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Was the USA Really Justified in Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

All the facts behind the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, then days later on Nagasaki.

On August 6, 1945 the first ever Atomic Bomb created was dropped on Hiroshima, this was followed by another bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later on August 9, 1945. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed as many as 140,000 people, and as many as 80,000 people were killed in Nagasaki. What is even more startling is that neither of these figures takes into account the amount of people who died in the following few weeks, months or even years as a result of the enormous amount of radiation they were exposed to. The impact of these bombs was massive, and not just for the Japanese. Their immense effect is still felt throughout the world to this day.

President Truman stated that the Atomic bombs were dropped to end the war with Japan and to save the lives of American soldiers. He told the American people that an invasion of Japan could have cost between 500,000 and 1,000,000 casualties, and to not use the bomb, would cause a huge loss of American lives.

Another possible, yet unstated reason for using the Atomic bombs on Japan was the fact that the Americans didn’t want the Russians to be involved in the peace negotiations. This was because they viewed the Soviets as a threat and a possible enemy and didn’t want to give them any control over Japan or Asia. America didn’t want to have the same problems with land division as those that had occurred when Germany surrendered to the Allies months earlier.
I think the US decided to use the bombs as a solution for a combination of reasons, which were put forward to end the war. The apparent and significant reason for dropping the bomb was to end the war with Japan and to save American lives. However, I believe the fact that America didn’t want Russia to become involved was one of the most significant reasons for making the decision to drop the bomb at that time.

“Secretary of State James Byrnes, Truman’s closest confidant on atomic matters, was eager to “get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in” and felt that knowledge of America’s new weapon would make the Soviets “more manageable”.” This extract from Why Did We Drop the Bomb? In Time magazine shows the attitude towards both the Russians and the bomb that people in power had at the time and gives more evidence as to why the bombs were dropped. Finally, I think the military had a view that the bomb was just another weapon to be used in war, it didn’t matter how strong it was, or how many people it would kill, it had the power to win a war. Because the military had such a narrow-minded view on such a weapon, they weren’t overly concerned with the fact it might kill hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom would be innocent civilians.

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  1. Neil

    On March 21, 2009 at 10:57 am


    I agree!!

  2. jakub

    On April 27, 2009 at 4:49 pm


    that is 100% true so fuk da japs

  3. R.Foley

    On May 2, 2009 at 10:15 am


    What was this supposed to be? You jump all over the place with your topics and you don’t have very solid evidence supporting what your claiming as facts. If I were grading your paper I would give you a c+

  4. johnny

    On May 5, 2009 at 8:14 pm


    there wasnt as many deaths after the bomings only around 40,000 after nagasaki

  5. Kenny

    On May 31, 2009 at 11:14 am


    In my opinion, this seems like a great paper covering all the different perspectives and options.

    Great job

  6. Bob

    On May 31, 2009 at 11:16 am


    TIMMAYYYYYY!!!

  7. gerard

    On August 3, 2009 at 5:05 am


    ahhhhh k

  8. Billy

    On August 3, 2009 at 5:39 am


    settle down there buddy!

  9. Superman

    On December 8, 2009 at 11:15 am


    Kaneland HIghschool is the worst school in Illinois.

  10. MARTIN

    On January 29, 2010 at 7:07 am


    THE EMPEROR WOULD HAVE NEVER SURRENDERED BECAUSE HE STILL STRONGLY BELIEVED IN THE “CODE OF THE SAMURAI” AND WOULD HAVE NEVER ACCEPTED DEFEAT AND THE ALLIES COULDN’T TAKE JAPAN BY LAND BECAUSE FOR ONE THING WE DIDN’T KNOW THE TERRAIN AND THE BOMBING SAVED COUNTLESS LIVES ON BOTH THE JAPAN SIDE AND THE AMERICAN SIDE AND MAYBE YEA THEY WANTED TO KEEP RUSSIA ON CHECK BUT THAT JUST JUSTIFIES IT EVEN MORE THEY AVOIDED MORE PROBLEMS SO PRETTY MUCH THEY KILLED TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

  11. robert

    On May 9, 2010 at 3:50 pm


    Good work with this paper, but a bit unorganized

  12. ally

    On December 13, 2010 at 11:49 am


    This presadent dude had a thery about the Japanese over taking them and wining in battle by doing so becouse of there population of technolagy and people. Yet he tried to take one huge step to try to blow up parts of japan to kill them off. for me that seems unfair yet this is war we are talking about here. I mean 140,000 people in one city? that alot of people in a small country , i mean Japan is a small country but thats alot of people on one of Japan’s city’s.

    Well I’m only 15 year old so what do I know about the majoraty of battle plans , populations and other that might cause distroction. =.= Japan gots two huge creaters in it now.

  13. USA

    On January 4, 2011 at 7:04 am


    The reason we dropped the bombs wasn’t to beat Japan. It is well documented that they planned to surrender much before the bombings. In fact they purposes a surrender to General McAuther months before. This was even later confirmed by the General and basically only allowed for the emperor to stay in power and not be brought on war crimes. Guess what the final surrender did… Just that, it was almost identical.

    Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

    The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

    If that’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that’s why we did it. For me I don’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

  14. USA

    On January 4, 2011 at 7:05 am


    The reason we dropped the bombs wasn\’t to beat Japan. It is well documented that they planned to surrender much before the bombings. In fact they purposes a surrender to General McAuther months before. This was even later confirmed by the General and basically only allowed for the emperor to stay in power and not be brought on war crimes. Guess what the final surrender did… Just that, it was almost identical.

    Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren\’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn\’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

    The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

    If that\’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that\’s why we did it. For me I don\’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

  15. USA24

    On January 4, 2011 at 7:05 am


    The reason we dropped the bombs wasn\\\’t to beat Japan. It is well documented that they planned to surrender much before the bombings. In fact they purposes a surrender to General McAuther months before. This was even later confirmed by the General and basically only allowed for the emperor to stay in power and not be brought on war crimes. Guess what the final surrender did… Just that, it was almost identical.

    Former president Hoover came out against the bombings, general mcauther said they weren\\\’t needed that japan was already beaten, General and future president Eisenhower stated how the bombings didn\\\’t have to happen for a Japanese surrender. Just to name the big 3, there are countless other high ranking individuals in politics and the military who attest it wasnt needed.

    The obvious and never talked about reason for dropping the bombs was the soviet union. The cold war was about to begin and everyone knew the tensions would grow. Dropping the bombs allowed the US to both keep the soviet union away from occupying japan after the war, which they would of if we waited longer because they just entered the war but never fought a battle. And to show the soviet union the power we had at our hands and that we would use it. Following world war II we were the only two super powers and Truman knew that would be when the cold war would begin.

    If that\\\’s enough to justify the bombing and killing of innocent men, women, and children in such an awful way leaving nothing not even ash in some case for a proper burial, that\\\’s why we did it. For me I don\\\’t think it was justified. Not with japan already ready to surrender, rather than talk about conditions we demanded complete surrender, and then even after the bombings fearing soviet Intervebtion and then claim to occupation we accepted the very conditions we rejected before.

  16. ManyAreCalled

    On February 4, 2011 at 9:10 pm


    The idea that Japan was willing to surrender is basically a hoax, gonna paste a rather lengthy explanation of it, these are not my words however. Beyond this I would compell you to do your own research.
    A staple of Hiroshima Revisionism has been the contention that the government of Japan was prepared to surrender during the summer of 1945, with the sole proviso that its sacred emperor be retained. President Harry S. Truman and those around him knew this through intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages, the story goes, but refused to extend such an assurance because they wanted the war to continue until atomic bombs became available. The real purpose of using the bombs was not to defeat an already-defeated Japan, but to give the United States a club to use against the Soviet Union. Thus Truman purposely slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Japanese, not to mention untold thousands of other Asians and Allied servicemen who would perish as the war needlessly ground on, primarily to gain diplomatic advantage.

    One might think that compelling substantiation would be necessary to support such a monstrous charge, but the revisionists have been unable to provide a single example from Japanese sources. What they have done instead amounts to a variation on the old shell game. They state in their own prose that the Japanese were trying to surrender without citing any evidence and, to show that Truman was aware of their efforts, cite his diary entry of July 18 referring to a “telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” There it is! The smoking gun! But it is nothing of the sort. The message Truman cited did not refer to anything even remotely resembling surrender. It referred instead to the Japanese foreign office’s attempt (under the suspicious eyes of the military) to persuade the Soviet Union to broker a negotiated peace that would have permitted the Japanese to retain their prewar empire and their imperial system (not just the emperor) intact. No American president could have accepted such a settlement, as it would have meant abandoning the United States’ most basic war aims.

    An exchange I had with two revisionists, Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, is revealing. In the December 2007 issue of Passport (newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations), I published a short critique of their Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Among other things, I accused them of resorting to “semantic jugglery” in falsely equating Truman’s diary reference to “peace” with “surrender,” and pointed out that they had failed to provide “even a wisp of evidence” that Japan was trying to surrender. In their response, Sherwin and Bird in turn accused me of dismissing a “huge body of distinguished scholarship,” but again failed to include a single example of such evidence.

    In particular, Sherwin and Bird berated me for failing to refer to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. “Hasegawa’s research into Soviet and Japanese archives,” they wrote, “is replete with massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence about the causes of Japan’s surrender. It seems telling to us that his work is ignored.” What Sherwin and Bird apparently did not know, or hoped their readers did not know, was that although Hasegawa agreed with revisionists on a number of issues he explicitly rejected the early surrender thesis. Indeed, Hasegawa in no uncertain terms wrote that “Without the twin shocks of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war, the Japanese never would have surrendered in August.” So much for the “massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence.”

    Undeterred by this fiasco and still unable to produce even a single document from Japanese sources, Bird has continued to peddle the fiction that “peace” meant the same thing as “surrender.” In a mostly contemptuous review of Sir Max Hastings’ s Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (Washington Post Book World, April 20, 2008), Bird professed to be “appalled by the critical evidence left out.” In passing he cited what he referred to as Hasegawa’s “widely praised” book again, but only to note the latter’s claim that Soviet entry into the war rather than the atomic bombs caused Japan’s surrender. There is no mention of the bogus “massive new and important ‘wisps’ of evidence” he and Sherwin earlier had claimed to find in Hasegawa’s work. Bird castigated Hastings because he “can’t find the space to note that Truman, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and Adm. William D. Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, all reportedly agreed on Aug. 3, 1945—three days before 140,000 civilians were killed in Hiroshima—that Japan was ‘looking for peace.’ ” Readers of this sentence who were unfamiliar with the sources—meaning practically all of them—could be expected to reach the false conclusion that Japan was trying to surrender.

    In the last sentence of his review, Bird wrote that “the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain a hot-button issue, something that can make otherwise responsible historian nose-dive into polemics.” How true!

  17. Anabel

    On March 31, 2011 at 12:33 am


    really even if not dropping the bomb would cause more deaths, which cannot be proven, what makes the difference is that if america didn’t drop it it would be the lives of soldiers lost. people who were willing to give their lives…at least

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