years after that, like they have been laboratory animals? After the conflict ended, an American protection rigidity team visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki to verify the victims. yet they have been purely there to verify them and to no longer treatment or take care of them. there is curiously a view between historians that united statesa. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki because of the fact it needed a study pattern to verify the effects of two atomic bombs. i think of so too. in the previous the 2nd Sino-jap conflict started, western worldwide places had many colonies in the international, and westerners had operated an obscurant coverage in the colonies. the jap purely have been had equivalent therapy from westerners. subsequently, Japan proposed The Racial Equality in Paris Peace convention in 1919. even although, the united statesand British took sturdy opposition in the convention, so the thought did no longer get the approval. we'd desire to continually comprehend this certainty too.

Answer 10

No. Japan slaughtered innocent civilians in the region, did horrendous medical experiments on them, raped women, murdered innocent children and the elderly, enslaved groups of people, and mistreated POWs in violation of international laws. Research the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, and other incidents of Japanese atrocities during WWII, which some of them continue to deny to this day. You'll never feel sorry for them again.

Previous comments about the cost of a ground offensive are absolutely correct. Truman and MacArthur, although they didn't get along at all, weren't fools. They knew that would end the war quickly and justly.