Just six days after the Nagasaki bombing, the Emperor’s Gyokuon-hōsō speech was broadcast to the nation, detailing the Japanese surrender. The atom bombs achieved their desired effects by causing maximum devastation. They had in their hands a weapon that was capable of bringing the war to a swift end, and so they used it. GEH: The USA was more interested in a quick and easy end to the war than causing untold suffering. WW2 films | 7 of the best – from Schindler’s List to Letters from Iwo Jima.Therefore the destruction of hospitals and schools etc was acceptable to them. The recommendations for the use of the bomb show that the military was more interested in its devastating effect than in preparing the invasion. Rear Admiral Tocshitane Takata concurred that B-29s “were the greatest single factor in forcing Japan's surrender”, while Prince Konoye already thought Japan was defeated on 14 February 1945 when he met emperor Hirohito.Ī combination of thoroughly bombing blockading cities that were economically dependent on foreign sources for food and raw materials, and the threat of Soviet entry in the war, would have been enough. The United States still had many industrial resources to use against Japan, and thus it was essentially defeated. Even secretary of war Henry Lewis Stimson was not sure the bombs were needed to reduce the need of an invasion: “Japan had no allies its navy was almost destroyed its islands were under a naval blockade and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks.” Roy Ceustermans : No, the US wasn’t justified. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was an abhorrent act, but one they were certainly justified in doing. This was a grave consequence taken seriously by the US. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the “many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan” – a view attributed to the president himself. It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take, since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives, both military and civilian. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict (in terms of life) in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war, by significantly shortening it with the use of atomic weapons. George Evans-Hulme: Yes, it was justified. HistoryExtra readers George Evans-Hulme and Roy Ceustermans debate.
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