Was nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki the right decision?

[derspiess]

Yes yes yes yes yes.

[Josquius]

Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

[Admiral Yi]

Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

Meaning otherwise not?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

yes. the alternative would have been a far bloodier affair

[Lettow77]

Yes. What is the reasoning of people here who say no?

[Tamas]

IDK about people here but the reasoning for disapproval in general seems to be:
OH MY GOD NUCULAR RADIOACTIVE BOMB!!!!111

[Valmy]

Alot of people do not seem to understand hard choices. Doing bad things is bad regardless of what the alternatives are. At least I see that a lot on the internet. The perfect is often the enemy of the good...or the least bad.

[Neil]

Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

So the bombings wouldn't be justified to save Japanese and American lives, but they would be to save European lives?  Disconcerting.

[alfred russel]

Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever.

-Truman, if he channeled GWB

[Gups]

Yes. What is the reasoning of people here who say no?

According to Wiki:

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.[76]

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[77][78] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr. (Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay:


The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, [69]


The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

— Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950, [79]


The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945, [80]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment... It was a mistake to ever drop it... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it...

— Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr., 1964, [80]

Stephen Peter Rosen of Harvard believes that a submarine blockade would have been sufficient to force Japan to surrender.[81]

I personally have no idea

[Valmy]

That is the evidence I used to use to believe that the dropping of the bomb was not the right decision. But the studying the Japanese archives seems to prove otherwise.

Still it does not look good that our leaders did not think it was necessary but did it anyway.

[Lettow77]

 While a submarine blockade would have been sufficient to force Japan to surrender, that could have entailed a worse death toll than the atomic bombs, and one that disproportionately killed women and children.

Although it is true Japan was interested in suing for peace without the bombing, it was not the sort of unconditional surrender America received from dropping the atomic bombs.

Extending the war without the atomic bombs means more conventional bombing and more time for the Russians to get a foot in.  The atomic bombs saved Japanese as well as American lives, if we accept the view that an unconditional surrender was the only way forward.

Of course, a negotiated settlement that let responsible government in Taiwan and Korea may have been preferable, but I've yet to hear anyone else say the atomic bomb was a mistake because Imperial Japan should have been left in place.

[grumbler]

Still it does not look good that our leaders did not think it was necessary but did it anyway.

"Our" leaders did think it was necessary, or they wouldn't have done it.  A number of high-level officials, who were unaware of the full details, speculated that it was unnecessary (and in some cases insisted, despite the evidence to the contrary, that it was unnecessary), but no one in possession of the actual facts felt it was unnecessary bar Leahy, and his opposition was based on so absurd a position (that killing women and children was okay before August 6, 1945, but became bad and "not the way" on that date) that I simply cannot attach any significance to it.

The Japanese government had not offered to surrender before this date.  Some Japanese diplomats had suggested mediation of the terms of the end of the war, but they were disowned by the government.  The government was confident that they would defeat the coming US invasion (suffering perhaps a million KIA in the process) and could then negotiate a less-than-unconditional surrender.

[Razgovory]

IDK about people here but the reasoning for disapproval in general seems to be:
OH MY GOD NUCULAR RADIOACTIVE BOMB!!!!111

This and I've heard arguments that Japan was "trying to surrender".  I think that debate occurred here a long time ago, I do remember Berkut mocking the idea of "trying to surrender", and rightfully so.  Elements of the Japanese government were putting out peace feelers, but I don't think they spoke for the whole Japanese government (or even the majority), and it wasn't a surrender.

From what I read the Soviets were planning an invasion of Hokkaido, which was not well defended.  The bulk of the Japanese military was defending Kyushu, where the Americans were planning to land.  If Japan capitulated after Operation Olympic it's likely that Hokkaido would be a soviet satellite and Tokyo a divided city.  It's even conceivable that he Soviets would have gotten an even larger chunk of Japan or all of Korea.

I have my own argument as well.  The world needed to see a demonstration of nuclear weapons, on people.  It had to be so hideous and terrible that it left no doubt in people's mind what would happen if there was a third world war.  Before the war, many experts believed that most urban areas would immediately be destroyed by bombers.  Leaders risked it, because it had never been demonstrated.  On the other hand, poison gas had been used on people, and the revulsion resulted it in not being used as a weapon during the Second World War.

[Tamas]

Also what people miss I think is that those bombs probably prevented WW3.

Stalin does not seem the kind of guy who would have let some spy reports about a supposed mega-bomb discourage him from his plans.