Should the United States Have Dropped the Atomic Bomb?

Atomic Bomb

The United States entered turmoil in 1941 into the second World War. Japan lacked many of the natural resources needed to fuel its industries. Instead of expanding trade, Japan expanded their empire, stopping at no costs. The atomic bomb was created and used to stop the Japanese from doing any more destruction to neighborhood countries. The Japanese Empire trained their soldiers for suicide attacks, and millions of lives were lost due to the Japanese's idealistic war strategy, "fight to the last man". The empire refused to surrender to the United States, and President Truman initiated the atomic bomb. The United States should have used the atomic bomb to end to an overwhelming amount of casualties, make good of government invested money, and to stop the Soviet Union's involvement with a joint occupation of the Japanese.

Militaristic reasons for using the newest modern weapon of the 20th century captivated government's approval. The first day alone, fighting on Iwo Jima claimed more American lives then D-Day. Seventy thousand U.S. soldiers were either killed or wounded on Okinawa. While the United States planned to invade the main islands, the Japanese were deploying two million soldiers who had a fanatical resistance, fighting to the last man on Pacific islands, and committed a mass suicide using kamikaze attacks at Okinawa. The United States issued fire-bombing in Tokyo, killing 100,000 people with no political effect. Only the atomic bomb jolted Japan's leader to surrender. If the bomb was not used and an invasion on Japan conducted, casualties could easily exceeded then the toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The atomic bomb served as an opportunity of ending the war, and saving lives.

Congressional committees had been pacing about the mass amount of appropriations put into the Manhattan Project. The committee warned J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and his scientists working under him, that the results had better be worth the astonishing $2 billion investment. That is $26.5 billion dollars in today's economy. When the scientists succeeded, it became impossible to argue that their weapon be shelved, instead of being used to prevent a horrific invasion. When the decision came for President Truman to decide to use the atomic bomb, two were already created with a third on the way. It was decided that it was a "waste" of money and materials to not use them, and a waste if one out of the three bombs was used as an example over Japan.

The bomb's use impressed the USSR, and stopped the war fast enough, so that the Soviet Union did not want a joint occupation of the Japanese. The Soviets were persuaded to relax their grip on Eastern Europe. The world witnessed the destruction that the bomb was capable of, and convinced it of its horror. If the USSR and Japan became a team, more countries would be taken over and become