Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I made one great mistake in my life. In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.

The atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, quickly followed by the bombing of Nagasaki (on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively) established that the Greek myth of "opening Pandora's box" had real-life consequences.

With a combined death toll of at least 200,000, the attacks marked the end of World War II with the total surrender of Imperial Japan, the culmination of the Manhattan Project, and doomed human civilization to over 40 70 years of threatening apocalypse for strategic gain.

But why?
The ethical justifications of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain in considerable debate. Proponents, including former President Harry Truman (who never recanted his decision to drop the bombs), maintain that it was a necessary measure to prevent a costly invasion of Japan, with casualties expected to rise into the millions. However, opponents consider it state terrorism (or genocidal) and question its military necessity as Soviet forces were already cornering Manchuria from the north and the war in Europe was over.

A study performed by physicist William Shockley for the staff of Secretary of War Henry Stimson estimated that the invasion of Japan would have cost 1.7-4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities, and 5-10 million Japanese deaths. The estimates are twice the number of American deaths in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific theater. The U.S. planned to drop another bomb a few days after the second, followed by a total of 12 additional atomic bombs.

Some view the bombing of Japan rather than Germany as racist, but Germany surrendered in early May 1945, before the bomb was ready. Had the war in Europe continued, Berlin may have been nuked as well, especially since the Nazis were trying to develop an atomic bomb of their own. Furthermore, Japan itself had an atomic program during the war (even though it was nowhere near as developed as that of the U.S.). Also, Japan itself expressed immense racism towards other Asian countries in the course of the war, even if that wouldn’t excuse Americans' racism.

The idea of the fanatical Japanese warrior-state that would fight to the bitter end, with images of school children and housewives using bamboo spears to defend the God-Emperor often being invoked, not unjustifiably. This was indeed an accurate reflection of reality, despite claims to the contrary. The comes to mind, when a group of super-fanatical Japanese soldiers tried to arrest the Emperor to prevent him from announcing Japan's surrender, not even a week after Nagasaki!

If the bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States would have had no choice but to launch, which would have caused even more casualties on both sides. For those who groaned against Japanese colonialism and imperialism, like the people of China and Korea, the incident was rather a moral decision that quickly ended the war and freed the people of Asia suffering from the fascist Empire.

American, Australian and other allied forces had seen that Japanese troops would often die in futile charges or commit ritual suicide rather than surrender. At the, Japanese soldiers used child soldiers, forced the civilian population into makeshift military units, and instructed them to kill themselves rather than surrender. Of the five Japanese commanders at Okinawa, only one was captured alive. A war memorial on Okinawa shows that almost 80,000 Japanese soldiers died there, along with almost 150,000 civilians. Only 7,000 Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war.

There is some indication that the Japanese realized there was no way they could win (even if Emperor Shōwa himself did not), and were willing to negotiate a surrender before the U.S. dropped the two bombs. The problem with this was that they were going to make Downfall bloody enough for the Allies that such negotiations would have Soviet mediation. After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, however, that was kind of no longer an option.

Robert Pape has suggested that if the U.S. was willing to budge just a little on some issues (not demanding total surrender from the Japanese, letting the Emperor go on pretending to be a living god), a settlement could have been reached before the bombings; however, his assessment is not universally supported.

Compounding the issue is the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hardly the first times the Allies had dropped bombs on a city with the express intent of burning the place to the ground. The firebombing of Hamburg had left hardly a building standing, and the firebombing of Tokyo (earlier the same year as the atomic bomb attacks) carried a death toll of nearly 140,000, most of whom were civilians. The doctrine at work in those two earlier cases was strategic bombing, the notion that one could win a war of attrition by taking away the enemy's factories and population.

Regardless, the bombing did amount to an enormous strategic advantage for the United States. By detonating not one, but two nukes, the U.S. showed other would-be superpowers that Uncle Sam had the ability and the will to use such devastating weapons in conflicts. On the other hand, there was no consensus among the generals whether committing the bombings were "necessary" either. Some of the generals who believed it was unnecessary include none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower himself, who had this to say about the bombings:

Here's what Bill Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff, had to say about it:

In fact, some have asked the inevitable question: if Nazi Germany were the ones to have done this, whether they would have been tried for crimes against humanity because of it, even using the same justifications as the ones the U.S. did? It's probable they would've been, and this goes to show that history is written by the victors indeed.

The perspective of thinking about this event in post-war Japan
Japan's right-wingers want the U.S. to apologize for this.

Japan's ultra-rightists claim that Japan was a victim of World War II. On the other hand, they also deny the killings, biopsies and brutal sex crimes they committed in other countries. In particular, far-right groups, including Nippon Kaigi, support the distorted view of history as a "victim of World War II" because Japan was damaged by the atomic bomb and promote it globally, to erase that they were allies with Nazis and fascists at the time and that they were serious war crimes perpetrators.

Japanese liberals and leftists tend to oppose nuclear power, which is also the impact of the trauma of radiation damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Possible positive impact


Some contend that a positive side effect of the bombing was that it showed the world the true horrors of a nuclear attack, and that the Cold War didn't go nuclear because leaders on both sides saw that nuclear weapons did more than cause massive explosions.

Lingering horror
Japan's diagnoses of leukemia increased significantly in the wake of the bombings. This link between radiation and cancer gave birth to modern radiophobia.

Incredibly, managed to survive both explosions. He lived to the age of 93 before dying of (what else?) cancer, which affected multiple parts of his body.

There are still roughly 250,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but despite their noticeably higher rates of cancer, the Japanese government only officially recognizes less than one percent as having A-bomb Disease. Many professionals allege that the real difficulty in meeting the legal criteria is that the Japanese government doesn't want to pay everyone the monthly 140,000 yen special medical allowance required for any citizen diagnosed with A-bomb disease.