Where do you stand on Pres. Truman's decision to use nukes on Japan to end WWII? Looking back, was it the right thing to do, the wrong thing? Could the war have been won any other way and would it have been worth the cost?

Where do you stand on Pres. Truman's decision to use nukes on Japan to end WWII? Looking back, was it the right thing to do, the wrong thing? Could the war have been won any other way and would it have been worth the cost?

First things first: the war could have been won with a conventional ground/air invasion of Japan. Unfortunately, such a measure would have undoubtedly led to far more bloodshed than was seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's military machine was determined to fight it out until the bitter end. One only needs to read about the battle for Okinawa to get an idea of how far the Japanese were willing to go for their cause.
Would an invasion have been worth it? Yes, but only in the long term. I can't help but wonder about public sentiment in the U.S concerning the war if the country had to hear about thousands upon thousands of casualities in a ground assault. With that in mind, I can't fault Truman for making the decison he did. It was a matter of whether one wanted a lot of people to die to end a world conflict, or if one wanted potentially even more people to die by trying to end it through conventional military means.
I understand why in hindsight, people become upset when they see the carnage resulting from the bomb, but its useless, Monday morning quarterbacking to suggest that any other decision would have been a better one. It's all relative, of course, as I suggested above; Death or more death? Take your pick. You can't change history. One can only make decisions in the here and now, based on the information available at the time. IMO, Truman did what he thought was best for all parties.

The war was already won.  Many involved in the "Manhattan Project" urged the military to to do a demonstration of the power of the bomb to the Japanese so that they would understand the magnitude, I would say that would have worked.  It is my opinion that the bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki was the most egregious case of terrorism that has ever happened in the history of the world.

The war was already won.  Many involved in the "Manhattan Project" urged the military to to do a demonstration of the power of the bomb to the Japanese so that they would understand the magnitude, I would say that would have worked.  It is my opinion that the bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki was the most egregious case of terrorism that has ever happened in the history of the world.



Yup-that just about sums it up. I would add that Nagasaki was even worse than Hiroshima because the Japanese was pretty much defeated. I wrote a paper in college about this subject that that was my argument.



Cat

Yup-that just about sums it up. I would add that Nagasaki was even worse than Hiroshima because the Japanese was pretty much defeated. I wrote a paper in college about this subject that that was my argument.


Cat


I can see the validity of both of the above points. It's true that the war was, for all intents and purposes, "already won". The question is, was a Japanese surrender a forgone conclusion prior to the dropping of the bomb? After all, they didn't exactly come up for air by waving the white flag after Hiroshima.