There are many Reasons for the dropping of the atomic bombs, one of them is that it was said that it would save lives. This was based upon the theory that the Japanese would fight to the last man to protect the Emperor. Also if America invaded thousands of American lives would be lost. Also the Americans wanted to show their military superiority to the USSR as the USA could see the cold war coming. Also most Americans wanted revenge for Pearl Harbour. At Pearl Harbour most of the American fleet had been destroyed by the Japanese without a declaration of war or even a warning. The Americans also seemed to want revenge for the treatment of allied P.O.Ws. The Japanese had put allied P.O.Ws in labour camps with awful conditions. They were often malnourished, tortured and many of them died.
There are also lots of points for not dropping the bomb. One of these is the huge loss of life in a single blast. 70,000 people died from the first bomb. In the blitz in Britain, which lasted 9 months, only 43,000 people where killed. Some would argue that the USA had no right to sacrifice this amount of civilians for it’s own army. The Americans had also said that the Japanese would never surrender this wasn’t strictly the truth. They had said that they would not surrender unconditionally, they where however at the point when the bomb was dropped negotiating conditional surrender with the USSR. There was also the argument that just the threat of the bomb would be enough. The idea that the Japanese could come to the test of the bomb was considered, but didn’t happen, officially because the American’s thought too many things could go wrong and also because the didn’t want to just use a bomb for display when they had spent $2 billion on it. Also as well as the physical loss of life there was also the fact that it was a very inhumane way of dieing. Eye witnesses described how people’s eyes had been melted, how there skin was “hanging off”, and some of this description was walst the people where still alive. One eye witness, Father Kleinsorge, describes 20 people he found in a bush that where still alive.
“Their faces where wholly burned, their eye sockets hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. Their mouths where pus covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of a teapot.”
To conclude I would say that it was not right to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, because although they might not have known the full story before they dropped the bomb, they still must have known it would be incredibly inhumane. It think it would have been a lot more acceptable to accept conditional surrender, or even to fight to the last man than to drop the atomic bomb on innocent citizens.