The act of dropping these bombs can be considered a terrible act against humanity. Any act of war that will slaughter hundreds of thousands of people should be considered a crime against humanity. However, if we didn’t drop the bomb on Japan, how many Americans would have been killed attempting to invade the Japanese mainland? Or how many total lives would have been lost if the war had continued? Some estimates are as high as half a million, some lower but almost all of the estimates are well over one hundred thousand American lives that would have been lost. This number did not include the number of Japanese that would have also been killed. This combined number would have seriously outweighed the 200,000 who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In order to prevent the countless number of American and Japanese lives from being lost in an invasion, America had to surprise and shock the Japanese into seeing how useless it was to persist and continue fighting in the war. The only way to do this was by using the atomic bomb. Using an atomic bomb showed the Japanese that a city could be destroyed in one fast blow, and that there was no possible way to prevent the city from being destroyed. After the ultimate destructive power of this weapon had been demonstrated, Japan had no choice but to surrender. Some may argue that by using the atomic bomb in the war, we started the nuclear arms race. This is completely untrue. Germany and Japan had begun research on the atomic bomb even before the United States had conceived the notion. Soon after the United States had begun research, Russia also began research.
From the beginning of time, man continuously seeks power. It is in our nature. That is the reason that wars are started, to gain more power. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate power, the power to play God. With one push of a button, an entire city can be vaporized, killing hundreds of thousands of people. As man got closer and closer to the beginning of a nuclear age, it became unavoidable that these weapons of mass destruction would be created. Once created, there was no way to stop the spread of them, as more and more countries gained the ultimate power. If the United States had decided not to perfect the atomic bomb, or even if they had decided not to use the bomb against Japan, other countries may have developed it before us. Hostile nations such as Japan or Russia could have developed it before us with devastating effects. The United States would have been defenseless against these nations. The Iron Curtain would have taken on a whole new meaning if Russia possessed nuclear weapons and threatened to use them. The nuclear arms race was inevitable and was not sparked by the use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
The decision made almost fifty-eight years ago to drop the atomic bombs on Japan will always be a controversial one. The life lost on those two days is unbelievable, but if we had invaded instead, the consequences would have been a lot more devastating. Thousands of Japanese lives were saved, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of American lives that were saved. In essence, the atomic bombs used in World War II against Japan did not only destroy lives, but it saved them. The use of nuclear weapons is in fact a horrible crime against humanity. But by committing this crime, if it can prevent worse crimes as committed by Japan and Germany in World War II, than that crime against humanity can somewhat be justified.
