Was the Dropping of the Usa Bomb on Japan Justified?

Was the dropping of the bomb justified?

WW2 came to an end on August 6, 1945 when an American bomber, Enola Gay, dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city, Hiroshima. ‘Anyone within a kilometre of the explosion became a bundle of smoking black charcoal’ a Japanese journalist described. Within minutes around 70,000 people were dead. Around 80% of the city’s buildings were destroyed. 3 days later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Approximately 36,000 people were killed. On 14th August, Japan finally surrendered, and the Second World War finally came to an end.

The bomb had killed around 96,000 – 136,000 people in total, including innocent women, children and men who may have never gotten involved in the war. One quite controversial question still rises when mentions of the how the Second World War ended comes up. The aim of this investigation is to find out whether America's decision to drop the Atomic Bombs on Japan was justified.

When World War II began, the United States was a neutral country. That was until Japan attacked on US soil in Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour was a US naval base found in the Hawaiian Islands. On December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbour was struck by Japanese forces. Recently before the attack, US had received a message from Japan informing them that their relationship is now 'broken.' This shocking attack resulted in the death of 2400 Americans and almost 1200 injured. Furthermore, about 200 aircraft vehicles were destroyed and several ship vessels were sunk or damaged, as well as four battleships and three destroyers. Japanese casualties included 64 dead from dangerous kamikaze attacks. The intention of the attack on Pearl Harbour was to maintain Japan's advancement into Singapore and the Dutch East Indies as the US naval fleet would be crippled and not able to intrude.

One of the most commonly used reason to justify the dropping on the bomb is that if America didn’t drop the bomb, American casualties would be high. This suggestion is backed up using Source 9 (Peace and War textbook) memoirs of Harry Truman, American president 1945 “All of us realized that the fighting would be fierce and the losses heavy. General Marshall told me it might cost half a million American lives” If the American’s didn’t use the atomic bomb then they would have lost many more American lives by sending all their soldiers to fight in all the islands around Japan. But by dropping the bomb, they wouldn’t need to risk any American lives and they could easily destroy Japan and win the war.

It is thought that the American’s wanted to teach the Japanese a lesson. This can be seen through the Source 19 through an interview with James Byrnes, American Secretary of State. “We are talking about people who didn’t hesitate at Pearl Harbour to make a sneak attack, destroying not only ships but the lives of many American sailors”. After the Japanese attacked Pearl harbour on December 7th 1941, destroying many ships as well as killing over 2300 Americans, they had angered the Americans who wanted to take vengeance for all they had lost. The main reason for the attack on pearl harbour was mostly because the Japanese knew that they’d need to go to war against America at one point, so they decided that they might as well be the ones to start the war. This attack was what triggered the starting point of the war that began in the East.

Another reason that is often used to justify the dropping of the bomb is that America wanted to show the USSR how powerful they were. Through source 17 Robert Oppenheimer, director of the project which developed the atomic bomb, was questioned by the American Senate, 1954

“Q: Wasn’t there a particular effort to produce a bomb before the Potsdam conference. [A meeting of the Allies in July 1945]?

A: It was the intention of the president to say something about this to the Russians. The president said no more than that we had a new weapon which we planned to use in Japan. We were under incredible pressure to get it done before the conference.” In short words, the Americans wanted to show the Russians how powerful they were,