Did pres. Truman make the correct decision in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?

I dont know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I have to write an essay addressing this issue. What are your views on it?
Did pres. Truman make the correct decision in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?
Sure it was the right thing to do to end the war quickly
Did pres. Truman make the correct decision in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?
if the bomb wasn%26#039;t dropped, the allies were getting ready to invade japan. that invasion would of cause much more deaths, and prolonging the war.
Reply:Why Hiroshima? Why worry about that? We killed far more people in the Fire-Bombing of Tokyo, and death by fire bomb is more gruesome and slow than being obliterated suddenly. Was it right? No. Was it necessary? Probably, unless we wanted to do a land invasion of Japan with Russia and fight bloody battles.
Reply:Personally, I believe that he did. I know many people will disagree with me, but I also had to write a paper about it and we had to pick, wither we were for or against it.


He was really left with no other decision. The Japanese had already voiced that they were willing to fight until the death(no surrender) and wouldn%26#039;t be quitting anytime soon. By dropping the A-Bomb on Hiroshima, yes millions of people were killed and it effected another generation, but he saved the lives of millions of American soldiers and ended the war.
Reply:There%26#039;s two answers to this; Yes or No.





Here%26#039;s my answers:





Yes: it allowed Japan to become Democratic after the surrender. It also allowed Japan to become the most developed country in the world today. It was also a easier way than to send so many soldiers to the mainland Japan when Truman knows that a lot of these soldiers would die in the battle for Honshu, Japan.





No: It killed innocent civilians, and spreaded a new disease into the world. It also started the Atomic Age in the world and caused the world to enter the Cold War Era.
Reply:YES!!!!! even though civilians died and all that mumbo jumbo, it ended the war! it saved more lives in the future than it destroyed. the war would have gone on a while longer cause japan had A LOT of islands and land. it would have taken years more to win the war and we had already won in europe.
Reply:It was a good decison because of the following reasons: less loss of American lives, wouldn%26#039;t have to invade Japan, show off military power to Soviet Union(Russia), make Japanese surrender, put immediate end to war, being outnumbered with Japanese bigger military which was 9 million, President Harry S. Truman dropped the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima for one reason: not to end the war with Japan, but to intimidate Stalin, keep him out of the Pacific war, deny him a share of the peace that we were going to impose on Japan.
Reply:That is a very tough question that i know Truman wrestled with even after he made it. The US believed that if they had to invade Japan it would have cost a million US casualties. Japanese casualties would have been even more staggering because the Japanese people were willing to give up their lives to save the homeland(They had a very different culture than ours, look at the kamikaze%26#039;s). By dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, millions of lives were saved but a new evil was brought into the world. Truman thought he made the right decision as a lot of other people do. I could not really tell you where i stand on this issue (though of course in hindsight i wish it did not happen) because i think a total naval blockade over Japan would have ended the war (though the reason it was not done was because it would take to long for the Japanese to surrender from the blockade like i think 4-6 years was the estimate) I do believe that the bomb drop on Nagasaki was uncalled for and i fault Truman for that moreso than over Hiroshima. I do believe that Nagasaki was to show the Soviets that we were willing and had a large number of A-Bombs. We wanted to show the world that we were the super-power
Reply:In my opinion, no. It was a bad thing. But I say this with the benefit of over sixty years of hindsight. At the time, it looked like it was justified, because the invasion of Japan was looming, and with it the deaths of US and Japanese troops, as well as Japanese civilians. So, hoping to avoid this, the bombs were dropped. But to me, this was no more than an excuse to use these new weapons, to see what they would do. Europe had been successfully invaded, and Germany had surrendered, so now the entire might of the Allies was concentrated on Japan, so - again in my opinion - the invasion wouldn%26#039;t have been as nasty or as prolonged as was claimed. The war would have gone on for a few more months, but Japan was on the ropes, and wouldn%26#039;t have lasted long. The %26quot;conventional%26quot; bombings had reduced most Japanese cities to ashes, and the military was just about finished. So I believe that this justification for using the bomb is mere propaganda - and in war, the victors write the history books. The use of the atomic bomb - and, remember, I%26#039;m saying this with sixty years worth of history to draw upon - was a terrible thing, for these reasons. (1). People in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are STILL suffering from the effects of the bombings - there is an increased level of leukemia, other cancers and birth defects amongst the populations of those cities. What do the people there today have to do with the war? (2). It let the %26quot;nuclear genie%26quot; out of the bottle, with the consequence that the world has never been safe since - for the first time in human history, we have the ability to obliterate all life on the planet, many times over. President Truman made a momentous decision when he authorised the use of these dreadful weapons, in my opinion the most important decision ever made by an American President. But he thought he was doing the right thing at the time. (Does that sound like President Bush and his WMDs? And this is one of the main objections I have to nuclear weapons - the %26quot;good guys%26quot; are allowed to have them, while the %26quot;bad guys%26quot; aren%26#039;t.


Iraq was invaded, and hundreds of thousands of people killed; Iran and North Korea are threatened with invasion, all so they can%26#039;t have these weapons. But the only country that has used the damned things in war is the good old US of A.


Why shouldn%26#039;t the bad guys have them? Nobody should have them). I know that little diatribe had nothing to do with your question, but it kinda puts things into perspective.





Here is an excellent website for you to have a look at:-





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over...





Cheers!
Reply:Yes, it was the right decision for the times. The planned invasion of Japan would have produced roughly one million US casualties by all estimates. Even more for the Japanese with their %26quot;fight to the end%26quot; mentality. So, likely the invasion would have resulted in millions of dead, plus the additional monetary costs of fighting the war for another 6-12 months.





People that object to the use of the A-bomb against Japan often don%26#039;t understand the full picture, or they have a rigid, emotional objection to the Bomb itself.
Reply:I think he made the right decision. It saved lives in the long


run. The Japanese had no intention of surrendering. It was not in their military makeup. Even after they saw the horrible


destruction of Hiroshama they allowed another bomb to be


dropped on Nagasaki before they came to their senses.


Besides which my brothers, my cousins and myself wouldn%26#039;t have been here. my father and my uncles were all POWs in Japanese concentration camps and they would have died before any convention land war would have ended due to


starvation and torture.