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Why is the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during WWII considered controversial?
Especially after Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, refusal of Japanese leaders to surrender and the idea that Japanese civillians would be armed? In my mind if one more Axis soldiers was to be killed versus 1million Japanese, that is one too many at that point. I realize that the horrors of nuclear war are disgusting and terrible but this war, and total war at that... most of it is terrible. If even one British, American or French life was threatened I would've tried to sink the whole island. What am I missing?
Civilain deaths in wartime are a horrible occurrence, on that we can all agree. You are right, however, in noting that WW2 was a total war, and that all participants made war on civilians, not just the United States. Germany bombed civilians in London, the Japanese bombed civilians in the Chinese cities, and both of those countries murdered millions of innocents as part of their military activities, which were based on racist and fascist philosophies.
We have justifiably come to be especially horrified at the thought of the use of nuclear weapons. But we should remember that before they were used, and before we were really cognizant of the great threat they presented to civilization as a whole, they were considered as just another weapon. The destruction wreaked on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was no greater than that wreaked on Tokyo or Dresden with conventional weapons, and more civilians died in Tokyo and Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The pain and suffering described so poigniantly in the response above was no greater, in many respects, for people living in any of those cities than it was for any other. They were burned, and killed, and maimed, in Dresden just as they were in Hiroshima.
Hindsight allows us to be horrified at the thought of the use of nuclear weapons, but the US leadership at the time did not have the luxury of hindsight. Imagine what would have happened if Truman had decided not to use the bomb, and invaded Japan instead. Many more people on both sides would have been killed, civilians and soldiers alike. And when the American public found out that tens of thousands of US soldiers had died because Truman was reluctant to use this new weapon on Japanese cities, due to the possibility of civilian casualties.......well, he would have been lucky if they didn't storm the White House and string him up from a tree on the front lawn.
Realistically, and politically, he had no choice, and militarily, it was the right thing to do. Better if the war had never started, but ending it as quickly as possible saved more lives than it cost.
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