Should the atomic bombs have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Attempts to answer the moral questions raised by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are rooted in a cold-blooded mathematical equation of war.

The rationale is simple: You kill a lot of people now, hoping to save even more lives later.

An estimated 140,000 people were killed at Hiroshima and another 74,000 at Nagasaki. Would an Allied invasion of Japan have been more bloody?

Many factors cloud any calculation:

The battle for the outlying Japanese island of Okinawa a few months earlier killed at least 12,400 Americans, between 100,000 and 127,000 Japanese soldiers and between 70,000 to 80,000 civilians.

About 3,000 kamikaze suicide plane missions were flown at Okinawa, and only a handful of Japanese soldiers surrendered.

More people were killed in the battle for the small island than the combined toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What would have happened if Kyushu - the westernmost of Japan's four main islands - was invaded in November 1945 as planned?

Or if the Allies went ahead with plans to invade the main island of Honshu in March 1946?

The Allies estimated between 63,000 to 250,000 of their men would be killed or wounded in the battle for Kyushu - depending on which historian provides the figures. Japanese casualties were expected to be much greater."


As one might expect, the few surviving crew members of the B-29s bombers Enola Gay and Bock’s Car are interviewed each August by reporters from around the world, who invariably ask them the same question with mind-numbing familiarity: “Do you have any regrets?”

In response to this question, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, recently issued this statement:

In the past 60 years since Hiroshima, I have received many letters from people all over the world. The vast majority have expressed gratitude (that we) were able to deliver the bombs that ended the war. Over the years, thousands of former soldiers and military family members have expressed a particularly touching and personal gratitude suggesting that they might not be alive today had it been necessary to resort to an invasion of the Japanese home islands to end the fighting.

I have been thanked as well by Japanese veterans and civilians who would have been expected to carry out suicidal defense of their homelands. Combined with the efforts of all Americans and our allies, we were able to stop the killing. It is a sentiment upon which the surviving crewmen are unanimous."

"To try to comprehend the human costs of Japan’s rampage across the Pacific, one should consider that the generally accepted casualty figures for the Hiroshima attack include at least 100,000 people killed outright by the blast and fire that destroyed the city. Thus, if we are to quantify the loss of life across Asia due to Japanese aggression in terms of Hiroshima, then the minimum number of Hiroshimas inflicted by Japan onto its neighbors, including China, Korea, Indochina, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) is at least one hundred. Beginning in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria, Japan unleashed wave after wave of death and destruction on her Asian neighbors, the rough equivalent on one Hiroshima per month for more than 14 years."

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thinker

I think it was the right call. they were far from finished. 5,000 died in the Kamikaze attacks off Okinawa alone.
do you use or hold back your best weapon???? consider this:
he decides NOT to use the bombs. how many US serviceman die in the invasion. ive heard ests as high as a million. so. we invade. the war ends. the grieving families find out Truman had a 'magic weapon' that could have saved their loved ones. how do they react???? ill tell you. they want a rope around Trumans neck !!!!
ive heard Japan is still waiting for an official apology for the US
but thats just my opinion.

so what do you think????
Should the atomic bombs have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

There was also the arms race were several countries were trying to build there bomb and show it of to become a world superpower. Hiroshima and nagasaki were the perfect opportunity for america to test/show of its new weapon and establish itself as a world superpower. Without it america wouldn't be were it is today, were it plays a very active role in promoting freedom in the worlds nastiest hellholes!

I'm sure one could have been enough. Tho the Japanese still wouldn't give a unconditional surrender after the first, I'm sure enough threats would have worked.

So, IMO, at least one of the bombs was necessary, undecided about the second.

Weren't the two bombs of different design? Isn't there a different design between Uranium and Plutonium bombs? Maybe they wanted to test both out...

here. nick named the 'gadget'
litttle boy. Highly enriched uranium; "Oralloy"

fat man
Highly enriched plutonium 239
source

the Japanese did not believe the Americans could mass produce these bombs. Nagasaki blew that away. still army hot heads insisted japan should fight on to the death. the emperor put an end to it.

and the US was shocked when Russia detonated its first test bomb only 5 years after the war. it was believed it would take them at least 15-20 years to catch up. but no one knew Stalin had spies inside the test camp feeding him technical info on the bomb.

One was an impact device. The other was an implosion device.

I dont think the fuel mattered...Plutonium is a better fuel no matter which one you use.

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I'm also in the "it was the right thing to do" camp.

However some who disagree often point out that Japan was (and I think they're correct on this) willing to make a conditional surrender before we dropped the bombs.

Personally I have a feeling that would have just led to more trouble in the long run. And possibly more death.

Just an FYI on this, the B-29's used to carry the A-bombs had the gun turrets removed and a few other modifications. This was referred to as the Silverplate project.

About 53 B-29's were modified to be able to carry nuclear bombs, prior to the obsolescence of the B-29.

"Silverplate" modified B-29...notice the absence of gun turrets.

also they decided to arm the Bomb in mid air. the plan was to arm it before take off. but they decided there was to big a risk of of the plane crashing on take off and incinerating the island.

the components of the bomb were delivered to the island of Tinian by the heavy cruiser Indianapolis. running at top speed from sanfran to the island she broke all speed records. but after delivering the bomb she meet her fate on the way to leyte for gunnery exercises. At a few minutes past midnight on July 30 two Japanese torpedoes tore into her side, igniting an explosion that broke the ship in two. It took only twelve minutes for the ship to dip her bow, roll to starboard and slip beneath the sea. Of her crew of 1,196, an estimated 900 survived the explosion. and only 317 survived. in one of the biggest shark attacks on record. - but the worst was yet to come.
the sinking of the Indy

the enloa gay crew wrote many messages on that bomb. most were obsene. but one said "Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis,"