What was the morality of using the atomic bomb?

Answer 1

The morality presented was that dropping the bomb would end the war and save more lives because the U.S. would not have to invade and fight through the cities there to subdue it. == The standard answer (and arguably most true) is that using the Atomic Bomb stopped the Japanese from fighting a protracted war for Japan. While a horrific thing to be sure the loss of life encountered by the dropping of 2 bombs was probably less than what would have been experienced in an island to island, to the last man war of attrition. Hindsight is always 20/20 and people can say all day that we shouldn't have done it, but the reality is that we did it and it can't be taken back. The other thing to consider here is that we warned Japan repeatedly that we were in possession of a weapon that would change the very face of war as we knew it, and that we were prepared to use it. The Japanese told the US to get bent, basically, and even after we dropped the first bomb they refused to surrender. I guess when you get down to brass tacks there really is nothing moral about war. It is a terrible thing to undertake and I think that the decision to use atomic weapons was the best option we had at the time. ==

Answer 2

I think the biggest objection to the atomic bomb as a weapon of war is that it is likely to kill and injure non-combatants, even women and children and unborn children. The fall-out may even harm people in neutral countries.

Answer 3

At the end of World War II, few questioned Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most Americans accepted the obvious reasoning: the atomic bombings brought the war to a more timely end. They did not have a problem with over one hundred thousand of the enemy being killed. After all, the Japanese attacked America, and not the other way around. In later years, however, many have begun to question the conventional wisdom of "Truman was saving lives," putting forth theories of their own. However, when one examines the issue with great attention to the results of the atomic bombings and compares these results with possible alternatives to using said bombs, the line between truth and fiction begins to clear. Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan was for the purpose of saving lives and ending the war quickly in order to prevent a disastrous land invasion.