No, something like that can't be justified

War is war, and the only honorable outcome is victory. We won. And the war ended. Again, easy to judge the highest military commanders over half a century after the events happened.

My father is still alive and in his nineties. He was in Patton's Third Army and after VE Day, when the war ended, in Europe, they were starting to pack up for redeployment to Japan. I talked to another old vet, who is 95, just about two months ago. He was in the marines, on a ship, headed for Okinawa. The men were told that the war ended but secrecy was so great in those days, that the troops were not told of the bomb! They were so relieved. Go ahead and ask these two nonagenarians if they were sad that we dropped two bombs!

Something like the dropping of an extremely powerful weapon, cannot be justified in anyway. The Americans understood perfectly just how much destruction the atomic bomb would cause, yet they still dropped it on an extremely densely populated place. Why not drop it on a remote, unpopulated pacific island, just to show how much damage they could cause if the Japanese did not surrender. They may have been saying at the time that if the bomb was not dropped, half a million American civilians would die, but they didnt seem to care about that when they eventually joined the second world war. More than a million innocent Americans died as a result of Roosevelt's actions (after ignoring his army officials strong advice)and he was worried about half a million lives ?? Some may say that this was the main reason for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, but others may think that it was for revenge,(concerning the Soviet union). Something like this simply cannot be justified.

"How can the killing of thousands of innocent people ever turn out to be positive thing?!" Hotpinkroxx Because it brought my Grandfather home instead of him being sent to storm the island of Japan which surely would have gotten him killed. You do not want war on your shore then you should not bring it to mine! But it is nice to see Japan and America are such good friends and trusted allies!

How can the killing of thousands of innocent people ever turn out to be positive thing?!

if the japanese or germans had had this technology, there is no question they would have used it against their enemies. the killing of over 100,000 japanese civilians was one of the consequences of attacking pearl harbor and bringing the united states into the war. i feel badly for the japanese citizens who lost their families and homes in nagasaki and hiroshima, but not as badly as i feel for the families of the victims at pearl harbor.

I agree that such an act would not be justified today.. but this event took place in the first half of the last century. They barely understood the destructive power that they had in their hands.

When I was younger, I bought into the idea that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible events in our history, but necessary to break the will to fight of the Japanese, therefore saving American lives. I no longer believe this. The non-discriminate, calculated slaughter of civilians is simply too high a price to pay to achieve political/military victory. Targeting civilians in order to wreak havoc on a regime / nation sounds a little too much like terrorism to me.

I'll be the first to admit that very few acts of mankind is more horrific and inhumane than that of detonating a nuclear bomb in a largely populated city killing 40 to 80 thousand people. But is it less humane than 1 million American and Japanese soldiers being killed by bullets? Remember, death is death no matter how it's brought about and the Americans were getting sick of our soldiers being killed left and right. Do the math.