Although the dropping of the A bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long before my time – and the rebuilding had long since been completed by the time I was born, it is a time in our history that I have thought of many times.
I have absolutely no idea what the world was really like back in the early 1950’s with the World War going on, but I think they made the right decision to drop the bomb, thus ending the war. From the many different accounts I have read, lots of people think it was a mistake, and that we should not have committed such an atrocity. At first, I felt the same way, but there is so much written out there about this piece of history, it seems the government did the right thing.
The mentality of the Japanese leaders at that time seemed to be as hard headed as many of us are today. To never give – never say die. It is thought that the US would have likely invaded Japan and the war would have lasted for many more years. 70,000 people died instantly and another 70,000 died over the next 5 years – a huge number of people who likely did not deserve the treatment they were given. There are also several accounts that the fire bombings that had gone on in Japan in the months prior, killed as many as 4 times the number of people as did the initial blast of the A bomb at Hiroshima.
After hearing and reading the personal accounts of the service men involved with dropping the bombs, I believe they are correct – this was not a punishment, but a means to an end. The war ended quickly after the bombs and the world was free to continue on. I hope everyone on the planet can look back and recognize the reason and meaning of such destructive power, and why humans should never come to that conclusion again. However, I think I would support a similar idea, should we be up against such a power leader again.
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