Was it a horrible regretable act that we dropped the atomic bomb not once, but twice on civilian targets (though they both were home to large war plants and other key military infrastructure points)? Yes. It is always horrible and regretable when anyone attacks non-military targets. No one likes to see innocent civilians harmed.

Was it an unnecceary act? One that we could have avoided completely and seen the same quick cesation of hostilities through other peaceful means? We don't know. We simply do not know. Based on recently declassified intelligence filings from our global SIGINT network, it would imply that the Japanese were nowhere near surrender, and the diplomats in Moscow and Washington were lobbying for peace without the knowledge or support of their own governments. They were attempting to persuade the Allies to back down on their own. Military intercepts from Japan also indicated that if a surrender was to happen, Japan would dictate the terms, under no circumstances were they going to accept an unconditional surrender. They were in fact instructing their men and civilian population that they were to fight to the very last man, and to make the invaders pay in blood for every inch of ground taken. They wanted to make an invasion so incredibly unpleasant that the Allies would offer Japan the option of a conditional surrender to avoid bloodshed. They knew our civilian population couldn't support a war effort that saw us losing more than we gained.

We don't know all the circumstances that led to those bombings, we only know the results. A war that was looking to cost us a LOT more men was ended abrubtly and with minimal loss on our side. The effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only temporary. Both rebuilt, both are populated again and are normal cities. Many many people died in those bombings, many people who had nothing to do with the war directly, and that is a great tragedy that we must never forget (just as we must never forget the Japanese Internment camps, or the Holocaust, or Stalin's purges and gulags... they all represent Humanity doing the worst possible things to fellow humans in the name of a national cause). But what is done is done, those responsible for it are dead. Those who vividly remember WWII and the bombings are soon to be gone from us as well. We can not continue to punish a nation for what can not possibly be undone.

We know what happened, and we can but guess and what COULD HAVE happened if we didn't drop the bombs, but we simply do not know. We can't play the armchair quarterback with the assumption that we would have done it better, no one here was there, no one here has all the facts of the situation, and I don't think even with all the documents and intercepts could we really make a truely informed decision now since we'd be separate from the time, from the situation and the attitude.

We did it, we ended a bloody war fast, we had to get dirty doing it, but it was done. We can't undo it. We can't say for sure what the alternative results would have been. It's in the past, it's time to move on from it.

The Japanese did not quite understand the term "Unconditional Surrender". Maybe it was the difficulty of trasnlatingb English inot Japanese or else they did not think it proper that their Emperor should be made in any way responsible for the outcome. They only wanted time to mull over the point relating to the status of the Emperor. I think the USA dropped the bomb on Japan without a second thought probably due to the anti orientalist sentiment in USA at that time. Whatever be the justification, the Atomic Bombing was a great human tragedy, Baker Street , and not a tirade against the USA.

Bahu, do you have any understanding at all of history? Do you have any clue as to the culture in Japan at the time? The attitude towards war and honor? Do you have the first clue as to what led up to the decision to drop the bomb?

Your last comment implies that you actually know next to nothing about the war or the bomb.

I just love how all mention of how the cities in question were also, war factories, slave labor camps, weaponry inserted into hospitals, schools.

But this is what to expect from america hating children, 1/2 truths the rest fabrications.

To those Americans that say no, you shouldn't have dropped the bomb think on this. Would you rather than things like the "Death March on Battan" be allowed to continue, or to go unpunished?

My dad was in the Pacific in the summer of 1945 and he said all he could say after they were dropped was WHEW!!!

two defenceless cities

---Bahu

Two defenseless cities that were, as industrial sites and such, protected by anti-aircraft weapons, just as was every other major city. Let's not pretend that Japan was some martyr state that left itself wide open to attack or sacrificed its innocents or something. Nothing would be further from the truth.

i can't prove it, but i'm pretty much convinced nobody but the physicists who created the bomb understood its power or its effects...and even they knew less about it than most of us. i'm basing this partly on the plan to use atomic bombs to clear a beachhead prior to any invasion of kyushu and partially on the experiments conducted during the late 40s/early 50s.

Starting with the last post: Rape of Nanking is a WAR CRIME and the Japannese Military leadership paid for it with Death in the Tokyo War Cimes Trial after the WAr.

