While my view always has & will be that President Harry S. Truman should've dropped the atom bomb(s) elsewhere in Japan with fewer civilian deaths, he did what ended the war. Had it gone to a ground war with Japan, many American & Allied soldiers would've been killed or wounded & more Japanese civilians would've been killed & wounded. The Japs would've used women & kids in combat, armed with pitchforks & sticks-they were using teenage boys in kamikaze missions. Most Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors have said that they don't blame the U.S. for dropping the atom bombs because they understand why it happened. President Harry S. Truman had no animosity towards those killed in Hiroshima & Nagasaki-he did what would end the war. If Japan & Germany had the atom bombs, they would've used them against us. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/24/secondworldwar.japan1 If Japan & Germany had the atom bombs, they would've used them against us. the Japanese had Bushido code or Samurai way. Japs would fight to the death & for most surrender was dishonorable. Sometimes Japanese soldiers would pretend to surrender & when American soldiers tried to take them prisoner,the Japanese soldiers would drop grenades in suicide missions. If you see WW2 footage, Japanese POW were often wearing only their underwears when taken prisoner so as to delete possibility of grenades being used. Japanese famliies sometimes committed suicide by jumping off of cliffs. Hara-Kiri was committed by Japanese soldiers & captains who rather commit suicide than surrender. Imperial Japan used biological warfare against China such as plague, typhoid, anthrax, along with Shiro Ishi's parachuted flea bombs-similar to daisy cutters used during the Vietnam War only that they had fleas which carried diseases. There was the Bataan Massacre, Rape of Nanking, bayonetting Allied POW, etc. Hiroshima & Nagasaki were a continuation of the policy both sides had in believing would end the war which was bombing cities with the hope the other side would surrender. Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama & other Japanese cities were firebombed & so many civilians were killed because homes were made of paper & wood. Hiroshima & Nagasaki continue to get most of the coverage so long after the war. Yes, the children killed in Hiroshima & Nagasaki with their moms are innocent war victims. Regardless of whether whether 1 believes as I do that President Harry S. Truman should've dropped the atom bomb(s) elsewhere in Japan with fewer civilian deaths & woundings or believe President Harry S. Truman's decision's right, we must not harbor animosity towards the victims. Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors have said that they don't believe we need to apologize for the atom bombs being dropped but that we should not harbor animosity towards them. See column by Patrick J. Buchanan, Hiroshima, Nagasaki & Christian morality http://www.wnd.com/2005/08/31714/
Permanent jerky attempts to justify the bombing indicate that advocates themselves feel that their conscience is guilty.Those who feel their case is right would not try to justify..
Again, my view always has & will be that the atom bomb(s) should've been dropped elsewhere in Japan with fewer civilian deaths. But regardless of whether you agree or differ with President Harry S. Truman's decision, we can't deny the fact that the atom bombs ended the war. War is not understandable & as long as wars have been with us, people who don't want to be a part of the war end up being the 1s killed. If Japan & Germany both had the atom bombs, you can't deny that they would have tried to use them.
Don't disagree with you that wars should end with as few civilian deaths as possible. During WW2, the policy by both sides was that by bombing civilians the nation would surrender. Many Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors themselves have said that they don't personally blame the U.S. for dropping the atom bombs because they understand why this happened & that it was not against the victims personally. During WW2, many innocents esp. children of both the Allies & Axis nations were killed. There are Germans who don't sympathize with German children killed during the bombing raids on Germany, Red Army atrocities against Germans & the ethnic Germans killed during their expulsion from territory that Poland & Czechoslovakia won after the war. Though the 6 year old German kids in 1945 were innocent, the ethnic German kids often ended up being the victims-blamed for what their parents may have done. War is not understandable.
Two theories on war exist, Jominy and Clausewitz. Jominy believed in total war, once it starts let the generals take over. Clausewitz believed that war is an extension of politics and should always be controlled by elected officials. We teach Clausewitz at all our Military Academies and Truman made the final decision. To look back when we were in a war so vast and devastating and try to back-seat quarterback is BS. Truman was president of the United States, not Japan. He swore an oath to protect Americans, every day American men were dying, in all realism, each one worth more than all the victims of Hiroshima-why? Because it was a war and we gave no quarter to the Japanese just as they gave no quarter to us. We are not at war with Japan right now, and as such I can sigh at the huge loss of life and it's terrifying consequences, in hindsight I could make a thousand what-ifs and ponder the differences. Truman didn't have this luxury, he was not a man to shy away from decisions and he didn't shy away from this one. I think he did what was right at the time with the info he had in the time allotted.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki will not be the last cities vaporized by nuclear weapons. The next fifty years will see a breakout of nuclear weapons technology throughout the planet. As a matter of statistical probabilities it is close to certain that those weapons will be used.
