The United States still had many industrial resources to use against Japan, and thus it was essentially defeated. Even secretary of war Henry Lewis Stimson was not sure the bombs were needed to reduce the need of an invasion: “Japan had no allies its navy was almost destroyed its islands were under a naval blockade and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks.” Roy Ceustermans : No, the US wasn’t justified. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was an abhorrent act, but one they were certainly justified in doing. This was a grave consequence taken seriously by the US. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the “many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan” – a view attributed to the president himself. It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take, since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives, both military and civilian. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict (in terms of life) in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war, by significantly shortening it with the use of atomic weapons. George Evans-Hulme: Yes, it was justified. HistoryExtra readers George Evans-Hulme and Roy Ceustermans debate.
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