Was it necassary to drop the bombs on Japan in 1945? YES!

Essay by PattomateHigh School, 10th gradeA+, March 2004

download word file, 3 pages 2.0

Downloaded 53 times

On the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15am a single US B29 bomber nick-named the "Enola Gay" dropped an atomic bomb from an altitude of 9,000 meters on Hiroshima.

A second bomb was then dropped on the 9th of August 1945 at 11:02pm when another B29, known as "Bock's Car", released an atomic bomb over Nagasaki. Together the bombs killed over 240,000 Japanese civilians, today this subject is both infamous and controversial but we often ask ourselves this question was it necessary to drop the atomic bombs on Japan?. Although many civilians were killed, the bombs were necessary tools to end the war.

The most obvious reason for the dropping of the Atomic Bombs was to end the war and minimize both American Troops casualties and Japanese civilian casualties. The Americans had weighed up the casualties from previous battles and rightly decided the bombs must be dropped. The American authorities saw the danger and possible loss of life in the siege of the Japanese mainland because of the Japanese's honor and patriotism; they were not going to surrender.

In The battle of Iwo Jima 20,700 Japanese defenders were killed at the cost of 6,800 US Marines dead and 20,000 wounded. The conquest of Okinawa by the American forces cost the lives of 83,000 Japanese defenders and killed 12,500 US Marines and wounded 35,500 more. Just by enhancing these toll of the Okinawa battle to a scale that would be more reminiscent of an invasion concerning the main islands, would mean a conservative estimate of 800,000 Japanese killed and US casualties of around 120,000. These figures make the 210,000 killed in the two atomic blasts pale in comparison, so if looked at merely in terms of the probable lives saved; the choice to drop the atomic bombs was evidently the least...