why it was bad to drop atomic bomb in hiroshima?

Question

what are the negatives of using atomic bombs in hirosima and nagasaki

Answer 1

Who said it was a bad idea?

Answer 2

Well, it was bad of the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor when America wasn't even involved in the war in the first place. It never would have happened if they wouldn't have pulled the Pearl Harbor stunt... funny thing is that a lot of the older Japanese people have this huge grudge against the Americans (my husband was stationed at Yokuska on the Kittyhawk for four years). They're very unforgiving... but funny thing is, we got over the havock that they wreaked here at Pearl... it's war... bad stuff happens. Unfortunately, ever since the good Lord created the earth, there has been war and there will be until the end of the world when Jesus comes again!

Answer 3

It ended world war two early, saving approx two million lives, for a death toll of less than a conventional bombing raid in Europe......

The only downside is that people 60 years on , people who cannot remember the cruelty and brutality of the Japanese in WW2, or the suffering of millions subjugated by them and their German pals would now prefer a sceanrio where another 2 million US and British soldiers would have died invading Japan to end the war.

One bomb, or a thousand bomber raid over Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, London, Coventry, Portsmouth etc.....whats the difference?

Answer 4

Thousands of lives were lost when the bombs were dropped. Not military, but civilian. . .children, babies etc. That great loss of life was a tradgedy. That being said, it probably saved hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives. The dropping of the bombs forced the surrender of Japan and avoided an immanant invasion. All loss of life on that scale is a tradgedy, but in this case as awful as it was, the greater good was served.

uhgrant - My grandfather was a marine in the Pacific during the war. I do think the bomb was the lesser of two evils and was the right thing to do. However, the loss of life on such a scale as that is worthy of some amount of sorrow I think. We absolutly did the right thing to end the war, as the Japanese "civilians" were ready for a long fight they had no hope of winning.

Answer 5

The dropping of the atomic on Hiroshima become not "undesirable." Japan's invasion and occupation or aggression against the Asian countries of Australia, Burma, China, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), India, Indochina Malaya (Malaysia), the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Siam (Thailand), the united statesA. (Hawaii), become undesirable. Had Japan chosen to not pass to conflict against those countries; invade, occupy, and drop bombs on the civilians in those countries -- no bombs could have been dropped on Japan.

Answer 6

It was a horrible decision that simply had to be made. Both targets were chosen carefully and did indeed have some military merit. The simple fact is that bombs of that size are area weapons and didn't have the capability to attack a precise target without massive collateral damages. Ultimately I believe it did save lives. Somewhere around 120,000 died but who knows how many would have died assaulting Japanese beaches and fighting for every yard gained inside of Japan.

Answer 7

Ken, all those "civilians" you are talking about, were issued weapons to kill the invaders.

My grandfather was part of the occupation. His job was to man a checkpoint at at street corner of Tokyo and collect the government issued weapons from "civilians."

An invasion would have been far worse, and not just for the Allies, millions of Japanese would have been killed in an invasion and probably 5 more years of war by some estimates.

The other options were not any better, starvation and gas attacks.

Like it or not, the bomb was the lesser of all those evils.

Answer 8

That has been debated for decades.

The "pro" argument, which has merit, is that it would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives had we invaded the Japanese mainland.

The "con" argument, put forth by Albert Einstein and the scientists who actually built the bomb was that a demonstration on an uninhabited island may have convinced the Japanese to surrender.

I personally think that had Roosevelt not died when he did, we would not have bombed Japan.

Answer 9

The use of the bomb wiped a lot of people's memory out...like the memory that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor without provocation.

Another negative is those were the first nukes, the yield was way low, so only a few thousand people died, and the terrain was not poisoned forever.

Answer 10

Another thing to remember is that the incendiary bombs we were dropping on Japan caused much more destruction and death than the A-bomb. Dropping nuclear bombs were a psychological deterrent to continuing the War.

Answer 11

Simply put, there was no negative to the bomb being used in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The move saved possibly hundreds of thousands of American lives, as well as paid Japan back for a little thing like Pearl Harbor. We weren't expecting that(officially), and they weren't expecting to get their asses handed to them.