Did U.S. Have to Drop Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945: "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war."

 

Sued for peace is not unconditional surrender, and that's what we demanded at that point.

 

The Japanese weren't willing to have their emperor be dishonored before the bombs hit. Afterward, they were.

 

DoD appears unconflicted:

 

Oh, you're absolutely right. If Japan could have built the bomb, the West Coast of the US would have been obliterated. If Hitler had the bomb, Russia and the UK would have been devastated (even more than they were).

What is also interesting to note is MacArthur wanted to use nukes on China when it came to the defense of North Korea. Truman said no and ultimately recalled the hero of WWII. You want to talk about one of those moments of American history that could have shifted wildly. Top three: Washington elects to not become king after the Revolution. MacArthur obeys his president and returns from Korea without a fuss. Kennedy chooses to believe a cable Russia that ended the Cuban missile crisis and ignores the one that was antagonistic, thus preventing nuclear war with the Soviets. There are some others, but those are the ones that always blow my mind when I think about what would have happened with someone else making the decisions.

 

Justified.

Imperial Japan was the Taliban but with better cuisine and cooler headbands. Ask any American POWs during the Pacific Theatre how they were treated in Japanese captivity.

 

The liberals would have loved the diaaster a land invasion of Japan would have been. Then by 1947, people would have been burning their draft cards and listening to the Glenn Dorsey Orchestra at sit-ins all over college campuses.

 

After reading about the potential shitshows of Operation Olympic, et al and the potential for millions of lost lives, based on the information available to President Truman at the time, dropping the bomb was justified.

Was what happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki awful? Yes. But how many more lives would have been lost had the U.S. NOT dropped the bombs.

 

I'm not a student of WWII so these questions may be rather elementary, but how did Roosevelt feel about the bomb and would he have been as quick to use it?

 

Glenn Dorsey?

 

Roosevelt was the one who gave the green light for the bomb to be developed. Again, the justification was because they all thought Hitler was doing the same. Would Roosevelt have OK'd the use of the atomic bomb? I don't know. The bombing of Dresden was under his watch, so maybe. The argument to end the war sooner with fewer casualties was strong.

 

Tommy Miller would have been playing down the street.