Do you believe Trumans decision 2 drop the atomic bombs was morally and ethnically justified?
Absolutely! Dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima was justified to prevent American forces from losing their lives in the invasion of Japan. Since they wouldn’t surrender, we dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki to avoid the possibility of losing 500,000 American soldiers’ lives. Yes, both incidents were morally and ethnically justified. Now, did you know that the military in Japan considered overthrowing Hirohito and continuing the war at the expense of innocent civilians? It all tells me that Truman made a darn good decision.
Anyone who says it wasn’t morally justified isn’t a very good student of history. The Japanese were not going to quit, despite the fact they were losing the war. To end the war, we would have had to invade Japan, just like we did Europe. Ultimately, that would have cost MANY more lives (both American and Japanese) than bombing two cities. Most likely, hundreds of thousands of lives were SAVED by ending the war with the atomic bombs. Isn’t revisionist history great?
Are you asking if it was OK to drop the bombs on ethnic Japanese or did you perhaps mean ethically justified. Of course it was. They started the war (sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Remember that incident?) and it was either them or us. They were willing to fight on to the last person to defend their homeland. They didn’t even get the message from the first bomb, thus making the second one necessary. An invasion by sea would have cost perhaps as many as a million American casualties. Would it be ethical to allow that if the war could be stopped quickly with no loss of American lives. You would not have thought so if you were the parent, brother or sister, relative, friend or even a neighbor of a G.I., as I was. Even if I was only ten when the war finally ended.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified by three things. 1.) Operation Downfall (the invasion of Japan) would have cost many times more American and Japanese lives than the bombings. 2.) Showing the bomb’s destructive power to the world was an effective bargaining chip and deterrent in regards to the USSR. 3.) The Manhattan project was expensive. You don’t make that kind of investment without recouping some dividends.
