The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a “Gun and barrel” type weapon, and as the name suggests, it shoots a piece of subcritical uranium down a barrel at 300m/s and into another piece of subcritical uranium, making one large, supercritical piece of uranium that would fission. It had a yield of 16 kilotons. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was a more efficient, implosion type weapon. It had a ball of subcritical plutonium in the center of another ball of high explosive. When the explosives were detonated it compressed the plutonium into a supercritical mass, causing an explosion. It had a yield of 21 kilotons. These weapons were examples of our ingenuity and our determination, but they were also weapons of mass destruction. The gun and barrel type bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 8th, completely obliterating the city. Three days later, on August 9th, the implosion type bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

If we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs then we would of had to invade Japan. There would be great loss of life on both sides; even more so on the Japanese side as they were ordered not to surrender, under any circumstances. We had already experienced their fighting style on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and on the rest of the island hopping campaign in the Pacific. On Iwo Jima we lost 6,000 Americans, however, the Japanese lost all but 200 out of 20,700 soldiers. On Okinawa the Japanese ordered over 1,900 kamikaze pilots to their deaths, sinking 30 ships and damaging over 300, killing almost 5,000 sailors. On the shore over 7,600 Americans died, but that is nothing compared to the Japanese loss of 110,000 soldiers. On average, 7 Japanese died for every American death. That meant that at least 3.5 million Japanese soldiers and 500,000 Americans would die if we invaded Japan. Probably even more would die because civilians were trained to fight.Here is a question, would you rather over 4,000,000 die in an invasion, or a comparatively small 300,000 die from the atomic bombs. The bombs were the best of two evils.

The atomic bombs needed to be dropped to end the war to prevent Stalin from invading Japan and spreading communism. On August 8th Stalin declared war on Japan, just two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped. We needed the war to be over. What we did not want or need was Stalin invading Japan and every other territory he would need to capture on his way there. If Stalin had done this another war would have probably been started, adding to the already ghastly loss of over 4,000,000 lives in the invasion of Japan. But this would not be a normal war. This would be a nuclear war.

For every person that died from the atomic bombs 13 would die from the invasion. Why would you want over 4,000,000 to die to save 300,000? The cities were rebuilt. Just look at them today, it’s like a Japanese version of New York. They don’t even have radiation from the bombs, as the bombs were detonated at 2,000 feet, the radioactive material was carried away into the atmosphere. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are completely rebuilt and were able to survive the dropping of the atomic bombs.

After Japan was bombed twice, threatened by Stalin, and told America had 100 bombs, Japan surrendered to the Allies under the conditions of the Potsdam Proclamation on August 14th, 1945. There were isolated Japanese soldiers that refused surrender up into the 1970s. The instrument of surrender was signed on September 2nd, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The peaceful surrender of Japan was brought about by the atomic bomb. It was a necessary evil.