Hiroshima and Nagasaki...?

Question

Should we, the United States, have dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Keep in mind, Hiroshima was mostly military, while Nagasaki was mostly civilian. Don't recite paragraphs from sources. I want opinions. Thank you.

Answer 1

Knowing what we do today, no. Knowing what they knew then, yes. The problem is one of the ways of waging war, and how it changed from mostly armed combat between uniformed forces, to waging war indiscriminately on civilians. This started when Hitler declared unrestricted warfare at sea. Once this happened, it further escalated in Europe and probably culminated with the bombing of Dresden with incindiary devices. At the time, a nuclear device was just another kind of bomb, just a really BIG one. They knew nothing of the aftereffects which today we DO know. It does not matter that one target was mostly military, it was simply put, a way to devestate the infrastructure and destroy the will of the people. It worked, horribly well. I think the 2nd bomb was overkill. To me, the message of "surrender or die" was perfectly clear after Hiroshima. I can see the reasoning of using the bomb. To put the words of a famous Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, into the vernacular, use your best weapon first. You will win or you will lose but either way, you will suffer the least consequence. This was simply putting this thought into practice once the bomb became available. After the bomb, we DID suffer the least consequence, we won, and in my opinion, fewer lives on both sides were lost as a result. So, there are points in favor of both sides here, using or not using the bomb. Both have good points in favor, both have negative consequences against. I think the powers that be at the time, did the best they could with what information they had available to them. Hindsight is always 20/20. There it is, my opinion.

Answer 2

All the major combatants in WW II bombed civilian targets, and the destruction and casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in line with those of other cities. There's no difference, except that it took two bombs and two bombers instead of thousands of bombs and hundreds of bombers to accomplish the mission. The only moral distinction between those and the others is the forcefulness of the argument to surrender. There is no valid argument that conventional bombing was OK but those were not. Nagasaki was an alternate, not a primary, target, but Hiroshima would have suffered the same fate had the atomic bomb not existed.

Answer 3

Yes, the choice to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the correct choice. Whether military or civilian targets, the Japanese had to be bombed into surrendering. What is different today is this - many Americans will ask if the American president and the American military made the right choice, and many will say "no." Most of the people who say "no" really have little idea of what the Japanese did in Asia from 1931 - 1945.

I wonder how many Japanese today ask themselves - should the Japanese Emperor and the Japanese military have bombed Manila and Nanjing? Should we have invaded China, Singapore, India, Burma, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, etc., etc. ad nauseum, and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians? Was it the right choice?
The Japanese still go to the Yasukuni Shrine and remember their "heroes" which include about 1,000 POWs who were convicted of some level of war crime, and a total of 12 convicted and 2 suspected Class A war criminals.

I am not reciting paragraphs from sources, this IS my opinion. You are welcome.

Answer 4

It was a very hard decision that President Truman had to make concerning dropping the atomic bombs. He had to outweigh all the options including doing nothing with the war dragging on long into 1946, invading Japanese mainland which probably would have caused a million casualities because there would had been house to house fighting with the Japanese resolve not to surrender or dropping the atomic bomb.

Answer 5

It was all out war with a country that attacked the USA without warning and slaughtered prisoners with all out brutality and were hell bent on wiping the USA off the map if not by themselves then by teaming up with Nazi Germany. If it was my call at the time and I had more nukes they would have been falling out of the sky over Japan like raindrops from hell. So yes I believe it was just THEN . NOW if I was a US soldier and was sent to protect Japan from an attack I would fight until death for our allied brothers and sisters. How things have evolved.

Answer 6

One of the biggest and stupidest mistakes that anybody can make in history is . . .

. . . judging the actions of the past by the standards of the present.

It doesn't prove anything except that standards have changed, and will change again. What is the use of concluding that by today's standards, it was wrong? In another sixty years, the conclusion could be the opposite, and in sixty more, back to today's standards.

All that counts is that the people who had to take the decision at that time arrived at the correct one by the standards of their time. Real history would consist of understanding those standards well enough to see why they led to that decision. Fake history consists of trying to judge them by our own standards.

Answer 7

No. The overwhelming majority of the victims were innocent civilians. It did stop the war, but there had to have been another way. The entire world saw what those bombs were capable of and we hope they never have to be used again.

Answer 8

Yes. It saved an estimated 1M men of US armed forces and an estimated 6-12M Japanese. That does not take into account the immense destruction of the cities and countryside.

Answer 9

Yes, it helped end the war, and it actually saved many American lives. It is sad that we killed as many as 100,000 Japanese but unfortunately that is the nature of war.