Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Right or Wrong?

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We all know that the US dropped atomic bombs near the end of World War II, speeding the surrender of the Imperial Japanese. Following a firebombing campaign that destroyed many Japanese cities, American airmen dropped Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 , followed by Fat Man over Nagasaki on August 9th . The bombings killed half of the civilians in each city on the first day, most of them dying from flash or flame burns and falling debris. During the following months, years and even decades, large numbers of people died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by other weird and rare illnesses . As the American use of nuclear weapons in Japan is highly controversial, I do not wish to justify such act or to attack it. I just wish to think critically about such issue. The controversy of the issue is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war of the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States. But how do you define satisfactory? Everyone has a different level of satisfaction. For the people who think that it was more than enough, what reason do we have to oppose the bombings? The strongest argument is that such action was not needed to end the war. The US had been undergoing air raids on most major Japanese cities starting long before August when the bomb was dropped, causing enough destruction to weaken the Imperial Japan to surrender. Such heavy air raids, together with the sea blockade and the collapse of Germany, which redeployed ally forces to Asia and the Pacific, would also have led to a Japanese surrender, making the atomic bombing militarily unnecessary. All the US had to do was to wait a little longer. Atomic bombing was simply a... ... middle of paper ... ...s could have been dropped on Japan. However, such response was supported by the imagery presented to the public and the censorship of photographs that showed corpses of people incinerated by the blast as well as photos of maimed survivors . At that time, propaganda caused people to depict the Japanese as pests, creatures no more than monkeys. One couldn’t even imagine living in a crazy age like that. A likely reason to such banning was that the images depicting burnt victims and such aftermaths of the bombing were extremely similar to the images taken in liberated Nazi concentration camps by the press, which, of course, would cause outrageous uproar in the public if displayed. Isn’t it ironic? We strived to terminate fascism but somehow turned out with a similar outcome. Burnt bodies, broken bones, endless tears, and all a nightmare that some may never get over.

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