Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the two names of two cities that ended World War II in the Pacific.    On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by a B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay.  Three days later, on August 9th, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.   President Truman decided to use the atomic bombs to save lives from a land invasion of Japan that would have cost many more lives and to stop the Soviets from attacking Japan.  The atomic bombs saved millions of lives, believe it or not.  The atomic bombs should have been dropped.

In the strange, terrifying context of World War II, the atomic bombs actually saved lives, at least, they saved far more than they took.  Prior to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese military leaders vowed to fight to the last man.  The war had already turned against the Japanese, with the Americans ultimately emerging victorious from the hard-fought Battle of Iwo Jima, a sulfurous volcanic island turned Japanese military stronghold.  This is a dangerous mentality to have as a leader because it means that you could cause your people to suffer greatly and continue to fight and die in huge numbers long after surrender becomes necessary.  All civilians, even school girls were trained to fight the American invaders.  Death in battle was seen as honorable.  Some historians estimate that the American firebombing of Tokyo from 1942-1945 killed over 125,000 Japanese citizens without bringing a decisive end to the war.  Without the advent of the atomic bomb, America and its Allies would have been forced to take the Japanese mainland using a ground invasion, an operation that could have cost 1 million American lives, and as many as 10 million Japanese lives.  The bombs dropped by the Enola Gay and Bockscar took around 200,000 lives, which is still horrible even when you remember that the land invasion might have killed 50 times that number.  The horrifying, spectacular nature of a weapon that could end this many lives at once while creating a monstrous mushroom cloud of death finally shocked Hirohito and his generals to their senses.  Hirohito had to admit not only defeat, but the fact that he was not a demigod.

The atomic bombs continued to save lives long after World War II ended.  By August of 1945, the Allies beat the Germans and other European Axis powers in the European-African-Middle Eastern theater of the war.  The United States knew it would be competing with the Soviet Union for power and influence in the post-war world in a different way that it would compete with Great Britain and its other Allies.  This is because the Soviet Union was a communist nation run by a vicious dictator, Joseph Stalin, about to become the other superpower on the global stage.  Before the atomic bombs were dropped, the Soviets were readying their great army to invade their close Japanese neighbors from the north.  Again, a land invasion like this would have cost many more lives, besides giving the Russians the glory and influence in the region.  Stalin had already killed 8-13 million of his own people in Russia, so there was no telling how ruthlessly he might govern the Japanese.  The atomic show of force intimidated the Soviets enough to give the Americans the upper hand over them by the time treaties were being signed.  It checked the Soviet Union’s newfound power in 1945, and for decades after, giving us an early lead in the Cold War.

Critics of the use of the atomic bombs argue that in using them, President Harry S. Truman and the United States brought war to a terrible new level.  Their creator, Dr. Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project, famously quoted a passage of the Hindu scripture, Bhadavad Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” after witnessing the initial tests.  While it is true that the bombs represented a new level of warfare, their mission was to put an immediate end to further fighting.  This mission was successful.  The world might not have been better for more firebombing and death on the ground.  While it was true that they killed innocent people and caused later complications with radiation poisoning, the United States did target Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were industrial cities important to the Japanese war machine.  Because the bombs were new technology, the full extent of the radiation damage was not known at the time.  Still, many argue that lives should not have been taken in part of an attempt to show dominance over the Soviets as a Communist rival.  Hindsight tells us that it was still the right move.  Communist revolutions around the world failed to deliver on their promises of equality and protection for workers while killing tens of millions of people through violence and starvation (well over 50 million in Soviet neighbor China alone)!  While the United States’ development of the atomic bomb forced the Soviet Union to develop their own, the fact that we had it first and developed many of them prevented us from going directly into a “hot” war with these rivals after World War II because of “Mutually Assured Destruction.”  Both sides knew that if one attacked using atomic weapons, the other would do the same, and everyone would die as a result.

In conclusion, the use of atomic bombs by the United States to end World War II was a better choice than a land invasion to end the war.  While a lot of people were killed by the bombs, the Japanese vowed to fight to the last man, so the bombs were needed to end the war.   Also, the use of the bombs intimidated the Soviets and gave the United States a head start in the Cold War.   Although this raised warfare to a new level, it was necessary to reduce the loss of life in Japan and later, throughout the world.  The atomic bombs should have been dropped.