The Pros And Cons Of Atomic Bombing

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In August 1945, the Second World War had almost come to an end. The enemy forces in Europe (Germany and Italy) were defeated, and now the allies aimed to overthrow the enemy in the Pacific: Japan. But Japan had a very different war culture than Germany or Italy, for Japan, death came before surrender, as an old Japanese tradition stated, the so-called code of honor. Knowing this, the US only had a few choices left to defeat Japan without mass casualties on both sides. One of the main options was the dropping of atomic bombs. President of the United States: Harry Truman chose this option. In the course of three days (August 6, August 9 1945) two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This resulted in an estimated 260,000 fatalities,…show more content…
Over the past 70 years there was always the question of if the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was justified. In the following paragraphs I will state my opinion, using the facts of historians, on whether it was justified or not. Starting with the reasons of why the bombing (also called the Manhattan project) was justified. Starting with the reason the already mentioned in the introduction, that Japan would rather die than surrender. The real question is what the difference in fatalities and effect it would have if the Allies had conquered Japan by troops. It is predicted that the fatalities would've been much higher on the Allied side and the side, and much higher on Japanese civilians and military. The US may have lost from 418,000 lives to well above 1 million soldiers without the bomb. Another reason is that Japan planned to execute thousands of Allied…show more content…
The main reason was that as Henry Lewis Stimson Secretary of War stated, “Japan had no allies; its Navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities work undergoing concentrated air attacks.” But the main question that was asked, is why the US had to drop the two atomic bombs on highly populated cities, and not in an area where the bomb would get enough attention to show the capabilities of an atomic bomb, and not to have such extreme civilian casualties. Due to the two bombs being dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many schools, hospitals and houses were destroyed, and innocent people such as young children were killed. Another question that is being asked is why the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and if one would've not been enough, to for one give Japan a severe warning, and to the other to spare unnecessary civilian casualties. I think that the second bomb was there to show the USSR the power of what the US possessed and what the results of such a bomb were. And although the aim was to keep the US is our in-line, the price was very high at an estimated 200,000 deaths, and massive suffering through radiation. A historian called Philip Knightley quoted that “the success of the United States Navy in denying Japan her vital oil supplies is told in one simple table of figures. The following amounts of oil reached Japan from the areas she
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