What were the main arguments for and dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?

Answer 1

The main arguments were:

1. To save lives
2. To counter the spread of Communism.

1. A. We saved many more American soldiers. We knew that invading Japan would be a terrible and bloody battle. The estimates were that more Americans would die in the first month of the invasion than Japanese died in the atomic attacks.
1. B. We saved a number of Japanese soldiers. The Japanese military was already in trouble. They were running low on experienced soldiers, they were pulling in kids to fight for them, or more often die for them. The kamikaze attacks were terrible in cost to the Japanese military.
1. C. We saved many Japanese civilians.
1. C. 1) We knew (as we do now, but most won't acknowledge it) that the Japanese were training thousands of women and children in how to kill and be partisans. We had and have video of thousands of women being trained to use sticks to beat men to death.
1.C. 2) Look at what happened on Saipan and Iwo Jima. Hundreds of civilians jumped from cliffs rather than be under US control. It would have been no different in the mainland.

2. We put the Russians on notice of what we could do. Also, Stalin had promised to help with the invasion shortly. Anywhere that Russians took, they divided into separate countries. Look at Germany. We avoided having a half-Communist Japan.

Answer 2

1. Hiroshima was HQ of the the Western Army. Nagasaki had the Kure shipyards. It was mostly a tactical decision at the time, the A bomb would get it over with in one raid. To military planners it was just a really big bomb. They had some cities they wanted flattened and they had the means. Rightly or wrongly, they didn't know about the effects of radiation in detail or that they were initiating an arms race. The strategic implications were realized later.

2.The casualty estimates for the invasion of Japan were in the neighbourhood of one million. Given that one quarter of Okinawan civilians were killed during the invasion of Okinawa, that seems like a reasonable number.

3.The Allies felt that POWs and civilian internees would be slaughtered in retribution if the main islands of Japan were invaded.

4. The USA didn't want the USSR to invade Japan and then divide up the country between two zones of occupation.

5. The Allies wanted an orderly top-down surrender from the Japanese, not a descent into chaos and guerrilla warfare.

Answer 3

"for and against"
against: they might not work, the cities were almost entirely civilian (but we had fire bombed Tokyo and killed more than were done by the A-bomb as it turned out), if we had known more about the radiation effects, we might have hesitated more. The moral consequences, which we still live with, and many scientists brought up beforehand as we are still the only country to use the A-bomb on people.
for: the Japanese by their behavior on the islands prevously and their statements diplomatically and publically, made it clear that an invasion by conventional forces would be resisted with huge losses on both sides - on the order of 5 times as many Japanese that died in the A-bombing for the Japanese and perhaps as many as a million Allied soldiers.
Even after both bombs were dropped considerable elements of the government were expecting to surrender, not unconditionally, but with the emperor still in power and any war crimes trials to be held by the Japanese.
As for considering the Japanese less human, evil propaganda against the Germans Satanized them as well, but the simple fact is that when we were invading Germany in 1944, the bombs were not ready (there were only 3 in August 1945 although more were being made, and the only one tested, in July, was 2 months after Germany surrendered), we were winning with conventional forces on both sides of Berlin, and if we had dropped it, the radiation cloud, which washed into the sea in Japan, would have drifted over our troops, allies, and allied or conquered nations.

Answer 4

It was the only way to convince the Japanese government at the time to end the war. Even after Hiroshima was annihilated, they refused to surrender necessitating the 2nd bombing.

Phurface

Answer 5

Pearl Harbor

Answer 6

The American considered the Japanese less human than the Germans.... Otherwise they would have dropped it over Berlin.