here are several points you have to take into account to make up your mind :
- Most of the Japanese big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe or Nagoya had already been greatly destroyed by six months of intense bombing (day and night) with inciendary and napalm bombs (The Tokyo night raid of March 9, 1945 alone killed 120'000 people).
- Five cities were selected for their georgaphical area and pruposedly left untouched by bombings : Kyoto (because of the symbol and because the city is 3/4 surrounded by mountains and constructions were mostly made out of wood), Hiroshima (a large circular and flat city), Kokura (situated in a strait), Nagasaki (situated in a basin), and Niigata (an elongated coastal city)
- Japanese army, airforce and navy were decimated, the economy and agriculture was dismantled, and the US and allied controled Japan territorial waters and had maintained an embargo on the country.
- Japanese people was starving.
- Taking account all of the above invading Japan by foot wasn't a necessity, Allied could have continued the incendiary bombings and waited for surrender instead.
BUT :
- Russians were about to declare war to Japan by entering by the north. If the Russians had entered before Japan surrender they would have claimed a part of the territory.
- The US and Russia were already engaged in a political and psychological war that became the Cold War.
- The US had a new kind of weapon but didn't knew what damage it could inflict to a real city.
- The US thought of using the Bomb not only to test it life-size but at the same time to give a warning to the Soviets and show the world their military might.
- The city of Kyoto was taken out of the list by Henry L. Stimson, not out of kindness but because he new that destroying the cultural heritage of the city would damage US reputation.
- The two bombs dropped were very different in mechanism, Little boy was an gun-type uranimum fission bomb that had never been tested before it was droped on Hiroshima, while Fat man was an implosion-type plutonium bomb. The fact they used two different weapons is another proof they were actually testing which method was more devastating.
- "Scientific planes" were taking part in both bombings (Great Artiste and Necessary Evil, in Hiroshima) their task was to collect several data, mesurements like air pressure, temperatures and radiations, etc. and take pictures and videos.
- After the Bombings the US have censured for seven years any article regarding the consequences of the explosions on the Japanese population, denying that the exposure to the weapons had any long term effects on human health.
- But US doctors and scientists were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki throughout this seven year period to study those alleged non-existent effects.
- Even worst they created the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Hiroshima were irradiated people were said to be treated but in fact they weren't, and were actualy left to die. The goal was only for scientists to collect blood, skin samples, make analysis and study the symptoms of exposure.
