Recently, Lance Morrow of Time magazine offered an explanation. He wrote, Hiroshima was destroyed for an "excellent" reason. "Events occur in contexts," and in 1945, "it seemed that nothing less than suck a devastation would serve to eradicate a Japanese militarist regime." Thus, the United States had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in order to end the war "almost instantly" and avoid a bloody invasion, there by saving both Japanese and American lives (Takaki 4). Lance Morrow writes that the bomb saved both Japanese and American lives, where in reality only American lives were saved. The bomb devastated the city. Hiroshima was a communications center, a storage area, and an assembly point for troops. Of its population of 350,000, 43,000 were soldiers. When the bomb hit seventy thousand people were killed instantly and many more would die. Most of them would become victims of a new way of killing, radiation. By November there were 60,000 more deaths and another 70,000 by 1950 (Takaki 47). . The United States Strategic Bombing Survey confirmed that only 3,243 troops were killed (Takaki 46). Thus, implicating of the 200,000 total deaths only 1.6 percent were soldiers. .
The Decision to use the Bomb.
The decision to deploy the bomb was made within a larger context than just the war against Japan. The utter obliteration of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and then Nagasaki three days later did, in fact, bring the Pacific War to an end. But, the decision was also related to postwar concerns; the reality of Soviet Expansion in Eastern Europe as well as in Asia and, more important, the fearful prospect of an atomic arms race (Takaki 6). The United States was worried about an emerging Russian threat. Secretary of State Byrnes linked the atomic bombing of Japan to his strategy of containing the Soviet Union and frustrating Stalin's expansionist ambitions in Europe and Asia. "The demonstration of the bomb," Byrnes thought, "might impress Russia with America's military might (Giovannitti and Freed 65-6).
