In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four square miles of the city was reduced to rubble and more than 80,000 innocent civilians were killed on impact. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Another 40,000 civilians perished in the disaster, not to mention the many more who died later from injuries and radiation poisoning. Japan had no choice but to surrender at this point. I believe that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were not justified.
Even though President Harry S. Truman was trying to make the right decision and end the war as quickly as possible, I think it was unnecessary to drop the powerful and destructive nuclear bombs on Japan. In a letter to a journalist Truman stated, "I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war. That would have killed half a million youngsters on both sides if the bombs had not been dropped. I have no regrets and under the circumstances, I would do it again-and this letter is not confidential." Truman felt that if he hadn't made such a bold move on Japan, even more troops and civilians would have died, but the war on Japan had already been nearly over.
Before the bombs were dropped, Japanese civilians had no idea what was coming. We gave no warning. The bombs were sudden, devastating, and a huge shock to the whole of Japan. At this time, the battle with Japan had been coming to a close; Japan was nearly defeated. The Japanese government was also looking to surrender very soon, making the dropping of the atomic bombs unnecessary and cruel. Although the Japanese had a will to fight until the end of the their life, they saw that the war would just drag on and on and would cause more loss of life unless they did something to end it soon. Unfortunately, the United States beat them to it.
By the time the United States conducted the first successful test of the atomic bomb, Germany had been defeated.
