What could the U.S. have done besides dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Wel, they could have continued to fire bomb Japan, which, in the long term, might have been just as bad by itself. Of course then the US would have had to invade the mainland with ground forces. The Japanese by this point were arming thier civilians and sending them to possible landing areas…men women and children….they were intent on sacrificing their entire population to inflict as many casualties as possible in the event of an invasion. The bombs prevented that. It reduced Japan’s options down to surrender or die without the need of landing ground troops. It kind of made Japan’s strategy moot at that point. The bombings saved lives….millions on both sides.
I’m pretty sure that the United States was getting ready to invade the island of Japan. But judging on how the fighting went when we invaded Okinawa, it was pretty evident that it was going to be very brutal. The local population was told that the U.S. Soldiers were going to rape pillage and burn the country, the people, and the homes. When the U.S. landed in Okinawa, (as a stepping stone to the invasion of Japan) women were seen jumping off cliffs with their babies in their arms – committing suicide rather than being captured by what they were told were evil people that were going to torture them. The dropping of the atomic bomb was a very unfortunate event in world history but I think that there would have been even more people killed had we invaded and fought our way to Tokyo.
First off – It wasn’t a retaliation – it was to avoid the mass slaughter of the planned invasion of Japan by allied troops (mainly Americans) Dropping the bomb saved millions of allied lives. The Japanese – the militaristic leadership and the Emperor should rightfully take the majority blame – they were reached out to diplomatically many times and refused to surrender – even after the first bomb. Two bombs had to be dropped. The Japanese Emperor chose his ego and nationalism over the lives of his subjects. There are records of all this on the Japanese end and in US archives. Dropping the atomic bombs was a well thought out and measured tactical move to save lives. Simply put, the Japanese cared less about their people than the US did. Keep in mind that the Japanese started the war, slaughtering millions in Asia. The Japanese routinely put prisoners to death as surrendering was seen as conduct unfit for a soldier. The injured were also executed. Women throughout Asia were kidnapped and