That wasn't my point, but okay. My point was that some here were trying to pin Truman as a war criminal. Horsedoody. He did what any good war leader would do with a new and powerful weapon. He used it. When faced, as he was, with possibly extending a prolonged, protracted conflict and possessing the means to end it quickly, who wouldn't use it?

Are yopum not forgetting the Internmnet of Japanese Americans in Camps due to an Excecutive Order of the Great Liberal Roosevelt.

Uuuh...Well, I'm not sure I ever heard of anyone at those internment camps being forced to work, starved to death or executed for minor infractions. It was a dark blot on our record, yes. It was wrong, but you can't seriously compare that to what the Japs did to our men on Bataan, for example? Unless they died of illness, accident or old age while incarcerated, all the people who went in those camps came out.

The rape of Nanking's death toll was 300,000 plus....the death toll of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was less than 200,000.
The people of Nanking were just as innocent as the people in the two target cities, maybe less so, since none of them were aggressors, and the level of brutality and barbarism involved in the bombings was, oh, just a teensy bit less. On a cosmic scale, in my opinion, the Japs got what was coming to them. Justice was served and then some.

Dropping Atom Bombs on Women and Children is not the right way to win the war.

With a name like Bahu Virupaksha, if that's you're real name, you could only be Indian or Pakistani. Depending upon your age, I'd be curious to hear what your grandparents or older aunts and uncles would have to say about your position, considering that the Japanese adventures in Asia took them to the border of India. Would their outlook be as sympathetic to their former enemies as is yours?

infractions. It was a dark blot on our record, yes. It was wrong, but you can't seriously compare that to what the Japs did to our men on Bataan, for example? Unless they died of illness, accident or old age while incarcerated, all the people who went in those camps came

I am not equating the two and I agree that with the Apology of the Ameican Senate passed on the motion of Senator Dan Inoye of Hawaii in 1984, raking up the Intwernment iserves only to remind, as I did in my Blog that an anti oriental mind set was at work and the Atomic Bombing was a consequence of that. There are no credible estimates about the casualty fgures and in any case all historians now agree that the figures generated during the run up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are gross exaggerations. Yet the horrible Japanese War Record of the Army does not still justify the atomic attack.

The battle of Okinawa cost 130,000 civilian lives alone, not counting the military deaths and that was just one Island. Think how many more would have died on the main Islands. Link

But don't forget that the bomb was actually, and officially, earmarked for use first against the Germans, not the Japanese. It's just that Germany got lucky because they surrendered first

The bomb was tested on July 16 1945 two months after the surrender of Germany. In fact the Manhattan Project was extended to deal with the Japaanese. There can be no contrafacuals in History, but my informed guess is that America would not have used the Bomb on Germany. Kar Alterovit's book Decision to Use the Atomic Bombs is simply too detailed and he makes out a fairly good case on the lines that we have been arguing. We cannot look at the record of World War II of both the Allies and the Axix from a present day perspective. That world, fortuantely, was far far different.

You must have failed your history classes in school.

1. The Manhattan Project was started to develop the bomb, the intention was to beat the germans to it since there was intel suggesting they were working on their own. The goal was to have one to use against Hitler if needed, to preempt any german bomb being used. The bomb was designed primarily to be used against the Germans as they were our main war target.

2. The bomb was tested after the germans surrendered, true. Just because the germans surrendered didn't mean the war was over, and honestly they had invested millions upon millions in the single largest scientific/technological project in human history, it makes NO sense at all to just cease work on it because Hitler shot himself and the European war ended. Continued effort on the bomb does NOT imply anything close to an anti-japanese mentality. It was simply the continuation of a war project while the war still raged on.

I suggest you pick up a copy of Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes... it's pretty much considered the authority on the development of the bomb, including a lot of political and military decisions and implications. It's probably the closest thing to an accurate record of what the project was really all about. Combine that with the recently (1995) declassified SIGINT materials regarding Japan's government and its position on surrender and how it wanted to handle the end of the war prior to the bombs being dropped.

Go to the history, the source materials and not the political analysis with personal spin. It'll give you a damn good idea of what ACTUALLY happened, not what you would like to believe happened.

Oh, and go apologize to your history teacher, you owe him/her at least that much.