I think the U.S. did the right thing in WW2 by using the A-Bomb. What about you?

Try to judge them by the standards of thier time and not ours. They were tired of war. Not the type we are in but ome where every American sacrificed to win. The military est 200,000 Americans dead and possibly a million wounded in an invasion of Japan. THis is on top of the losses already incurred during the 4 1/2 years of intense contant war. The est were also for 10-15 million Japenese dead. This is after the experiances at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Yes it is a terrible weapon. The Japanese were not going to surrender. I believe if the Japanese govt knew we didnt have any more bombs, they would not have surrendered. I believe they did the best decision they could do given the circumstances

It depends.

I have heard 2 serious rationales for this.

1. That it was a necessity to get the Japanese to surrender and prevent countless more casualties.

2. That the Japanese were already negotiating and on the point of surrender and that the primary motive was to pop a major warning shot across Russias bows.

No, I don't think your points do get lost in the debate - it depends on the level of sophistication the debate is at.

One assumption of the former is that Japan had limitless oil, gas, munitions, food... I think this was proven to be not the case after the war, so they could only have gone on for so long...

Of course they did the right thing. People who win wars are always retrospectively judged to have done the right thing. After all, history is written by the winners ;-)

A major reason why the bombs were dropped was that the Russians had not yet declared war on Japan, and were ready to do so. The Americans wished to deprive them of the opportunity to occupy territory, so it was vital from their point of view that the war be ended quickly.

I just love all the "new'' Revisionist style of history being taught out there now. History is a fact based discipline just like any science its not a 'what if' its a 'what are the facts'. The facts in this case point clearly to the fact that the Japanese were given fair warning about the A-bombs potential, final proof with the bombing of two of their cities and it cannot be calculated for a fact how many more civilian and military deaths would have occurred if we had not used it. Hindsight is always so 20 /20

Of course it was the right thing, Japan was not going to surrender anytime soon if we wouldn't of dropped the a bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military citites that is why they were chosen over Tokyo because that would have been all civilians. We warned them if they didn't surender that would face complete and utter destuction, shows that they wern't going to surrender. Then after we dropped one they still didn't want to surrender, so we dropped another one. Even after that some people still didn't want to surrender, so everyone who says japan was about to surrender is crazy. Learn your facts. Japannese soilders thought it was better to die then lose.

yes it was the right thing to do.

Jarrod do you have a clue? the Japanese stopped because they were over extended not because of anything the Australians did. they Australians by themselves didn't have the resources or military might to do much more than try and stop them in New Guinea. they were n no better shape than the US at the beginning of the war in the Pacific. after the US went on the offensive they Australians did also with heavy US support.

Yes we did the right thing.

I think anyone who questions this is Ignorant. We were in a Global War and our leaders didn't and shouldn't have traded even ONE of our lives for Thousands of theirs.

more people were killed in the fire bombings of Tokyo than both of the A bombs. The Bomb saved lives (ours and there's)

Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of both American AND Japanese lives.

I don't think it is a question that can ever be answered satisfactorily. Dropping the a bombs was a terrible thing to do that caused massive death, primarily amongst civilians. Was it better the the alternative? Quite possibly but I would never categorise it as a good thing. At most it was the lesser of two evils.

Look, over the Summer holidays I watched a movie made by a Japanese citizen, describing the conditions of Japan during said time.

If the Americans were to just sail up to the mainland, and just shoot out stuff, they would have been just fine. We already had the south island (bar Nagasaki, of course) so we were pretty much good.

The bombs were unnecessary. Any educated person can tell you that.

It's just a waste of Japanese lives.

Also, I wouldn't act so high and mighty about Americas part in the war. If memory serves me right, you didn't start fighting when millions of Jewish people were dying, or when dozens of islands were being overthrown, but when you got bombed.

Of course, regardless of whether or not America helped, we (Australia) already had them on the runs with little help from you.