WHY Truman decided to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan & WHY this was a the RIGHT and/or WRONG idea.?

Question

WHY Truman decided to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan & WHY this was a the RIGHT and/or WRONG idea?

Answer 1

Truman wrote about this. Basically, he was the leader of a nation which had been attacked 4 years earlier. Though he was just a Senator when the attack happened, he had been the President since Roosevelt's death in April of 1945.

The object of a war is to end hostilities as quickly as possible with as few casualties to your side as possible. If you will note the bloodiest battles in the war, they took place when the US attacked heavily fortified islands held by the Japanese. Truman knew this as well.

In July of 1945, Truman used diplomatic back channels to see if the Japanese would surrender. He got no replies. So the only way he was going to get them to surrender, thereby ceasing hostilities, was to invade the Japanese mainland. Truman's military experts estimated about 100,000 US casualties (killed and wounded) on the first day!

Now there are some who will tell you that the dropping of the bombs saved Japanese lives. That is true. If an invasion happened, Japanese casualties would have exceeded 1,000,000. But that was not a factor in Truman's decision making process. Japanese lives were to be the concern of the Emperor. American lives were the concern of the President.

To Truman's mind, the bombs had a good chance of getting the Japanese to surrender without an invasion of the mainland. This would save American lives. As it turned out, it did.

The question is, were the bombs necessary? The answer for me is to look at what almost happened during the surrender ceremony. A Japanese military leader had to stop a full squadron of suicide bombers from trying to take out the USS Missouri, the ship on which the ceremony took place. There is the belief this was a common mindset of not only the Japanese military, but many civilians as well.

So it came down to this for Truman, would it end the war quickly and save American lives? He felt it would, so he ordered the first bomb dropped. He heard no response. He ordered the second one dropped. They surrendered. The Japanese began American involvement in World War II with a sneak attack. The Americans ended it by using two Atomic bombs. Justified? Well, if you start a war with a sneak attack, you really shouldn't complain about how it ends.

Answer 2

The Japanese were planning to fight to the last man in the defense of the home islands. Any invasion would have resulted in massive loss of life. The use of the atomic bombs was intended to convince the Japanese to surrender instead of risking total annihilation. And it was effective. With the Russians declaring war shortly after the Japanese realized there were facing extinction if they resisted to the bitter end.

It was the right decision for its time. The casualties were high, but the fire bomb raids were killing just as many or more people. And if you imagine how many casualties there would have been if the war lasted another year or more...

Answer 3

To demonstrate the effect of the weapon on civilians and to show the Soviet Union that the USA possessed a weapon that they could not defend against.

Answer 4

First, every account I've read claims that more people died in conventional bombing.

Second, the Japanese started the war, in which many countless atrocities occurred. They refused to end the war in a manner that would in any way help those they had harmed. If you bite off more than you can chew, it's your own fault.

Third, there are the Saipan and Iwo Jima arguments. And if you live in Japan or know anything about this country, you can see that they would have fought themselves to extinction. The imperium's destruction would have been no tradgedy. How can anyone defend an imperium that allied itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy? Emperor Hirohito could have ended the war at any time (the same way he did after the atomic bombs), thus all the blood is on his hands.

Lastly, if the bombs weren't dropped, I wouldn't have been born. My grandfather (who fought in the Philippines) would have likely been one of the first sent to invade Japan and probably would have died. Had he not died, he would have come home at a different time and that event would have disrupted the timeline of what is now my family, resulting in different births. Everyone in this discussion owes their existence to the world's history happening the way it did up to the time of their respective births. Had anything slightly different happened, we might not be here!

Answer 5

As Randy has already pointed out - this question has been asked here nearly two dozen times in the last 2 - 3 months.
If you need to, and want to, learn more about the Second World War - then you will have to go beyond the single issue of America's dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.

See Saburo Ienaga's 'Pacific War: 1931 - 1945'

Answer 6

At the time when the decision was made, the Japanese people were planting mines, booby traps, and Molotov cocktails all over their islands. They were teaching their children to roll under American tanks as suicide bombers.
An American invasion of the islands would have been a bloodbath for both sides. Using both A-Bombs on Japan resulted in fewer deaths on both sides than would have resulted from a lengthy invasion and occupation (see the current situation in Iraq for evidence of what could have happened).
After 4 years of an intense world wide war, even the US was in no position to deal with a protracted occupation of a nation prepared to resist for a long time.
And remember...this was an UNPROVOKED war started by Japan with multiple sneak attacks that occurred at least 30 minutes BEFORE the delivery of the declaration of war...whether the use of the weapons was morally right or not, it was trouble of Japan's own making. In the end, however, the use of the nuclear weapons prompted His Divine Imperial Majesty Hirohito to end the war to preserve his people from further suffering.

Answer 7

This question has been asked many times here in Yahoo answers. If you place the words "Japan" and "abomb" in the question search box you find more answers than you will ever get here.

Answer 8

it did end the war a lot faster but in the long run it did save lifes but we had it and i think that time it had to been done. with what happened when japan attacked pearl harbor we had nothing else to do

Answer 9

Because, although Japan was already on the verge of surrender, this quicken the Japanese government discision and it also gave Truman an excuse to test the Atom Bomb, showing the Soviet Union, who is becoming a threat that the US has the ablility to wipe out the Kremlin.

Answer 10

It ended the War a lot quicker and potentially saved lives